TOURIST GO HOME: COMMUNICATION AND PROPAGANDA ON YOUTUBE

The Social media are considered to be important for the development of the tourist industry as they provide travellers with brand-new practices for choosing their destination. In addition, the travel websites contribute to this notion by offering the possibility of evaluating and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of various destinations. Nowadays, YouTube is the most visited video-sharing platform on the Internet. It is used for entertainment, political discussion, and recently for marketing purposes in the field of tourism. Via its services, users have the capability of uploading their content (UGC) online to various platforms. Thus, YouTube has become one of the leading tools for promoting users’ specific perspectives. It is even used for propaganda. This research focuses on the incidents that occurred in Barcelona, because of the “tourists go home” movement. For the analysis of the results, this paper used elements of descriptive statistics from YouTube and methods of quantitative content analysis. The conducted research included UGC and content from news organizations (e.g. Euronews and Bloomberg).  The analysis of YouTube video characteristics such as comments, views, likes, dislikes, channel subscribers etc. revealed that they might be used for influencing the public opinion. Moreover, it was proved that the “tourists go home” movement has challenged the current image of Barcelona as world-class tourism destination.