Travel Journalism

Popular science television today is dominated by “infotainment” and undergoes the convergence processes. The number of genres of television travel journalism is increasing due to the emergence of various TV shows and entertainment programmes. However, there is no substantial thesis concerned with travel journalism so far. This article is devoted to travel journalism as it is practiced on modern television and the characteristics of travel programmes and their prospects for development.

In recent years, the tourism industry has seen a significant rise in the number of solo travelers. More so, the numbers of female solo travelers have also increased exponentially. So, what makes people attracted to destinations around the world? Travel journalism has been a basis for travelers all around the world to choose their next travel destination for a considerable amount of now. People all around the world read travel magazines, subscribe to travel and living channels and word of mouth plays an important part too. This research paper aims to find out how travel journalism impacts the decisions of the female solo travelers about the destinations they choose to visit and what effects it has on how these female solo travelers’ experiences after they reach the destination.

Terminological system in the field of Travel Journalism and Travel Blogging is not formed academically, there are differences in writing and understanding of various terms that form the basis of this field. This article is exploring the key concepts of Travel Journalism and Travel Blogging, the main ones being Travel Journalist and Travel Blogger. The concept of Travel Blog is explained in the article. The author summarizes the foreign and Russian theoretical and practical experience in the field; it gives some recommendations to aspiring Travel Bloggers.

Actualmente, periodistas, comunicadores, profesionales del turismo, estudiantes y público general, sienten confusión frente a lo qué es y debería ser el periodismo turístico. Existe una visión mercantilista del turismo y a su vez se percibe al periodismo turístico como una actividad ligada a la publicidad, vinculada con el relato literario de viajes, y bastante alejada de los principios periodísticos. En este contexto se vuelve imperante reflexionar sobre la naturaleza social del turismo, la ética periodística y el verdadero accionar de los periodistas turísticos.

McGaurr, Lyn 2016, ‘The Photography of Debate and Desire: Image, Environment and the Public Sphere’, Ethical Space, special issue ‘Beyond clickbait and commerce: The ethics, possibilities and challenges of not-for-profit media’, vol. 13, no. 2/3, pp. 16-34.

Photography has long been a powerful tool of environmental communication and debate. In their efforts to promote environmental issues, landscape and wildlife photographers committed to conservation may provide images to established environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs), appear in activist documentaries, found their own ENGOs, curate websites and social media pages, run galleries or publish books. Yet the same photographs and photography events that feature in activist media may also appear in the editorial sections of commercial newspapers and magazines, and in public relations and advertising for consumer goods.
This paper draws on interviews with photographers and ENGO spokespeople in North America to consider the implications for the public sphere of image events that combine activist media and mainstream media to promote environmental concern.
Key words: image event, public screen, public sphere, environmental movements, Great Bear Rainforest

The ‘newsworthiness’ of news continues to be an issue of great importance within the field of journalism studies – as the recent publication of Harcup and O’Neill’s article ‘What is news? News values revisited (again)’ (Journalism Studies, 2016) attests. However, the question of what makes the news the news has been pursued, almost exclusively, in the context of mainstream news events and political reporting. The values that underpin other forms of journalism have as yet received little academic attention. This paper seeks to explore the ‘news values’ of British travel journalism.  As a form of lifestyle journalism, travel features arguably lack the political relevance and importance of their ‘hard’ news counter-parts. Nonetheless, given its close alliance to the world’s largest industry (tourism), this paper argues that the underlying ideological values of travel journalism are significant and worthy of study for what they reveal of the representational and narrative features of the genre as well as the cultural and economic context in which it is produced. As an exploratory investigation the aim is to identify and compile a preliminary taxonomy of ‘news values’ specific to the genre of travel journalism.

While travel journalism studies in Russia focus mostly on press and media, little to none attention has been paid to the emergence of travel blogging and Travel 2.0, that have boomed in the last two decades, allowing regular users to become the producers of travel-related content. This article aims to explore the key concepts of travel-related content on the Internet and Travel 2.0.

In this article author gives a chronological analyses of the Russian travel journalism, and a genre of travel program in particular. Evolution of television travel journalism in Russia is described in three stages: author depicts characteristics of each stage in evolution, and provides the most vivid examples of TV-programs to illustrate these stages. The article examines the modern television travel programs in the context of the current media situation of digitalization, convergence, conglomeration, and unification of journalism, which occurs in two dimensions — contextual and technological. Author analyses the modern conditions, problems, trends and prospects of the Russian geographically oriented popular science journalism. The study detected the beginning of a formation of unified publicly available multimedia environment, where the content is circulating freely (regardless of the country of production). The study results suggest that the Russian television travel journalism is on the verge of transition to a new stage of development, where the user of television will not only be able to put together his or her own program schedule, but also to participate in the creation of travel program.

The article investigates reaction of Internet users on the documentary travel series «England in general and in particular» by V. Pozner and I. Urgant. Author uses method of content analysis to determine the contribution made by the documentary travel series to the creation an image of England. To achieve the goal of the article we analyze the comments made on the most useful for our study Russian websites due to its popularity, credibility and accessibility.

This book is about the research and practical work of students from various parts of the world; and of different professional and academic backgrounds. Taking into account this we can say that its background contains contributions from different angles, which translates into greater wealth because it gives different approaches to the work of travel journalists. Proposals for radio programs (some already in progress or in production ) Show all these aspects, there are commercial, educational, literary, informative but in what they do all agree is not to be influenced by the sponsor of the program or become a simple offer of destinations of a travel agency.

Показаньева И. В. Погоня за экзотикой на телеэкране, или трэвел-журналистика на практике // Средства массовой информации в современном мире. Петербургские чтения: матер. 52-й междунар. Науч.-практ. Конф. 17-19 апреля 2013 г./ отв. ред.-сост. С. Г. Корконосенко. – СПб. СПбГУ, 2013.

Travel stories form part of a great tradition inside Western Culture which has served historically to describe, to understand and to imagine other cultures and communities, far or near, being constituted into a real narrative genre. This type of story has been and is a reflection of the perception of the world based on the imaginary worlds created by the travelling narrators.
How do modern authors of travel stories take advantage of the opportunities offered by transmedia storytelling? The present article explores the potential of these types of stories as a privileged object of study for transmedia storytelling studies, from the analysis of a sample of 80 narrative productions based on experiences of travel and presented in diverse editions of the Festival Le Grand Bivouac (France). It also shows the existence of a new contemporary trend inside this narrative form that transcends its literary nature.
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El relato de viajes forma parte de una gran tradición dentro de la cultura occidental que ha servido históricamente para describir, comprender e imaginar otras culturas y sociedades, próximas o lejanas, constituyéndose en un verdadero género narrativo. Este tipo de narración ha sido y es el reflejo de la
percepción del mundo a partir del imaginario creado por los narradores viajeros.
¿Cómo aprovechan los autores actuales de relatos de viajes las posibilidades que hoy en día ofrece el universo transmediático? El presente artículo explora la potencialidad que tiene este tipo de relatos como objeto de estudio de las narrativas transmedia, a partir del análisis de una muestra de 80 producciones narrativas basadas en experiencias de viaje y presentadas en diversas ediciones del Festival Le Grand Bivouac (Francia).
De igual forma, muestra la existencia de una nueva tendencia contemporánea dentro de esta forma narrativa que trasciende su naturaleza literaria.

Travel journalism provides unique insights into changing notions of culture, media, and mobility. This study examines ‘Why we travel,’ a New York Times collection of over 2000 reader-submitted photos and captions about travel. To locate trends within this multi-authored text, the author refers to the theories of tourism scholars MacCannell and Urry to distinguish between enduring and emergent travel representations. The former include unequal distributions of certain subject matter across regions, emphasis on ‘authentic’ touristic experiences, and visual methods for minimizing signs of western culture. Within the same collection, however, emergent representations feature ‘new’ tourisms, highly reflexive portraits of tourists, and conscious confrontation of interconnectivity. In conclusion, the study considers some of the cultural messages communicated by ‘Why we travel’ as it coheres under the New York Times’ authoritative aesthetic. More than a travel feature, the collection can be read as a guide to global mobility in the 21st century.

The article defines the concept of an ethnic «Other» in the context of television travel journalism. It also depicts the influence of understanding of a conceptual pair «we – they» on a way of author’s presentation of other cultures in modern audio-visual media. This paper also discusses importance of an awareness of the problem of cultural alienation (Othering) in travel texts and its potential harmful effects on society. It also suggests the ways to overcome Othering. The article examines representation of the Other, as well as Othering, in the modern-day travel journalism. The relevance of undertaken study is determined by general neglection of the problem of Othering in journalism theory. The study depicts the typical presentation of the images of «the Other» in travel journalism, which allows to highlight the problems of tolerance and ethnic competence of journalists while portraying other cultures on screen.

David Robie continues his three-part series about travelling in Iran. I stumbled on the scene by chance. Our host family in Iran’s second city Mashhad, a modern and beautiful metropolis that would comfortably fit in New Zealand’s entire population, was taking us on a drive to the outskirts to visit the tomb of the famous poet and chronicler Abolqasem Ferdowsi.

It just so happened that this was the very day that a new section of the surrounding gardens was being opened and the red carpet was being rolled out for a visiting cultural affairs minister. Shortly after we arrived, the political scrum began – a mass of photographers, press people and ceremonial guards pressing. Part 2 of a 3 part series.

As journalism scholars’ interest in the impact of public relations on hard news has grown in recent years, little attention has been paid to attempts by elite sources to influence soft journalism. In an effort to better understand what can, in fact, be complex interactions between travel journalists and public relations practitioners, this paper tracks one destination’s brand over an extended period of cosmopolitan concern. It finds that in times of conflict, government tourism public relations may become politically instrumental, as public relations practitioners seek simultaneously to promote the destination and shield it from media scrutiny. At such times, travel journalists may subvert traditional expectations of their genre by exposing contradictions in the brand. The paper concludes that the power of travel journalism derives not only from its authors’ capacity to communicate through their texts but also from their tendency to be enmeshed in the
interactivity of the brand.

The course engages the constructed cultural past and present of the Eastern Mediterranean, in its various iterations existing in Greece and Cyprus. This engagement materializes with onsite fieldwork visits to significant archaeological, his-torical and other cultural sites. Research and writing both prior and following the fieldwork days are an important com-ponent of the course, as are writing, diagramming and drawing while on site.
Fieldwork talks by the instructor and assigned student presentations contextualize the sites visited in regards to temporal, architectural, socio-cultural and other considerations. Intensive on-site assignments with recording, writing and drawing components alternate with on-site discussion sessions, and the course concludes with travel journal compila-tion, presentation, and recording for the DCG archives, prior to student departure from Greece.

This chapter examines the intersection of activism and travel journalism, which is an underexplored area in the existing literature. My theoretical starting point is Lovink's concept of tactical media, as elaborated and adjusted by Lester and Hutchins, who see value in exploring the broader strategic and tactical uses of new media in environmental conflict and, " contra-Lovink " , regard many environmental NGOs as " worthwhile, albeit imperfect organizations " (2009: 582). Although focusing primarily on the actions of travel journalists themselves, each of the two examples I present in the case study begins with the deployment of a new-media tactic by environmental activists. In the first example, the original web protest emerges in a form that readily corresponds with Lovink's description of tactical media as anonymous outsider do-it-yourself new-media activism. In the second, the initial online campaign seeks legitimacy by publicising the involvement of large, well-established NGOs, thereby making a virtue of the very " professionalism inside the office culture of these networked organizations " with which Lovink takes issue (2002: 260). By tracing the outcomes of these examples of new-media environmental activism as manifested in, or absent from, the traditional or new-media practice or texts of two travel journalists, I attempt to determine whether either represents a sustained challenge to " the many influences, pressures and constraints that encourage the media to gravitate towards the central orbit of power " (Curran, 2002: 148). In so doing, I ask more broadly whether new media can enhance the agency of travel journalists and, through them, the power of environmental groups, in the face of structural forces that favour elite sources.

Travel journalism about natural attractions is environmental communication at the cusp of consumerism and concern. Countries and regions that market forests, rivers and wildlife to international tourists drive place-of-origin brand recognition that benefits exporters in other sectors. Place-branding in such destinations is not just PR for environmentally sustainable development and consumption, but also a political enterprise. Environmental Communication and Travel Journalism considers tourism public relations as elite reputation management, and applies models of political conflict and source-media relations to the analysis of the 'soft' genre of travel journalism. The book seeks to understand how, in whose interests and against what odds discourses of cosmopolitanism and place-branding influence the way travel journalists represent vulnerable and contested environments. Informed by interviews with journalists and their sources, Environmental Communication and Travel Journalism identifies and theorises networks, cultures, discursive strategies and multiple loyalties that can assist or interrupt flows of environmental concern in the cosmopolitan public sphere. The book should be of interest to scholars of environmental communication, environmental politics, journalism, tourism, marketing and public relations.

Like international news, travel journalism draws upon and perpetuates the “home” nation’s collective imagination of different parts of the world (Fursich and Kavoori, 2001). In keeping with the hierarchical nature of news genres and the academic attention they garner, travel journalism has tended to be overlooked in favour of the “hard” news of political reporting. Nonetheless, given its long history of representing “other” peoples and “other” places, travel journalism is an equally important site for the study of transcultural encounters.
This paper focuses on the ways in which travel journalism represents the Middle East in three British Sunday broadsheets; The Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday, and The Sunday Telegraph as well as Amman to Wadi Rum, a programme broadcast by the pan-European network, the Travel Channel. The rich cultural and political heritage of Europe’s relations with the Middle East provides an ideal context to examine how travel journalism frames “others”. Specifically, three primary considerations will be addressed: how does this journalism construct cultural frames for the peoples and places of the Middle East?; to what extent do these cultural frames draw upon Europe’s colonial past?; and is this representational trope constitutive of a European imagining of the Middle East?

Keywords: travel journalism; travel writing; Orientalism; Middle East; representation; consumerism

El periodismo de viajes ha vivido una transformación en la última década con el avance de Internet y la eclosión de blogs dedicados a esta temática, mientras que el mercado de revistas tradicionales se ha contraído. Al mismo tiempo, los medios actuales tienen que hacer frente a nuevos hábitos y exigencias por parte de los lectores. Este artículo analiza, a través de dos encuestas online dónde y cómo buscan información sobre viajes las audiencias en España y en Rusia, así como su opinión sobre las revistas y los blogs de viajes. Los resultados (N= 123) muestran que los usuarios apenas compran las revistas de viajes en papel, y que la popularidad de proyectos digitales es mayor, mientras que los motivos para consultar las publicaciones tradicionales y los blogs son diferentes. Las tendencias son similares en caso de España y de Rusia, lo que sugiere su carácter global.

Príspevok Tvárou v tvár s „Iným“. Kukučínova cesta do Dalmácie a Čiernej Hory. Medzi udomácnením a odcudzením rieši otázku prvej časti Kukučínovho „balkánskeho“ cestopisu Cestopisné črty v kontexte autorovho stretnutia s „inakosťou“. Tézou štúdie je, že spomínaný denník sa prirodzene rozpadá na dve časti, z ktorých prvá, venovaná Dalmácii, je popisom získaného domova, nadobudnutej otčiny, druhá zase tvorí skutočný priestor skúmania rôznych odtieňov kultúrnej odlišnosti. Čiernohorská inakosť je Kukučínom pozorovaná, skúmaná a interpretovaná vnútri metaforického a vecného trojuholníka: priestor (krajina) – mužskosť – ženskosť a na pozadí dichotómie: mýtická (stereotypná) predstava – skutočnosť. Slovenský prozaik a cestovateľ vychádza z istej šablónovitej predstavy o Čiernej Hore a Čiernohorcoch. Postupne však jeho príbeh nadobúda prvky a osnovy, ktoré prehodnocujú tento pôvodný rozprávkový prístup. Dôležitým referenčným bodom v interpretácii Kukučínovho „zápasu“ s exotikou Balkánu je cestovný denník Gustava Zechentera Laskomerského Zo Slovenska do Carihradu, ktorý je v slovenskej literatúre svojráznou predlohou a príručkou prežívania kontaktu s „Iným“.

Although travel journalism can have considerable influence in one of the world’s largest marketplaces, a definition remains elusive and the genre continues to be under-explored. The explanation may be a scholarly ambivalence towards the use of the word ‘‘journalism’’ to describe texts characterized by subjectivity and a conspicuous proximity to tourism advertising. Yet not all travel journalism is tourism’s handmaiden. Drawing on examples of US and British newspaper and magazine travel articles that criticize forestry practices in Australia’s island state of Tasmania, this paper attempts to understand better the genesis and deployment of political comment in a genre routinely subsidized and besieged by government public relations. The paper argues that travel journalism that subverts traditional expectations of the genre through its mediation of environmental conflict can usefully be understood as a textual manifestation of the cosmopolitan interplay of culture and environment arising out of transnational and cross-genre discourse. Noting Ulrich Beck’s faith in the media to promote active political cosmopolitanism, the paper hypothesizes that further analysis of travel journalism has the potential to provide surprising insights into journalism, public relations and the mediation of global concern.

Показаньева, И. Трэвел-журналистика как явление современного медиапространства / И. Показаньева // Збірник матеріалів Всеукраїнської науково-практичної студентської конференції «Українські мас-медіа: традиції та виклики сьогодення». – Львів, 2012. – C.114–116.

It is no secret that the frames of travel journalism tend to be anchored in the world views of its writers and readers. Yet if we expand our interest in cosmopolitanism beyond the mediation of cultural diversity to the media's engagement with politics and the environment, we may find it a site with more to offer the public sphere than banal cosmopolitanism. The very home-market focus responsible for some of travel journalism's limitations can enhance its ability to foster an appreciation of distant and home cultures as united in their common humanity and shared vulnerability to environmental threats. Viewed from this perspective, travel journalism appears favourably positioned to perform the cosmopolitan function ascribed to the media by Ulrich Beck of recognising and reflecting " a sense of partaking in the great human experiment in civilization – with one's own language and cultural symbols and the means to counter global threats – and hence of making a contribution to world culture " (Beck 2006:21). Drawing on texts by, and interviews with, British and US authors of travel journalism about Australia's island state of Tasmania, this chapter considers the genre's mediation of environmental threats. The chapter finds that travel journalism can accommodate expressions of what I describe as brand-sensitive cosmopolitan concern – concern for distant destinations it simultaneously praises as places worth visiting. This is because such concern can service particular industry needs while simultaneously functioning as evidence of marketable editorial independence. In the case of endangered animals, for example, expressions of concern for species that tourists can still view in their natural habitat but may soon be extinct in the wild are also a promise of bragging rights – one of tourism's most desirable rewards. In the case of environmental degradation, political comment can be justified as encouraging better stewardship of places of tourism value or arousing the interest of readers facing similar problems at home. Either way, the travel journalist's concern for the landscape marks it as special enough to warrant inclusion in the reader's itinerary. In this manner, brand-sensitive cosmopolitan concern may form a bridge between consumer and political cosmopolitanism. Yet the very travel journalism that supports Beck's faith in the media's ability to play a central role in the public contestation of environmental risks also provides evidence that media framing of one environmental problem can disguise the risks of another. Tasmania's capital, Hobart, is one of the farthest destinations from London and Washington – some 17,000 kilometres from each. The tourism sector is responsible for approximately 5 per cent of global carbon dioxide, and tourism transport accounts for around three-quarters of the sector's emissions. Despite the potential of brand-sensitive cosmopolitan concern to contribute to the emergence of the cosmopolitan outlook, which Beck defines by its public reflexivity, its advocacy of travel to distant places can deflect attention from debate about the global environmental costs of pursuing economic sustainability through tourism development. Transnational travel journalism that expresses brand-sensitive cosmopolitan concern often has a political purpose and can unsettle those responsible for environmental problems in host destinations. Yet it does not necessarily indicate a weakening of the structural bonds between mainstream travel journalism and the broader tourism industry. And herein lies a cosmopolitan paradox at the heart of this perplexing genre, for travel journalism that takes on carbon-intensive tourism head-on by advocating travel closer to home negates its own ability to expose tourists to distant cultures and alert them to distant environmental threats.

Экология медиасреды: проблемы безопасности и рационального использования коммуникативных ресурсов. Сборник тезисов Международной научно-практической конференции, 10 декабря 2015 г. — М.: Факультет журналистики МГУ имени М. В. Ломоносова, 2015.

“Out there”: British travel journalism and the negotiation of cultural difference.

This chapter examines how British travel journalism provides its readership with cultural frames of reference for a specific touristic experience: safari holidays in Africa. It will focus on a selection of articles from British broadsheet newspapers, from The Sunday Times, and The Sunday Telegraph. The intention is to address two principal concerns. What representational strategies are deployed in travel journalism on this region and how are they constitutive of broader British imaginings of Africa? Secondly, it is important that these representational concerns are considered in terms of the commercial context in which they are produced. In addressing these concerns the intention is also to explore how this is indicative of the broader, cultural frames of reference through which travel journalism views its “others”.

This article provides a brief description of the situation while presenting the image of an ethnic «Other» in the media of the modern era. The article indicated the importance of awareness of the problem of cultural alienation while facing a collision with the Otherness on screen, also it showed the need of a guidance by the principles of tolerance and ethnic competence while representing the other cultures by the journalists. The relevance of the article is determined by the lack of sufficient research of this particular topic of representation of «the Other» in the theory of journalism.

Hilmar Schmundt, Milos Vec, Hildegard Westphal (Hgg.).

Angefangen hat alles mit einem Salonspiel zwischen Forschern, Schriftstellern und Journalisten: Was sind die Pilgerstätten der Wissenschaft?

Welche Orte laden ein zum Entdecken und Verharren, zum Schauen, Staunen und Begreifen?Gibt es so etwas wie Mekkas der Moderne? Wir diskutierten per E-Mail, Skype und über ein Onlineforum. Als wollten wir die Frage nach realen Orten des Wissens von Anfang an ad absurdum führen. Doch dann geschah etwas Überraschendes. Je mehr Argumente wir gegen reale Pilgerorte der Moderne auflisteten, desto mehr Erlebnisse fielen uns ein, die nicht durch Datenleitungen passen: das erwartungsvolle Strahlen von Schulkindern, die mit Schlafsäcken unterm Arm durch das British Museum eilen, um bei den Mumien zu übernachten; das seltsame Gefühl, gemeinsam mit Geologen aus aller Welt am Strand von Stevns Klint genau die fingerdicke Tonschicht zu berühren, die entstand, als die Dinosaurier ausstarben; die Lust, in Bologna, der vielleicht ältesten Universitätsstadt Europas, ein fettes Fleischragout zu löffeln; das Frösteln, das sich an Palmenstränden des Bikiniatolls einstellt, wenn man an die Bombenversuche denkt. Ziel dieses Buches ist es nicht, den einen kanonischen Ort zu finden oder zu erfinden. Die Mekkas der Moderne – falls sie existieren – kann es nur im Plural geben. Aber das geht anderen Weltanschauungen ähnlich und den großen Religionen sowieso: Das Christentum bietet seinen Anhängern nicht nur Rom zur Pilgerreise an, sondern auch Wittenberg, die Wartburg oder den Jakobsweg. Selbst Mekka ist nicht das einzige Zentrum des Islam, denn da waren immer auch Medina und der Felsendom in Jerusalem.

Was also sind die Mekkas der Moderne? Wenn es sie gibt, welche Funktionen erfüllen sie?

Auf den Spuren dieser Fragen lädt das Buch ein zu einer Weltreise im Flugzeug, zu Fuß oder einfach beim Lesen auf der Couch.

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Eine Publikation der Jungen Akademie an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina

Dark tourism, as an established form of tourism, has been implicated by scholars in the commodification of sites that relate to disaster, tragedy, and death. This chapter reviews the literature surrounding dark tourism, recovering a tension between commercialization and cultural significance in both dark sites and dark spectators. Cambodian history is filled with sites of recent atrocity, but dark tourism has offered an economic boon to the country, expanding the middle class. As a case study, this chapter introduces the travel discourses surrounding Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng genocide museum and argues that dark sites form from the tensions between acts of commodification and practices of historical reverence. Travel journalism, while not resolving these tensions, offers a style of engagement for negotiating them discursively.

Traveling to sites that relate to disaster, tragedy and death has become an established form of tourism. The aim of this chapter is to explain the conflicted role travel journalism can play in promoting this so-called dark tourism. The question is how travel journalists — who tend to focus on more positive, light-hearted stories — produce and negotiate the boundaries, motivations and ethics of this type of macabre tourism. As a case study, this chapter investigates the ways in which US-based travel journalists have participated in the public discourses that surround Tuol Sleng, a former Cambodian primary school that became a secret prison during the Khmer Rouge era and now exists as museum. Cambodia sits on the cusp of modernity, as tourists are lured to the country by the promises of exotic beauty but also by the darkness of a violent recent history, fueling a booming tourism industry that has led to real economic gains for the country (Chheang, 2009). By examining travel journalism articles +that document visits to and histories of the site, this chapter posits that travel journalism can operate as a realm of discursive practice that helps make sense of complex realities by offering, beyond tourism’s broader commercial concerns, a mode for engaging with dark sites that preserves empathy.

Pendant les années trente, Giovanni Comisso s’affirme comme écrivain en Italie. Cependant, il a toujours été considéré comme un auteur difficile à classer. Ancrée dans la tradition autobiographique italienne des décennies précédentes, sa prose affiche une nature esthétisante qui s’impose à travers un style proche de la prosa d’arte de l’époque. Par contre, ses choix thématiques et génériques pointent plutôt en dehors du littéraire, vers le récit de guerre, le reportage et la littérature de voyage.

C’est le cas de Giorni di guerra (1931), les mémoires de guerre qualifiées à la fois de personnalistes et réalistes, ainsi que du grand nombre de missions effectuées comme reporter de voyage pour la Gazzetta del Popolo. Le statut hétéronome des textes journalistiques de Comisso est d’ailleurs confirmé par leur édition en trois recueils – Questa è Parigi (1931), Cina - Giappone (1932) et L’italiano errante per l’Italia (1937) – et donc par leur incorporation dans l’œuvre littéraire l’auteur, à côté de ses ouvrages de fiction.

La contribution se propose d’approfondir la fonction des ouvrages de non fiction de Commisso à l’intérieur des systèmes littéraire et journalistique des années trente en Italie, afin de formuler des hypothèses concernant leur position charnière sur le plan culturel au sens large. Dans cette perspective, l’usage d’un langage strictement affirmatif et la présence d’un « je » confiant et extraverti s’avèrent fondamentaux pour ce qui est de l’attribution aux textes du statut de documents attestant non seulement le vécu d’un écrivain exceptionnel mais aussi caractéristiques parfois dépaysants des cultures étrangères ou du passé de la guerre.

Cependant, dans le contexte de la société italienne des années trente, le refus d’interpréter et d’analyser ouvertement ces réalités est tout aussi significatif. De même, le langage se démarque par la bravoure avec laquelle l’auteur manie un vocabulaire et un phrasé foncièrement classiques, plutôt que par des choix radicalement innovants. Enfin, la description des réalités « lointaines » de la guerre et des pays étrangers se caractérise par un dosage prudent d’exotisme et de stratégies d’assimilation, deux composantes essentielles du « sensualisme » qui fonde l’originalité de l’auteur, mais aussi sa neutralité.

Sur le plan méthodologique, la contribution s’appuie sur une analyse du discours à visée large, comprenant, entre autres, une lecture de la critique littéraire, des témoignages de l’auteur et une comparaison avec des textes de Comisso remontant à la même période, mais édités après la deuxième guerre mondiale.