Ana Alacovska writes about a very specific topic and theme relating to tourists and their relationship with travel book guides. In accordance with her theme, the abstract gives a brief summary on our current society and its connection with travel writers, and how that is changing moving into the digital era, and how that can help understand the relationship between audiences and other relationships.
Alacovska in the introduction of the article makes the claim that companies moving into travel information or travel guides online are an information business. This means that writers for these kinds of outlets can be professional writers with great enthusiasm or can be non-professional amateur writers creating a niche digitized industry. She also compares this situation to a “canary in a coal mine” when it comes to the rapid digitization of media industries and travel books, saying that the amateur writing differs from the professional writing due to the “amateur productivities” that professional writing can surpass, for instance, systematic dialogue and cultural or locational research.
Alacovska also connects this to the difference between creative and co-creative labor and how digital technologies can expand the travel information market.
“—the proliferation of inexpensive and user-friendly media production tools. In this view, digitization democratizes, decentralizes, and liberates cultural production. It empowers amateur users to become media producers who participate in ‘‘produsage’’ (Bruns, 2008) or ‘‘commons-based peer production’’ (Benkler, 2006) and dismantle the professional paradigms of creative industries”
This advancement gives the opportunity for amateur writers to have a stage to show off any writing whether it had scholarly research behind it or not, and regardless of scholarly research, has the productive force of conversation to expand on information from a guide book, or any similar type of writing. The inclusiveness of online writing can expand upon its niche segmentation, and expand into something more, while at the same time providing a different contextual style for the reader.