Extreme selfies not worth the risk
Depending on what kind of tourist you are, you may look at Instagram selfies of iconic destinations and see a great photo, or imagine a tourist climbing over a barrier that reads, ‘DO NOT CROSS’ in six languages to snap the perfect shot for their 67 followers.
Often, however, we hear about these tourists falling to their deaths, being electrocuted on live wires, mauled by deadly predators or hit by some form of public transport.
If you’re JCU Professor Gianna Moscardo, you might wonder what causes these people to go to such extreme lengths for the ‘gram and how you can help travellers be more responsible tourists.
“We looked at how the media explained the motivation for it,” Gianna says. “Why do they think people are doing these things?
“We then looked at the grey literature. It is more professional amongst people managing tourist sites and them talking about what problems they were facing and their attempts to do something about it.
“Then we had a look at the available research in psychology, mostly that’s starting to explore what are the things that are driving this passion for Instagram and taking selfies.”
Gianna and her team found that while the media often blames narcissism, self-portraits have more to do with socialising than self-love.
“Yes, there are narcissists but of course there are narcissists in every group of humans,” she says. “It’s actually driven a lot by the desire to be social.
“To connect to significant other people, to your social reference group. It’s about social status and self-esteem rather than, ‘I’m a narcissist and I want to look at myself’.
“In fact, if you look at them, very few people actually post a photo just of themselves. So we say selfie, but they’re often with other people.”
Tourist sites need to play their part
With these facts in mind, Gianna concluded that the tourist sites themselves can do the most to promote good selfie behaviour, lapping up all the benefits of hundreds of thousands of photos, while preventing someone’s trip of a lifetime ending in tragedy.
“Tourism sites can be more active in the social media world and actually talk to the audiences,” Gianna says.
“Ultimately, it’s your social media audience that drives your selfie behaviour. If they all say, ‘no that’s stupid and we don’t like it,’ people won’t repeat it.”
For the conscientious tourist who wants to snap a great memory, but doesn’t want to offend the locals and other tourists, Gianna has some tips.
“Stop and pause and think before you take it and look around you,” she says. “That’s the first one in terms of your physical safety."
“Stop and look, not through the camera, but actually look at what’s going on around you so you don’t get run over, trampled on, bitten and that you don’t step off the edge of something."
JCU Professor Gianna Moscardo
“Number two is because a lot of them are trying to copy an image that they’ve already seen; check that the image is real," she says. "Do a little bit of Google searching. Check, because the selfies you see are very cleverly shot to make it look much more spectacular than it actually is.
“The third thing is to try and be your own individual, start your own trend, don’t repeat one. Think of a new angle, a different way.”
Featured researcher
Professor Gianna Moscardo
Professor Personal Chair
Professor Gianna Moscardo has qualifications in applied psychology and sociology and joined JCU Business in 2002. Her applied psychology and sociology qualifications support her research interests in understanding how communities and organisations perceive, plan for, and manage tourism development opportunities, as well as how tourists learn from their experiences and sustainable tourism design.
Gianna has published extensively on tourism and related areas with more than 200 refereed papers and book chapters. She has been invited to speak on tourism-related issues in New Zealand, South Africa, Botswana, Italy, Finland, Austria, Croatia, Wales, Spain, and the United States. Her recent project areas include evaluating tourism as a tool for economic development in rural regions, tourist experience analysis, cross-cultural issues in tourism, and tourist storytelling.