Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Baguio City, dubbed as the Summer Capital of the Philippines, is named to the exclusive UNESCO Creative Cities Network for crafts and folk art in 2017. Yet, its appeal and reputation as a tourist destination derive mainly from its cold climate, cultural expanse, and its access to various points of interest in the North of the Philippines. The city also features the Panagbenga (“season of blooming”) Festival which lures thousands of tourists to watch its flower float parade and street dance. As a fascinating tourist destination, Baguio City’s sites and sights are being documented, captioned, and shared online in various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and blogs. This case study looks into 20 widely-read, highly followed blogs in the Philippines to understand how the bloggers experience the city in three levels: destinations commonly photographed; the categories of information about the image of tourist destinations that could be analyzed in photo content; and, the image represented in the bloggers’ travel photos. Employing qualitative content analysis to the images and the accompanying captions or online descriptions, this research combines how elements of both text and photography build representations or meanings that define what a city looks like to its visitor, by using Baguio City as a springboard locale.