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Amadi, UR, 2024. The Black Travel Movement- the roles of framing and social symbolic work in the development of meaning in institutional fields. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
This study explores the interplay between framing and social-symbolic work, specifically emotion and identity work, in shaping meaning within the Black Travel Movement (BTM) on social media. In doing so, it aims to unpack the micro-interactional patterns of emotion and identity work practices that underpin the framing processes that shape the development of collective action frames within the travel and tourism industry. The BTM, which emerged in 2011 with the aim to address the underrepresentation of Black travellers within the travel industry, was chosen as the research case study being a relatively new phenomena addressing the grand challenge of racism, which could be studied comprehensively with a granular longitudinal study given the relatively small population of its actors and scope of activities.
Drawing from a rich base of Instagram social media posts and BTM archival data (January 2011-December 2022) and 16 semi-structured interviews (2022) with knowledgeable actors within the movement, consisting of Black travel influencers, entrepreneurs, and travel enthusiasts, I apply a qualitative longitudinal approach that spanned eleven years to analyse the bottom-up social construction of the BTM. My first findings unpack the growth trajectory of the Black Travel Movement over the focus period and reveal that the meaning of Black travel developed around five significant contextual or temporal markers that introduced new interpretations of reality events.
These ascribed meanings informed the development of the Black travel injustice collective action frame to address the underrepresentation of Black travel within the global travel industry. Situated BTM actors incorporated the contextual markers into their multimodal framing activities on social media to advance their preferred meaning interpretations and drive target mobilisation initially towards the Black travel injustice collective action frame and subsequently to the refined BIPOC travel injustice frame, a prognostic realignment of the initial frame to accommodate a global and heterogeneous target audience.
My second findings expose the combination of purposefully constructed emotion and identity work practices conducted at the nexus of framing activities on social media. These practices are designed to foster an emotional connection to the BTM and manage identity threats resulting from variances in grievance interpretations and imaginations of the future among an increasingly global target audience. Furthermore, the findings reveal three main phases in developing the Black travel injustice frame over social media and these are: framing the BTM as a social-symbolic object, fostering emotional resonance, and resolving identity tensions within the BTM.
This study contributes to framing literature by theorising how framing, combined with emotion and identity work on social media, shapes meaning within a specific case study. It also contributes to the literature on emotion and identity work, extending its impact to the broader domain of social-symbolic work. Insights from the specific case study shed light on the combination of different social-symbolic work practices within a specific empirical case study.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Amadi, U.R. |
| Contributors: | Name Role NTU ID ORCID |
| Date: | June 2024 |
| Rights: | This work is the intellectual property of Uchenna Richard Amadi. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level, and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights. |
| Divisions: | Schools > Nottingham Business School |
| Record created by: | Jeremy Silvester |
| Date Added: | 15 May 2025 15:56 |
| Last Modified: | 16 May 2025 14:51 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53587 |
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