Dialectic thinking of social media and city tourism marketing

This research attempts to examine the dialectic thinking, mainly concerning its complexity reduction between social media and city tourism marketing. Critical focus is on the dialectic thinking of interdependencies and tensions. City tourism marketing involves much interdependence, such as between the production and consumption of tourism products, between city authorities and urban planners, and between tourism managers and tourists. Yet, there is also much tension involved, such as between the preservation and commodification of tourism resources and between potentially different expectations of producers and consumers. Employed eighty-five semi-structured interviews, the researchers demonstrated the value of the dialectic thinking in a case study of Nanjing city, in which social media functionalizes individual personal communication, promote destination in tourism marketing, as well as involving social changes and tensions in China’s economy, politics, urban and governance.