In recent years, tourist destinations and strategies of place branding have been facing new challenges owing to the diffusion of Information and Communications technologies. Smart devices can give tourists/prosumers the possibility to co-create and share their travel experience to the point to influence the destination web reputation and, consequently, its digital place image and branding. Furthermore, new technologies can be also used as effective analytical tools to scrutinize the role of online co-created narratives in influencing the web reputation of a specific tourist site, natural heritage included. The study focuses on the online destination image of Mount Etna, an active volcano located in Southern Italy inserted in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2017. The web reputation of this natural heritage site has been analyzed through a twofold methodology: a manual online content analysis and a software-based Sentiment Analysis methodology. The paper highlights the crucial role of new technologies both as tools of analysis in tourism and heritage studies and as “catalysts” of e-narratives able to influence place images. In so doing, the research aims at providing other researchers and policy-makers with new theoretical and methodological insights about the challenges and potentialities of smart technologies in exploring the online place image, thus contributing to a novel conceptualization of place branding through the theoretical/operational framework of Place Branding 3.0. In particular, the mixed-method approach represents an innovative framework insofar as it provides an in-depth evaluation of users’ online perceptions both at the “micro” scale—at the level of contents, through the manual content analysis—as well as at the “macro” scale, thanks to the software-based Sentiment Analysis methodology.

Drawing inspiration from the case of the Molise region and the well-known story with which it is associated, non-existence, this article aims to reflect on the theoretical lines and possible methodological directions for analysing the processes of identity configuration of territories. The concepts of region and identity, in their similarities, represent a valid starting point for critical analysis. Territorial identity, in particular, finds its foundations in association with the adjectives relational and narrative. Multiple narratives inform it and build the sense of belonging of Molise’s inhabitants. Discussing the way in which the region is narrated means wading through complex historical events and a constant co-production of places and myths. The latter, understood as low-intensity mythical narratives, are nowadays modified in the cyberplace. Therefore, discourse analysis and the combination of several methods are essential tools to follow the traces of the practices carried out by a hypothesized Molisian onlife sociotopia, such as the opinion of the inhabitants, news and information found on the web and internet memes. The answer to the proposed research question, “How can discourses and narratives about the non-existent Molise play a role in the construction of the territorial identity of Molise and the sense of belonging of the Molise people?” could thus reveal two regimes of truth, often understood as factual: the non-existence and, equally, the existence of the Molise region.

This paper aims at investigating images of places as a narrative element. In particular, dichotomous reference will be made to the global images of places that arise from dominant narratives versus the cultural images of places that arise from sensorial and experienced life.Starting from theoretical reflection on the role of images and narratives with respect to the perception, imagery and experience of places, this contribution will focus on the sense of place and the influence of direct experience on its formation. The work deepens critical issues and capabilities of the digital visual methodology combined with sensory ethnography. The research, from an empirical point of view, was carried out as a teaching laboratory during the Geography for Tourism Science course at the University of Insubria. The students were invited to direct observation of their own place of life, with the aim of analysing its cultural image, and also to mediated observation of a known place not known directly but known through famous images and representations, with the aim of analysing its global image. This exercise outdoor allowed students to compare the theoretical concepts learned in the classroom with their perceptions of their everyday geographies, transferring the study of theory to everyday life as a tool to better understand their own and daily experience.

The More-than-Cyberplace Approach for Environmental Activism: Insights from the Glen of the Downs Nature Reserve (Ireland) Eco-warriors are a group of activists who have been fighting for many years to protect ecosystems threatened by human action. This paper aims to examine ex-post the case of the oldest natural reserve in Ireland, Glen of the Downs, which provided a context in which an innovative example of activism in Europe has been developed, especially since 1997, marking a change of direction from environmental blocks to safeguard biodiversity and the ecosystems. The collection of secondary data offered by documents and videos of that period offers a numeral of arguments to reflect the need for a multi-disciplinary and multi-scalar interpretative framework. Therefore, the conceptual category of more-thancyberplace is suggested for the interpretation of the case study.

Semantic Web and Sentiment Analysis to Investigate the Territorial Image. Updates on the Salento Case. – Starting from the deep difference between cyberspace and cyberplace, this paper is developed in the second field of space: the cyberplace. In its recent conceptualization it is intended as the connection between offline and online actions. It is therefore the interstitial place that is generated by the encounter between virtual space and real space. The cyberplace reflects all the stages of the journey of a smart tourister and therefore becomes a container of numerous information relating to the tourist experience and destination in the tourist gaze 3.0, as Urry recalls. Online, from the tourist's gaze, new territorial narratives are spreading that arouse different reactions from the habitual users of the tourist destination who polarize in the opposite behaviors of strengthening the sense of identity or denial of the tourist narrative and reaction. The proposed empirical case is an update of the study conducted four years ago on the perception and online narration of the tourist destination Salento. The methodology used for the qualitative analysis of the semantic web, used in the first study updated, is the Sentiment Analysis which, after several experiments, proves to be increasingly useful for the study of the cyberplace and of the geographical narratives that spread in a-material squares (Fayyad, Piatetsky-Shapiro, & Smyth, 1996; García, Gaines, Linaza, 2012; Grabner, Zanker, Fliedl, Fuchs, 2012; Hippner, Rentzmann, 2006; Kasper, Vela, 2011; Liu, 2011; Pang, Lee, 2008; Hu, Liu, 2004). Thanks to the proprietary App2Check sentiment analysis software, it is possible to understand the stories that spread on the Net and, above all, to investigate which new (though changeable and short-lived) feelings, images and identities are developing in Salento.