City images in transnational travel vlogs from a multimodal perspective: an investigation of 20 port cities worldwide

1 Introduction

The rapid technological development in human society has allowed us to experience exponential changes, transitioning from a text-dominated life to an era exploding with information and replete with multitudinous images. Short videos are now popping up and being consumed and shared by ordinary Internet users worldwide. These short videos, along with their carriers, are reforming, reflecting, and recreating almost every aspect of social life. It appears that René Descartes’s famous phrase “Je pense, donc je suis” – I think, therefore I am (Descartes 2006), is evolving into “I film, therefore I am.”

One of the most important characteristics of short videos is their elasticity, as they are continually evolving. They serve as platforms to express emotions and follow trends, particularly among younger generations. Simultaneously, there is a significant emphasis on the quality of short videos, which encompass a wide spectrum of forms and contents. Conducting a research project on short videos is essential for understanding social life, youth culture, and the international communication of Chinese cities.

A vlog (video blog) is a form of blog in which the medium is video. According to Sanchez (2023), vlogging has risen almost simultaneously with YouTube after 2004, often referred to as the year of the vlog. Short videos are popular on various social platforms such as Facebook and TikTok and are utilized in different situations. These include information vlogs, fitness vlogs, and travel vlogs, among others. In the realm of travel vlogs, numerous researchers, especially in the field of tourism management, have explored their impact on usersʼ travel intentions (Cheng et al 2023; Le and Hancer 2021; Xu et al. 2021) and destination marketing (Abad and Borbon 2021; Peralta 2019). From a communication perspective, a travel vlog is a form of short video and image carrier that awaits further exploration.

According to data from the United Nations (2018), it is projected that 68 % of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2050. Modern society is increasingly characterized by a global network of cities. Travel vlogs predominantly focus on city images, capturing a wealth of vibrant details. As globalization persists, international travelers emerge as a significant group of vlog producers, contributing to the promotion of the international communication of city images. Urban administrators cannot overlook the influential role of vlogs in showcasing cities, both locally and globally. This paper holds significant scholarly value due to its innovative perspective in examining city images in transnational travel vlogs through a multimodal approach.

In this research, a new framework has been developed for the systematic analysis of all dimensions of modalities and their interactions in the sampled 60 travel vlogs of port cities. Provenance symbols in semiotics, which consist of three main types – natural objects, man-made objects, and pure symbols – are employed to comprehend the graphics within the vlogs. Appraisal systems, particularly the affiliated attitude system, focus on the verbal and paraverbal dimensions of these videos. Additionally, visual grammar in linguistics serves as a theoretical reference to understand kinesics and the editing of vlogs. After elucidating how vloggers utilize interactions of modalities to establish dominant themes, capture viewers’ attention, and shape city images, the paper also explores the socio-cultural context in which the vloggers are immersed. It seeks to evaluate the influence this context has on the discourse of vlogs and the construction of city images. At last, the mechanism of city image formation from cities’ physical existence to foreign viewers’ perception through transnational travel vlogs is illustrated. The findings inspire new perspectives on interpreting the international communication of city images, considering various actors such as urban administrators and travel vloggers. However, there remains a critical task for future research, which involves analyzing the audience and delving into a broader socio-cultural context.

2 Literature review

The review of existing literature has yielded three main themes: the ascent of vlogs, the portrayal of city images in media, and the exploration of provenance symbols, appraisal systems, and visual grammar. These themes collectively offer theoretical guidance for the current research.

3 Data collection and analysis

YouTube is selected for the current research project because this social media platform boasts a broad audience and facilitates various forms of interpersonal communication efficiently (Hou 2019). Users on YouTube can not only upload videos but also engage with other users simultaneously or at different times through the comment function (Chovanec and Dynel 2015). From a semiotic perspective, the YouTube platform is replete with symbols such as words, images, and sounds, a phenomenon also known as Polylogue by scholars like Bou-Franch et al. (2012). This concept is employed to explore questions such as how users utilize individual symbols, how they interconnect multiple symbols, and how effective the communication of these uses is.

Research data for this study are gathered from 60 vlogs featuring 20 port cities globally, available on the YouTube platform. The selection of port cities as research objects is justified for several reasons. Firstly, port cities present a more specific and categorically distinct topic compared to cities without such classification. Additionally, examining port cities allows researchers to explore potential connections between the distinctive natural and artificial characteristics of these cities and how they are represented in media, such as the appearance and portrayal of ports in the videos. The choice of port cities is strategic in providing a unique perspective for conducting research on cities. While many formal studies focus on single cases or opt for Western developed cities without a global perspective, port cities, being a common city type worldwide, offer an opportunity to fill this gap. Moreover, the term “port cities” is relatively more objective than other definitions such as intercultural or global cities.

In this research, the Global Cities Index, Global City Competitiveness Index Maps, and the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, recognized as the three most well-known and authoritative city ranking lists globally, are considered. The six continents – Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, North America, and South America – are utilized as geographical categories to select port cities based on their rankings in these three lists. Due to differences in economic development levels and list quota limitations, the study sampled five cities in Asia, North America, and Europe, three cities in Oceania, and one city each in South America and Africa (see Table 1). Subsequently, researchers employed the search term “city name + travel vlog” with subject relevance as the search filter on YouTube to obtain samples. After collecting all available travel vlogs, the three most-viewed vlogs were selected as best practices for a double-check. It is important to note that the chosen travel vlogs had to be created by international travelers from another country who were undertaking their first transnational travel to the destination, aligning with the research questions. Additionally, all selected videos were in English (see Appendix A for all links to the sample videos). To gain a deeper understanding of how vloggers themselves can influence the content of these transnational travel vlogs, demographic information about the producers, including nationality, occupation, and their videosʼ theme orientation (whether focused solely on travel or not), was recorded for further analysis.

Modes are semiotic resources that bear the imprint of culture and, at the same time, are shaped by people’s social practices (Kress 2010; Sammut and Bauer 2021). A multimodal discourse is one that makes use of all semiotic resources, such as words, layouts, images, music, audio tapes, and more, to construct meaning. This concept emphasizes the complex interaction and relations between different modes. Roux (2019) summarizes multimodality with a focus on: (1) semiotics rather than language; (2) the relations between semiotics and their division of labor; (3) describing and explaining the misplacement of certain semiotics from a phylogenetic perspective; and (4) explaining how they affect communication and subjectivity through their potential functions. As this approach gains popularity due to technological development, numerous methodological frameworks that include multimodality as a central component have been created to address specific research questions (Martinec and Salway 2005; Zhang 2009).

Vloggers consistently engage in active communication with their audiences through various means, including words and expressions, images and pictures, sound effects, and editing skills. Given the high interactivity of videos on YouTube, particularly travel vlogs that are rich in semiotics, this paper employs a comprehensive and systematic multimodal approach to analyze the content of transnational travel vlogs created by vloggers on the platform.

As illustrated earlier, the adoption of a multimodal analytical framework provides a robust structure for dissecting videos across various dimensions. This meticulously constructed framework encapsulates the richness of visual, verbal, paraverbal, kinesics, editing, and auditory elements inherent in video content (see Table 2). The analytical framework of this study includes: 1) graphics: objects and scenes; 2) verbal: titles and descriptions of video; spoken language; captions and comments; 3) paraverbal: prosody; 4) kinesics: facial expressions; gestures and body movements; 5) editing: cover and closeup; colors; slow release; time stamps; and 6) acoustics: background music (BGM).

The first five dimensions of modalities will be analyzed with the three theories mentioned above. Much of music’s power lies in its use as multimodal communication (Way and McKerrell 2017). From a social semiotic perspective, music can be analyzed as a part of a bigger construction, sharing the task of making meaning with other modes (verbal, visual, etc.) (Forte 2023). Specifically, background music’s role in multimodal environments and contexts, such as pictures (Klein et al. 2021), television commercials (Park and Young 1986) and digital stories (Requejo 2016), has been demonstrated. As the most frequently applied theory in the literature, meanings of music consists of both embodied and referential one (Zhu and Meyers-Levy 2005). The former is context-independent, eliciting positive or negative feelings in the audience with the evaluative function, and the latter concerns much about semantic associations. Margulis et al. (2019) consider that people experience music not just as an abstract sequence of sounds, but as episodes in an unfolding narrative. Taking BGM as one of the analytical objects in the narration of the sample vlogs, we try to identify the meaning of background music, either embodied or referential, in the videos and also to explore the cross-modal interactions achieved between it and other modalities, as well as its effects.

4 Results and discussion

Through a systematic analysis of all the travel vlogs, several dominant themes have been identified as the main components or detailed topics shared by the sample videos. These include nature enjoyment, landmark visiting and street wandering, food tasting, and infrastructure evaluation. While it takes all the modalities and their interactions to shape city images, it is evident that travel vlogs provide graphic-based or centered representations, with other modalities functioning and interacting as reinforcing supplements (Zhang 2009).

4.1 Dominant themes and modality interactions

4.1.1 Nature enjoyment

Nature has increasingly become a “refuge” for residents seeking respite from the fast-paced and high-pressured life of modern cities. For some vlog consumers who are temporarily unable to escape the “steel forest” of cities and face harsh realities, travel videos from other bloggers serve as a “substitute presence,” satisfying their desire for a dialogue with nature. From the perspective of provenance symbols, natural elements, including beaches, bay loops, and parks, are observed in the vlogs. Considering the two-way mutual relationship between different types of symbols, it is noteworthy that the relationship between plants and cities is represented through symbols such as cherry blossoms in Tokyo and tulips in Amsterdam. This reveals that seemingly simple natural symbols can embody multiple meanings, activating corresponding cultural schemas for video viewers.

To allow viewers to “experience” nature themselves, the presence of vloggers in natural scenes in travel vlogs is comparatively not as strong as in other settings. Taking the video Spending 2 PERFECT days in Auckland! produced by Travel For Phoebe as an example, the author primarily employs film techniques to showcase eye-opening distant views of Karekare waterfall and close-ups of wide ducks to illustrate the good ecological condition there. Soft and slow songs are simultaneously inserted as background music, creating a calming atmosphere. Meanwhile, the vlogger doesn’t appear in the video but expresses her direct feelings through narration. From the perspective of appraisal systems, adjectives like “beautiful” and “stunning” reflect the author’s appreciation of the natural spot. Sentences such as “It takes your breath away” and “And you just think, oh, this is what life is all about” describe the vlogger’s inner emotional state, making it easier for viewers to gain a feeling of participation. There are occasions when the vlogger does appear in the picture but maintains a relatively long “social distance” from the viewers without any eye contact. Shots from an oblique position or behind the character allow the audience to focus on the great nature and imply how the viewers could be integrated into the scene and “cured” by nature, just like the vlogger (see Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Screenshot from the travel vlog Spending 2 PERFECT days in Auckland!

4.1.2 Landmark visiting and street wandering

Buildings with diverse or unified styles are one of the most direct ways to present the urban landscape. In travel vlogs, the relationship between bloggers and architecture can be both close and loose. For stores or residents along the street, these man-made symbols have practical functions, yet they have become a significant means of representing the image and culture of the city. For vloggers and viewers, it is a cross-cultural implicit experience. Some symbols that belong to this category include exquisite bookstores and coffee shops in downtown Tokyo, the streets of London, and the old houses of Spanish style in Buenos Aires, etc.

On the verbal level, narrations of bloggers reinforce the existing stereotypes about a site. One example is from a blogger who encountered a sudden rainfall in a London park and said, “this is really in London,” while reminding the viewers to always prepare an umbrella in London. Walter Lippmann (2004) defines stereotypes as a distorted picture or image in a person’s mind, not based on personal experience, but derived culturally. Stereotypes enable cognitive thinking while also enhancing a sense of group belonging. Travel vloggers are not just following stereotypes but also communicating about them.

Graphics play a pivotal role in enhancing the visual representation of landmarks. Some vloggers opt for detailed close-ups, employing overlays and annotations to provide viewers with an in-depth exploration of architectural marvels. This approach not only serves an informative purpose but also establishes the landmarks as central characters in the vlog narrative, contributing to the overall appreciation of the city’s cultural and historical richness. In the example above (Figure 2), a panoramic view of the Shard is presented in the video. This vlogger is a filmmaker, so his videos display more professionalism and skillfulness. This scene, which arouses direct visual perception, and his quotation, which gives the audience concrete imagination of the height, work together to deliver a marvelous picture of this building.

Figure 2:

Screenshot from the travel vlog Travelling to LONDON!

However, a distinctive pattern emerges as some vloggers choose a different modality, positioning themselves as the focal point against the backdrop of city landmarks. In these instances, landmarks serve as atmospheric scenery, framing the vlogger’s personal narrative rather than taking center stage.

4.1.3 Food tasting

Food, as a man-made symbol, combines functionality and symbolism, with the latter often representing local cuisines. In the eyes of some travel vloggers, the experience of the city almost equals the exploration of good food, which is a cultural entity that can be directly experienced and felt. Constructed as a verbal modality, the titles of many travel vlogs contain food-related expressions like “street food tour” and “what/where to eat,” some even with capital letters for stress: “try DELICIOUS FOODS.” “First Impressions of Stockholm | Swedish Meatballs & Fika!” explicitly shows the important role typical local food plays culturally in city image perception. In addition, food and dining scenes are always highlighted on covers and in time stamps of the video descriptions for interested viewers to quickly dive in.

Through the lens of travel vloggers, a new “charm” is created with filming and editing skills. Before tasting, detailed close-ups of food with attached names and high color saturation (high sensory modality) can be interpreted as attention-catching exaggeration in terms of rhetoric. In the process of eating, food, together with the vlogger’s mouth, is placed in the center of the whole picture to emphasize how it has been enjoyed, interacting with narrations of appreciation such as “so good” and also intertextually with audience comments like “It looks so delicious, I want to eat it too” (see Figure 3). The vlogger’s attempt in eating and evaluating the food has satisfied viewers’ curiosity and aroused sensations of the audiences at the same time, forming a virtual interaction ritual chain to build up understanding of city image and creating the notion of “trying one food and knowing a city.”

Figure 3:

Screenshot from the travel vlog JAPAN IS OPEN!! Tokyo Food Tour vlog| HIDDEN GEM best ramen, Michelin Star Ramen, Sushi Omakase.

4.1.4 Infrastructure evaluation

A prevalent theme observed in vlogs is the meticulous portrayal of a city’s transportation infrastructure and accommodation facilities. Vloggers often employ verbal narration to provide insights into the efficiency of public transportation systems (e.g., bicycles in Holland; taxi driver detouring in the streets of Dubai; a NYC street littered with garbage), highlighting convenience and accessibility. Paraverbal elements, such as tone, further accentuate their experiences, influencing the audience’s emotional engagement. Intriguingly, kinesics plays a crucial role as vloggers visually interact with transportation modes, showcasing firsthand experiences of navigating through the city. The deliberate inclusion of graphics, such as route maps and transportation statistics, enhances the informative aspect, creating a comprehensive visual narrative. Also, vloggers strategically use music to complement these visuals, creating a harmonious blend that enhances the overall viewing experience. The screenshot extracted from the video “Stockholm Travel Guide” shows a traffic scene of Stockholm in slow motion (see Figure 4), which gives the impression of orderliness on the road. The soft magical music adds to this effect of presenting a dynamic and organized city. In addition, the vlogger’s comment that he and his companion can walk anywhere on foot precisely points out the traffic convenience.

Figure 4:

Screenshot from the travel vlog Stockholm Travel Guide.

Moreover, the focus extends to the city’s hospitality sector, with vloggers featuring various hotels and accommodations. This incorporates visuals of hotel interiors, verbal commentary on amenities, and paraverbal expressions of satisfaction or surprise. The integration of hyperlinks in the video description further demonstrates a strategic use of technology to directly connect viewers with relevant public services, offering an interactive and immersive experience. Furthermore, it is found that sponsored content often takes center stage in some vlogs, influencing the narrative structure and emphasis within the vlog. Vloggers, acting as brand ambassadors, meticulously showcase sponsored hotels, offering a detailed glimpse into the amenities, services, and overall ambiance. As vlogging continues to evolve, the symbiotic relationship between content creators and local businesses reshapes the landscape of city representation. Sponsored narratives not only influence the emphasis on specific public services but also redefine the vlogger’s role within the narrative. From sponsored hotel showcases to personal beauty escapades, the multimodal symphony of vlogging encompasses a complex dance of promotional agendas, personal branding, and the multifaceted exploration of cityscapes.

Furthermore, as all the sample vlogs were about travel experiences in port cities, it was assumed that images specifically related to ports, such as harbor views, would be easy to identify. However, our qualitative analysis revealed that ports and their features were relatively under-represented. Vloggers who filmed near ports either used the location as a background or briefly skimmed it. In contrast, visiting landmarks and tasting food, as much more popular routines, have shown a tendency towards homogenization of mediated representations of city images.

4.1.5 Regional differences

Concerning these four common themes, there are also notable differences between different regions. Take these travel vlogs from two cities, Buenos Aires in South America and Johannesburg in Africa, for example. While food tasting remains one of the dominant themes, infrastructure evaluations, such as detailed hotel tours (recommendation) or compliments on local transport, are rare. In addition, due to the underdeveloped status of these two cities, the vloggers’ zone of activity mainly covers the streets of the city center. Comparatively fewer filming skills are used, as these vloggers simply hold cameras to their own faces as they walk and talk freely. It is also worth noting that some locals have been invited by the vloggers to provide information about these two cities. For example, in the travel vlog 24 hours in JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, the local driver, April, who is facing the camera, not only shows the vlogger around but also tells stories and relevant culture on-site. This can be explained by the vloggers’ lack of knowledge of these cities, using locals as intermediaries. On the other hand, the presence and introduction of the locals also make the content more “authentic” and increase the credibility of these travel vlogs.

5 Conclusions

This paper has analyzed 60 transnational travel vlogs on YouTube from 20 port cities worldwide from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis. An analytical framework, based on theories of provenance symbols in semiotics and appraisal systems, visual grammar in linguistics, has been structured to systematically clarify the multimodal interaction practices in the videos. It finds that these vlogs mainly demonstrated four dominant mediated themes set by the vloggers, including nature, landmark and street, food, and infrastructure. Several regional differences between two specific port cities, Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, and other cities have also been illustrated, such as less hotel tours, fewer filming skills, and locals as intermediaries.

Furthermore, based on the results of RQ1 and the demographic information of the vloggers, this research explores the possible impact that the socio-cultural context can have on the discourse of the vlogs and the represented city images. Knowing how it works and disciplined by the platform logic, professional full-time travel vloggers from North America have almost dominated these popular videos, which may leave the mediated city images unchanged or biased. In addition, based on the above findings, this paper also systematically presents the mechanism of how the physical existence of these cities was represented with dominant themes and disseminated through vloggers with a double identity (as organic/solicited organic image formation agents) and their vlogs’ multimodal discourses to online foreign viewers, shaping their city image cognitively and also affectively.

This paper expands the scope of research on urban communication by adopting a comparative and global perspective. Focusing on port cities, it incorporates non-Western samples. The study employs theories from both semiotics and linguistics to establish an innovative analytical framework for investigating multimodal interactions and the dominant themes represented in transnational travel vlogs. This framework serves as a valuable reference for future studies on new media content. Additionally, considering the socio-cultural context, the paper underscores the role of vloggers as crucial contributors to vlog discourse and the formation of city images. Furthermore, by integrating the image concept from tourism marketing, the systematic mechanism presented for city image formation – from the physical existence of cities to the perception of foreign online viewers through transnational travel vlogs – contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of new media in the international communication of city images.

The research findings have practical implications for redefining approaches to the international communication of city images to diverse stakeholders. City administrators, particularly those engaged in tourism marketing, must comprehend the mechanism underlying city image formation through transnational travel vlogs. Recognizing vlogs as crucial and complementary channels for information dissemination, administrators can leverage the dominant themes identified in the videos and viewer comments as guiding references. This insight aids in the specific adaptation and optimization of services, such as enhancing food offerings for restaurants and incorporating detailed hotel tours for accommodations.

Given that a city’s image is multi-dimensional, encompassing both cognitive and affective aspects, administrators should deploy a variety of strategies. For instance, emphasizing representative landmarks and local cuisine aims to trigger memories and recognition among viewers, while showcasing the city’s natural beauty seeks to emotionally motivate viewers to visit in person and fully appreciate the experience. To achieve these goals, collaboration between city governments and professional travel vloggers, possessing rich experience and advanced filming and editing skills, is crucial. Inviting such vloggers to visit cities and produce high-quality, well-designed vlogs can significantly expand the cities’ global audience.

From the vloggers’ standpoint, travel vlogs serve as a medium for establishing emotional connections with their audiences and deriving financial benefits. By studying top examples, vloggers can enhance the attractiveness of their content and reap rewards from city authorities. In the era of smart media, the city image exists in a dynamic landscape where not only officials but all online participants, especially opinion leaders, wield significant discourse power. This duality manifests as cities becoming more visible through vlogs, yet concurrently facing challenges related to the increasing homogenization and one-sidedness of mediated city images.

Limitations remain to be further explored in future research. The current research focuses on the vlogger but have hardly considered the viewers’ comments from a quantitative way. Additional research could have been done to provide more insights by focusing on the interaction between vloggers and viewers to clarify how the represented city images have been consumed and reproduced circularly. Also, the socio-cultural context in which the travel vlogs are embodied needs to be further explored. Besides the vloggers as mediators, the economic climate (symbolic economy of urban development) and the practice of cultural exchange (intercultural communication) are also influential factors. We expect the current research findings to reach a wider audience for a better understanding and communication of city images around the globe.