Instagram Algorithm Raises Questions Over Travel Authenticity
If there's one thing that all travellers want to do, it's fit in. Nobody wants to be the tourist, to feel like an outsider in a new place. Instead, the desire is to blend in with those surroundings, to be one of the locals. Part of being a local is doing as the locals do, skipping the tourist traps and finding the hidden gems that only people who know the city well will have discovered.
If this need for a genuine experience is one of the permanent threads running through the narrative of the modern travel industry, others include the need to remember, record and share our experiences. We all want to have memories to look back on, even if it's a postcard, a few old photographs or a 10-second video. And we all seem to want to publicize these trip highlights and share them with friends and family.
So blending in with the locals and sharing memories are two things that modern tourists seek. It's about time that someone ties these two desires together, right?
New Tech Detects Attractions By Tracking Locals' Instagram Activity
Programmers from ITMO University, Russia, have come up with an ingenious, indirect way for locals to give advice to tourists. The research team has developed an algorithm that scans local Instagram accounts to come up with a list of the most popular museums, cafes, streets and parks. By using data from locals, tourists can be sure they are getting as authentic an experience as possible.
Researchers use instagram to help tourists see cities from a local's perspective https://t.co/1nXXNCLxoc pic.twitter.com/qP2nCBPBzE
— ITMO University (@spbifmo_en) September 6, 2017
Results of the research were presented at The International Conference on Computational Science and published in the peer-reviewed journal Procedia Computer Science.
Clearly, this is an interesting combination of social media, artificial intelligence and travel software. It merges the popular platform used to store and share memories, Instagram, with the desire many tourists have to get off the beaten track.
Let's go back to the craving many of us have to capture and share our favourite holiday moments. Social networks like Instagram are becoming increasingly popular for that exact reason. The platform currently has over 700 million monthly active users around the world. 14.4 million of those are in Russia, where this study was conducted. There are two examples of why people would post an update about a specific place: because it’s their first time there or because they visit often.
You might be thinking that the algorithm might have an obvious flaw: tracking both locals' and tourists' Instagram activity instead of just locals. But the team at ITMO (Or more specifically from the Uni's eScience Research Institute) found a way to distinguish between Instagram users living in St. Petersburg and visiting tourists based on how they use social media. By doing this, they were able to provide off-the-beaten-track locations that were most loved by St. Petersburg locals.
Of course, popular locations for locals and for tourists differ, but it was important for us to know just how they differ. Guides usually offer tourists a list of 10-15 attractions. However, locals usually know more. By identifying their favorite places, we can significantly diversify such guide books” - Alexander Visheratin, engineer and Head of Research at eScience Institute at ITMO University.
An important thing to factor into any tourism guide is that sites, scenes and destinations change over time. What's popular today may not be popular tomorrow. As such, a service that works in real time and offers tourists an insight into recent trends could be invaluable.
“Instagram is a dynamically changing environment. Some places gain popularity while others lose it. Sometimes new restaurants or cafés open. Therefore, the creation of a recommendation service which follows photographs of interesting places in real time is a logical continuation of the current results. This is what we are currently working on”. - Ksenia Mukhina, lead author of the study.
Is Authenticity Permanent?
Travellers' quest for authenticity brings about an interesting philosophical question. At what point does a sight or destination lose its authenticity? The whole notion of 'off the beaten track' is that it's a tourist-free zone, a place where locals get together and do locals things. Do technologies such as the one developed in St Petersburg threaten to undermine the authenticity it helps tourists to discover?
The answer is not straightforward. Take a quiet church or a secluded park. Part of the magic of these little-known destinations is their secrecy and their atmosphere. A horde of tourists would quickly see both of those things dissipate.
And this kind of phenomena could happen on a much bigger scale. We've recently written about issues with over-tourism in cities such as Barcelona and countries like Iceland. Although there are many factors at work in both examples, part of the issue is that locals feel like they are being crowded out, like their usual places are being overrun with tourists.
It's a fact that authenticity can be damaged, if not lost completely, by too much tourism. A key for technologies such as that developed in Russia is to find the right balance: to give travellers the local experience they seek without putting locals off themselves. Arguably this is just a case of simple numbers. But it's also about education. These technologies don't only have to locate secluded spots. Maybe they can also advise on how to behave like a local. Maybe don't take selfies in that peaceful church? Or don't play music out loud in that pretty park only the locals know about?
After all, blending in is as much about how you behave as the language you speak.
The Power of Community-Driven Content
We're big fans of community-driven content here at Travelshift. But the technology described above is slightly different to what we usually specialise in. Our marketplace platform gives sellers the ability to invite locals with expert knowledge to blog and contribute to a thriving community of influencers. As well as boosting SEO with bundles of unique, informative content, travellers can learn from authentic stories, hints and tips.
The notion of passively filtering Instagram data is not one we have considered before. But this study shows how it can be done to effectively make every Instagram user a participant in one enormous content community. By tracking hubs of activity in real time, tourists will never be far behind the latest trends and popular locations.