Eugenio Conti

Doctoral student in tourism studies

The forest contains stories and meanings that differ between various groups of people. Eugenio Conti addresses this in his dissertation project on nature-based tourism and the creation of experience values within social media. 

According to Conti, the traditional view on the value of the forest in a tourism context is that it is a wilderness – a nothing – that the tourist consumes relatively free from any deeper reflection. Conti wants to present a counter image to this; he sees the forest as a place of experimentation regarding co-creation between tourists and residents.

–My theory is that a kind of co-creation is needed; on one hand we have the collective, inherited view on the value of the forest shared by the local community, on the other we have the ideas and demands of individual tourists regarding the forest's meaning and value for them.

Conti describes his views on the possibility of co-creation concerning the forest and the nature as a two-sided coin. One side is the learning opportunity that comes from exploring and co-creating new values and stories regarding the forest. The other side is the potential risk that these new stories, in colonial spirit, will lay claim to the image of the forest.

Conti is also interested in tourists from metropolitan areas, a group that he finds interesting to study.

– People who come from a hectic and hyper-online metropolitan background have special demands regarding nature. They are the ones who construe nature as a place in connection with absence, a place for silence. According to Conti, nature is basically the antithesis of the city.

Parts of Conti's research material consists of interviews with Instagram users regarding the posts that they publish regarding their experiences as tourists in nature. Through these interviews he gains insight into how people express themselves the forest online, and also what stories and values they create.

– It is my belief that you can see some something of the subjective way in which the forest is constructed as an authentic place by studying the texts, images, filters, hashtags that are posted. The validating comments from others on these posts are also illuminating. This construction is about a constant pursuit of meaning.

Against this background, Conti sees a need to renegotiate the entire concept of tourism. Nature-based tourism it not about comfort and entertainment, but rather the search for meaning. According to him, this is what the tourists want to communicate through their instaposts. 

Photographer: Hans Ola Østby