ABSTRACT

This chapter provides insights into visual social media marketing and its implications for developing destination image. The contribution examines a campaign in which locals curate the official Instagram account of a mid-sized Swedish city. The concept of gaze is used as a theoretical lens through which to discuss how social rules and conventions discipline photographic practices on the platform. The study identifies three different gazes and analyses how they discipline the co-creation of destination image. It is concluded that involving locals in visual social media campaigns produce certain ways of seeing the destination that do not necessarily reinvigorate its image.