Sin, Harng Luh, and He, Shirleen (2019) Voluntouring internationally on Facebook and Instagram: Photography and social media on constructing the “Third World” experience. Tourist Studies, 19 (2). pp. 215-237.

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Abstract

This article studies photographic practices in ‘voluntourism’ alongside the rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The advent and widespread use of social media platforms today complicates the ethics of photographic practices, as the ease of sharing photographs accentuates and stirs up the unequal relations between the photographer and the photographed. From a conceptual standpoint, the moral and altruistic underpinnings of volunteer work supposedly differentiate voluntourists from their counterparts in mainstream tourism, who are often assumed to be engaged in commoditized and leisure-based activities. However, existing research suggests that voluntourists do participate in conventionally touristic practices, as the pervasiveness of photography illustrates. Using interviews with 16 voluntourists, this article examines the negotiations behind photo-taking and photo-posting in voluntourism. We also consider the case of Barbie Savior, a satirical Instagram account featuring ‘the doll that saved Africa’. The emergence of such online media articles that critique and make fun of voluntourists’ depiction of their Third World experience therefore becomes a self-governing mechanism for how one should behave in encountering the Third World, even as voluntourism itself continues to be seen as a viable way of caring for the Third World.

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