Harnessing social media for promoting tourism in Africa: an exploratory analysis of tweets

Alemneh, Daniel Gelaw; Rorissa, Abebe; Assefa, Shimelis

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89354 Copy

Description

Title

Harnessing social media for promoting tourism in Africa: an exploratory analysis of tweets

Author(s)

• Alemneh, Daniel Gelaw
• Rorissa, Abebe
• Assefa, Shimelis

Issue Date

2016-03-15

Keyword(s)

• tourism
• Africa
• cultural heritage
• social media
• Twitter

Abstract

Tourism has the potential to be the engine of a country’s economic development. Some developing countries, especially those in Africa, rely on tourism for their citizens’ employment. Consequently, the rise and fall of their unemployment rates are closely associated with that of tourist numbers. Hence, they need to constantly find ways to promote their cultural heritage in order to attract more tourists. Some of the key promotion tools are social media such as Twitter and an investigation to understand the nature of tweets about cultural heritage institutions is an important undertaking. However, investigations into the nature of tweets about African cultural heritage are non-existent. Our research aims to shed some light on the broad characteristics of tweets about African cultural heritage. We also identify possible implications and suggest potential strategies for tourism organizations, operators, and other stakeholders in their use of Social Media in general and Twitter in particular.

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

IConference 2016 Proceedings

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89354

DOI

https://doi.org/10.9776/16455

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 is held by the authors. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

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