Anti-tourism Rhetoric and Sustainable Travel: a Pragmatic Aanalysis of TikTok Discourse on Overtourism

Abstract

This paper examines how anti-tourism rhetoric shapes public perceptions. It further examines how this rhetoric seeks to advance sustainable travel by drawing attention to the adverse effects of overtourism, encouraging travelers to reconsider their roles within local ecosystems and communities. Through a scrutiny of digital media, specifically TikTok posts relating to overtourism topics, this research investigates how language, imagery, and persuasive techniques are used to frame the discourse around tourists’ responsibility toward environmental sustainability. The study aims to reveal the pragmatics of anti-tourism media discourse and examine how it helps to critique, resist, or reshape narratives around tourism as well as to find out the way it influences critical tourism narratives on sustainable travel practices. The findings reveal a wide range of communication strategies related to “tourism literacy” on TikTok, prompting further inquiry into tourism’s broader social impacts and how these strategies might be applied to shape tourists’ behavior and awareness.