Social Media Effects on Diaspora Tourism: a Case Study on Second Generation of Iranian

Home , Iranian diaspora, Koo (social network)

Social media effects on diaspora tourism: A case study on second generation of Iranian

immigrants in Stockholm

By: Paria Izadi

Supervisor: Saeid Abbasian

Master’s Thesis in Tourism Studies, 15 Credits

Södertörn University, School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies August 2020

Abstract The impact of social media in tourism industry is significant. This study examines the role, impact, and relationship of social media platforms among second generation Iranian Swedish in Stockholm as a segment of tourism market when travelling to Iran. In addition, the purpose of this study is to explore if social media has a motivational role for diaspora tourism on second generation of immigrants’ trip to their origin country. The study uses content analysis and online questionnaire to collect data of 22 second generation Iranian diaspora who have traveled to Iran at least once during their lifetime. Three themes were identified from the collected qualitative answers based on the objectives of the research: Iranian diaspora motivations to visit homeland, feelings, and traveler experience by social media. Findings demonstrate the social media platforms are working as a motivation-pull factor influencing second generation immigrants to visit Iran, in much the same as other pull factors do. Also, the results show the User Generated Contents (UGC) such as travelers generated reliable travel information and introduction of new destinations can persuade second generation of diaspora immigrants to go back to their origin country for another visit. Finally, the findings of this research have revealed that two outcomes of trip to Iran by second generation of Iranian immigrants are Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) and visiting tourism attractions. Such outcomes can highly affect the diaspora members’ decisions in planning their travel to their origin country.

Keywords: Diaspora Tourism, Stockholm, Second Generation, Social Media, Iran

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Saeid Abbasian for his support, guidance, helpful comments and insights. I also would like to thank Christian Widholm for his guidance on the literature review. I would like to thank pilot test group and the anonymous participants who kindly distributed my questionnaire and took their time to answer it. I am also grateful to my friend Farnaz Saberi for her support and guidance. I would like to express special thanks to my husband, Arsham Mazaheri, for his expert advice in the field of research study, encouragement, support and bearing me during the whole of this project. And finally, I would like to thank my family and friends who supported and believed in me throughout this project.

Contents Abstract ...... i Acknowledgement ...... ii List of Figures ...... v List of Tables ...... v Abbreviations ...... vi Definitions ...... vi 1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Background of the Study ...... 1 1.1.1 Social Media in Tourism ...... 3 1.1.2 Diaspora Tourism ...... 4 1.1.2.1 Iranian Diaspora and Second Generation Living in Stockholm ...... 4 1.1.2.2 Migration and Iran ...... 5 1.1.2.3 Tourism in Iran ...... 7 1.2 Problem Statement and Purpose of the Study ...... 9 1.2.1 Dissertation Aim ...... 10 1.2.2 Research Question ...... 10 1.3 Delimitation ...... 10 1.4 Dissertation Outline ...... 10 2. Method...... 12 2.1 The Research Approach ...... 12 2.1.1 Deductive vs. Inductive ...... 12 2.1.2 Exploratory vs. Explanatory vs. Descriptive ...... 12 2.1.3 Qualitative vs. Quantitative ...... 13 2.2 Data Collection Method ...... 15 2.2.1 Participants in the Research Study ...... 16 2.2.2 Procedure of Choosing the Participants...... 17 2.2.3 Data Collection Tools ...... 17 2.2.4 Data Collection Procedure ...... 17 2.3 Data Analysis Method ...... 18 2.4 Validity and Reliability of the Research ...... 19 2.5 Ethical Issues ...... 20

iii

3. Literature Review ...... 21 3.1 Social Media in Tourism ...... 21 3.1.1 Social Media and its Types ...... 21 3.1.2 Social Media and Tourism ...... 22 3.2 Diaspora Tourism ...... 24 3.2.1 Second Generation Diaspora ...... 26 3.3 Social Media, Diaspora Tourism and Motivations ...... 28 4. Empirical Results ...... 30 4.1 Characteristics of the Participants ...... 30 4.1.1 Demographic Status...... 30 4.1.2 Social Media Usage ...... 31 4.2 Qualitative Results ...... 32 4.2.1 Trip to Iran ...... 32 4.2.2 Motivations and Social Media Impact ...... 33 4.2.3 Travel Experience while Visiting Iran...... 37 4.3 Content Analysis ...... 40 5. Discussions ...... 41 5.1 Iranian diaspora motivations to visit homeland ...... 42 5.2 Feelings ...... 43 5.3 Traveler experience by social media ...... 44 6. Conclusions ...... 46 6.1 Further Research ...... 47 References ...... 48 Appendix 1: Questionnaire ...... 56

List of Figures Figure 1: Iranian population growth in Sweden over the years 1900-2019 (SCB, 2020b) ...... 7 Figure 2: Iranian-born living in Sweden by age, statistics of 2018 (based on data of SCB 2020b) ...... 7 Figure 3: Purposes of visits in 2018 (UNWTO, 2019a) ...... 8 Figure 4: International tourism, number of arrivals – Iran (UNWTO, 2019a) ...... 8 Figure 5: Travelers Interacting with the Internet when searching information, (Pan & Fesenmaier, 2006) ...... 23 Figure 6: Suggested theory influences on decisions of the Irish living in England to visit Ireland, (Hughes & Allen, 2010) ...... 26 Figure 7: Use of social media platforms ...... 31 Figure 8: Social media usage per day ...... 31 Figure 9: Reliable information on social media platforms ...... 31 Figure 10: Number of visits to Iran ...... 32 Figure 11: Length of stay in Iran ...... 32 Figure 12: Purpose of visit ...... 33 Figure 13 Influence of social media on decision to visit Iran ...... 36 Figure 14: Effects on second generation of Iranian diaspora living in Stockholm to visit Iran - summary of the findings, Author’s illustration, inspired by Hughes and Allen (2010) ...... 41 List of Tables Table 1: Iranian population in Sweden over the years (SCB, 2020b) ...... 6 Table 2: Contrast between qualitative research and quantitative research (Bryman, 2012, p.408) ...... 14 Table 3: Demographic characteristics of participants ...... 30

Abbreviations CGC Consumer Generated Content CIA Central Intelligence Agency COPPA Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act eWOM Electronic Word of Mouth MCTH Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft Organization SCB Statistiska centralbyrån, Statistics Sweden UGC User Generated Content UNWTO United Nations World Tourism Organization VFR Visiting Friends & Relatives WTTC World Travel & Tourism Council

Definitions Diaspora Members - include all voluntary groups and ethnic groups who leave their homeland with various reasons (e.g. economic and political) while maintaining their identities and connections with their homelands. Diaspora Tourism - this form of tourism which means emigrants travel back to their home country in search of their roots or to feel connected to their personal heritage. Electronic Word of Mouth - Person-to-person communication that occurs over the Internet or another electronic form of communication. International Tourism - which comprises inbound tourism and outbound tourism, that is, the activities of resident visitors outside the country of reference, either as part of domestic or outbound tourism trips and the activities of non-resident visitors within the country of reference on inbound tourism trips. Outbound Trip - outbound tourism, which comprises the activities of a resident visitor outside the country of reference, either as part of an outbound tourism trip or as part of a domestic tourism trip. Second Generation - divides into two groups: Swedish background was defined as a person who was born in Sweden and who has at least one Swedish-born parent and foreign background also was defined as a person who is foreign born or born in Sweden and with two foreign-born parents. Social Media Platforms - as a group of online software platforms that empower and facilitate sharing of consumer generated content. User Generated Content - is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media platforms. Visita - is an industry and employer organization for the Swedish hospitality industry, which represents over 7,000 workplaces that together account for the majority of the hospitality industry's total turnover.

1. Introduction In this chapter, firstly the background of the study as social media in tourism, diaspora tourism, Iranian diaspora, and second generation of Iranian immigrants living in Stockholm are presented. Thereafter the problem statement and purpose of the study, aim and research questions, delimitations and dissertation outline are explained.

1.1 Background of the Study Nowadays social media is extensively presented in our lives. Some industry experts assert that if people do not take part in Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, they are not part of cyberspace anymore (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). With the growing importance of social media in tourism industry, social media plays a significant role in traveler’s information search. Travelers can use their mobile devices or tablets on holiday or on a business trip to find information about the destination they are visiting or are going to visit (Yoo et al., 2011; UNWTO, 2012). Hence, social media is considered as an important source for tourism information. Tourists can share their experiences through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TripAdvisor. These user-generated contents (UGCs) in social media are playing a noticeable role in all industries, especially in the tourism sector (Kim et al., 2017). Smartphones and social media platforms together make users able to share their stories and experiences as they happen. Depending on which platform to use, users share their messages, pictures, videos, and locations with others in the social media (Brandt et al., 2017). The advent of the Internet made travelers able to share their travel experiences in new ways. There is a noticeable development in the evolution of the Internet. That itself caused the increasing usage of social media platforms among people, which makes it possible for Internet users to collaborate, communicate, and produce content such as blogs, videos, wikis, reviews, and photos. Social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter simplify consumer-generated content (CGC), and they are used by many online travelers (Gretzel, 2006; Hays et al., 2013). Nowadays people around the world connect to the Internet, and a world without the Internet is difficult to imagine. The Internet expanded rapidly to Europe in the mid-1980s and to Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Its rapid growth over the last two decades has changed the structure of the tourism industry (Benckendorff et al., 2014, p.88). Moreover, since social media is a fast- growing phenomenon through the Internet (Zarezadeh et al., 2018), it has attracted strong attention from the academic research about its effects on tourism industry such as marketing, planning, online information research, hospitality, destination image, and smart tourism. According to UNWTO (2019a), tourism industry with a faster growth rate than merchandise exports, represents 7% of global exports; and 2018 was the ninth successive year of its continual growth. International tourism exports are the world’s third largest export category among the top five economic sectors in the world, behind chemical manufacturing and the fuel industry, and ahead of the automotive industries and food (ibid). The importance of the tourism industry and holiday segment is well documented by UNWTO. In 2018, international tourist arrivals increased by 5%

1 to reach 1.4 billion arrivals, and export earnings generated by tourism have increased to USD 1.7 trillion. Asia and the Pacific region were the fastest growing region compared with the rest of the world in 2018. International tourist arrivals in Europe region had 5% growth and in Asia and the Pacific region grew by more than 6% in the first half of 2019. Overall, tourism is among the world’s fastest growing economic sectors that can be compared with oil, food products, or technology. Besides, tourism industry is helping to build better lives for people around the world and changing communities completely for good (UNWTO, 2019a & 2019b). Besides, tourism industry is helping to build better lives for people around the world and changing communities completely for good (UNWTO, 2019a & 2019b). Same as in other industries, the new way of user interaction and shared development and content generation in the worldwide web (Web 2.0) has significantly changed tourism industry on the way how individuals arrange their trips (Buhalis & Law, 2008; Fotis et al., 2011). Mobile Internet usage has worked its way into the daily life of smartphone and tablet users, providing a possibility to actively accessing information. In 2019, the number of smartphone users were 3.2 billion users in the world (statista, 2019a; statista, 2019b). In January 2020, almost 4.5 billion people were using Internet, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark In January 2020, almost 4.5 billion people were using Internet, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark (statista, 2019c; digitalbuzzblog, 2020). Hence, social media has a significant role in tourism industry through Internet usage and information accessibility. Tourism industry as an international industry and as the biggest provider of jobs worldwide, created 319 million jobs to the world economy in 2018 (Buhalis & Law, 2008; WTTC, 2019). In recent years, the number of returning emigrants visiting their homelands for holidays and other reasons have been increased, and thus this form of tourism has grown noticeably (Butler, 2003). This type of tourism of emigrants traveling back to their home country is called diaspora tourism. Definitions of diaspora is open and flexible, and it considers all voluntary groups and ethnic groups who leave their homeland with various reasons (e.g. economic and political) while maintaining their identities and connections with their homelands. Hence, these groups were called diaspora members (Cohen, 1997, Sheffer, 2003; Etemaddar et al., 2016). Some scholars, however emphasized that diaspora tourism is about a return visit to a homeland (Huang et al., 2013; Moufakkir, 2011; Scheyvens, 2007). Hence, a main feature of studying emigrants’ communities was a vision of return. Diaspora members left their homeland, but they considered it to be a temporary migration. Therefore, adjustment to the host country was not complete; so, they preserved their own culture and connections with their homeland. It is considerable that at least the ﬁrst generation of the immigrants made the visiting of their original country a priority. Thus, in diaspora definition, homeland was identiﬁed as a special place (Hughes & Allen, 2010). For the second generation of the immigrants, the experience of visiting homeland may be different, when comparing it with their parents as the first generation. They may perceive their parents’ homeland either as ‘home’ or a foreign destination. With these two perceptions of parent’s homeland, making a return visit helps second generation to achieve sense of belonging or identity and explore the destination (Iorio & Corsale, 2013; Huang et al., 2016).

For the advent of diaspora, mobility and human activity have played a significant role. The migrations of people have resulted in the formation of diasporas in many countries, and the emigrant communities often maintain strong links with their country of origin. Meanwhile, tourism in general has grown for the last century as a temporary movement of people for pleasure and enjoyment. That may have been paused only for a short period of time because of the two world wars. Shortly after WWII in 1950, international tourist arrivals have shown growth in numbers. UNWTO assessed that there were just 25 million international tourist arrivals in 1950. This number has increased to 1.4 billion 68 years later in 2018. This is a 56-fold increase (Roser, 2020; Butler, 2003). On the other hand, and specifically for Sweden, Eva Östling, CEO of Visita1 at the time, has stated that “Tourism is one of Sweden's most important industries with an export value of 97 billion SEK’’ (UNWTO, 2016). Moreover, in 2017, the number of outbound trips made from Sweden amounted to more than 21 million trips (statista, 2019d). Overall, to the fast growth of the individual travelers over the world, social media has become a popular platform on people’s daily life. In the tourism sector as well, social media has made huge effect on the way travelers search information and share experience and even decide for their trip and destinations (Kim et al., 2017). Social media has enabled users to communicate and reach their friends, families, and followers through the platforms (Brandt et al., 2017). Thus, due to speed growth of Internet and social media as well as rapid growth of travelling in the world, social media had and still has an important role on people, communities, and of course on first generation immigrants but more importantly on second generation immigrants, who have connection through platforms and have a feeling of tie to their parents’ homeland.

1.1.1 Social Media in Tourism Traditionally, tourists were getting the information they need from travel TV programs, magazines, newspapers, books, and brochure. Over the last 15 years, however, these traditional sources have been changed by social media sites that provide travel and tourism information and allow users to share their information and experience in an interactive way (Kim et al., 2017; Chung & Koo, 2015). Social networking sites are applications that make users able to create personal profiles, invite family and friends with accessibility to their profiles, and send e-mails and urgent messages to each other. These profiles can contain any type of information, including photos, video, audio files, and blogs (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Social media have been accepted by tourists to search, sort, share, and commentate their stories and experiences through blogs and microblogs (e.g. Blogger and Twitter), online communities (e.g. Facebook and TripAdvisor), media sharing sites (e.g. Flickr and YouTube), social bookmarking sites (e.g. Delicious), social knowledge sharing sites (e.g. Wikitravel) in a collaborative way )Leung et al., 2013). During the recent years, the growth of social media has been progressed rapidly. More than 5.2 billion people use mobile devices and more than 4.5 billion people use Internet around the world.

1 Visita is an industry and employer organization for the Swedish hospitality industry, which represents over 7,000 workplaces that together account for the majority of the hospitality industry's total turnover. 3

Moreover, there are 3.8 billion social media users while the world population by January 2020 was about 7.75 billion. In January 2020, an average Internet user was online for 6 hours and 43 minutes per day. The same statistics for Swedish users was 5 hours and 52 minutes. Facebook, a social networking website, claims that its active users has currently reached to more than 2.5 billion around the world, in which more than 100 billion messages and one billion stories shared every day. Twitter, a micro-blogging website, hosts 340 million users; YouTube has 2 billion users; WhatsApp has 1.6 billion users; and one billion people use Instagram every month all by January 2020 (Fotis et al., 2011; digitalbuzzblog, 2020; Facebook, 2020). Facebook user’s marketers mention that social media including Facebook and Instagram are important for their company and product strategy. Basically, more than 140 million businesses use Facebook to connect with their customers (Facebook, 2020). Travelers can share their experience and stories every day through platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. So, tourism industry also affected by this huge impact. Social media basically altered the way tourists search for, ﬁnd, and read information regarding tourist destinations and suppliers (Chung & Koo 2015; Facebook, 2020). These statistics clearly determine the predominance of social media in our daily life (Leung et al., 2013). Travelers today can actively and easily produce and distribute travel information, express themselves, and connect with people around the world through the Internet (Yoo et al., 2011).

1.1.2 Diaspora Tourism

1.1.2.1 Iranian Diaspora and Second Generation Living in Stockholm The author focuses on the precise definition of the term “second generation” and the notion of “generation” in the migration studies. King & Christou (2009) mentioned that scholars generally identified the meaning of generation as life-stage, notion of kinship descent, cohort, and as historical period. In daily conversation, generation is often used when people speak of the older generation, the generation gap, generational conflict, etc. Usage of the term ‘second generation’ has challenges in terms of descriptive meaning and analytic category. So, scholars use this term to imply a specific collective of people; but their definitions of second generation are indistinct and often inadequate (ibid). There is a variety of usable definitions of the second generation in the migration studies, but these vagueness in the definitions are not new. King & Christou (2009) demonstrated a lot of different opinions about definition of second generation. The author attended a few definitions existed in the migration literature. From the view of American authors, Portes and Zhou (1993) has defined the second generation as US-born children with immigrant parents, or children who born abroad but moved to the United States before the age of 12. Ellis and Goodwin-White (2006) has presented the second generation as the immigrants who came to the United States when they were under 10 years of old. From the view of European studies, the situation is different. Second generation is defined as children who may or may not have been born in their parent’s country (Wilpert, 1988), but moved in to the host

4 country before primary school (Crul and Vermuelen, 2003) or those who moved to Britain before the age of 15 (Modood, 1997). In the meantime, Andall (2002) had a reasonable approach about definition of second generation which defines it as those who born in Italy or arrived before the age of 6. This age is related to the school starting age (King & Christou, 2009). According to the Statistics Sweden (SCB), as of 2020, Swedish background was defined as a person who was born in Sweden and who has at least one Swedish-born parent. Foreign background also was defined as a person who is foreign born or born in Sweden and with two foreign-born parents (Statistics Sweden, 2020a). So, SCB categorizes the population according to the place of birth and their parents. This categorization of SCB is the one used by the author as one reference to define the second generation for this study. The other reference that the author has used for defining the second generation for this study is the age limitation. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) restricts users of websites and online services to children under 13 years old of age (COPPA, 2020). So, most of the online applications have terms of service according to this rule. For instance, Facebook and Twitter ask everyone to be at least 13 years old before they can create an account and using the services (Facebook, 2020a; Twitter, 2020). On the other hand, in Sweden, children under 18 years old of age are considered under aged and thus live with and under the supervision of their parents, maintaining specific rights (Government offices of Sweden, 2020 & Sweden, 2020). Thus, although the definition of second generation is vague in the literature, since social media users must have age limitation, the author in this study limits the definition of second generation to ‘people with at least 18 years old of age who are either born in Sweden with at least one non- Swedish parent born outside of Sweden, or are born abroad but grown up in Sweden with both parents being non-Swedish’.

1.1.2.2 Migration and Iran Iran is introduced as a part of Asia and the Pacific segmentation by UNWTO; but geographically, Iran is located in West Asia (UNWTO, 2019a). In 2019, the population of Iran was about 83 million based on the data elaborated by Worldometer (Worldometers, 2020). Country of Iran has thirty- one provinces and 1242 cities (Statistical Centre of Iran, 2020). The presence of heterogeneity in Iran due to ethnic and cultural diversity is obvious among Iranian diaspora (McAuliffe, 2008). Hence, Iranian immigrants are divided into Persian, Azeri, Kurd, Lur, Baloch, Arab, Turkmen, and Turkic tribes (CIA, 2020). There are also numerous religious groups in Iran. The official religion is Shia Muslim which is also the majority group. There are also minority religious groups including Sunni, Christian, Jewish, Assyrian, Zoroastrian, and Baha’I (ibid). Nevertheless, while Iranian immigrants come from different educational and social levels with different backgrounds, they are from the same country with the same cultural, historical, and political situation. So, along with different conditions, they have a shared unity (Etemaddar at al., 2016). According to Statistical center of Iran (2017), 8% of the cities had a population of more than 100,000 people. Between 2011 and 2016, more than 4.3 million people were internal or

5 international migrants (Statistical Center of Iran, 2017). The history of Iranians immigration backs to late 1950s (Bayor, 2011; Hakimzadeh, 2006). The Iranian immigrations comprises of four main waves with forced and voluntary departures. The first wave of emigrants from Iran, started from 1950 to 1977 or 1979, mainly consisted of students and tourists. The second wave, from 1978-79 to 1988, included political refugees who did not return to Iran (Bozorgmehr, 1998). The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the 1980-88 war with Iraq were the main contributing factors for the second wave of Iranians immigration (Bayor, 2011). Basically, the second wave of immigration mainly occurred during the eight-year of Iran-Iraq war, when people tried to escape from the war (Hakimzadeh, 2006). The third wave of Iranians immigration started from 1995, which was included highly skilled immigrants (ibid). Finally, Vahabi (2016) talked about fourth wave that started from 2009 till present days, which is caused by both economic and political factors. The largest number of Iranian diasporas inhabit in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Sweden (Hakimzadeh, 2006). Majority of Iranians have tendency to reside in key urban centers, including Stockholm, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Hamburg, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, and Sydney. It is worth mentioning that cities like Stockholm, London, Toronto, Sydney, and Vancouver became important spots in a transnational network of diaspora communities centered on Los Angeles in the United States (Böll, 2016). According to the Statistics Sweden (SCB), the population of Stockholm county was 2,374,550 persons on November 2019. In Stockholm, the foreign-born population was roughly 25 percent of the total population (ca. 595,882 persons). By 2019, there were 80,136 Iranian living in Sweden, who were born in Iran (Table 1 & Figure 1). This number could include both the first and second generations of Iranian-Swedish people. However, the count of second generation of Iranian- Swedish people, who are born in Sweden and both their parents are Iranian, were 18,611 persons by 2019. But the people with only one Iranian parent are counted as 22,272 persons by 2019. Therefore, the population of second generation of Iranian immigrants, who were born in Sweden, with at least one Iranian parent were 40,883 persons by 2019. Compare these numbers with 5,000 Iranian diasporas in Sweden during the Islamic revolution (i.e. 1978-1979). This number increased to almost 20,000 during Iran-Iraq War (i.e. 1980-1988) (SCB, 2020b).

Table 1: Iranian population in Sweden over the years (SCB, 2020b)

Year 1900 1930 1960 1979 1980 1990 2000 2001 2002 2003 3004 2005 2006 Nr. 2 8 115 5000 20000 40084 51101 51844 52721 53241 53982 54470 55747 Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Nr. 56516 57663 59922 62120 63828 65649 67211 68436 69067 70637 74096 77386 80136

Iran 85000 80000 75000 70000 65000 60000 55000 50000 45000 40000 35000

Population 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000

2003 2019 1900 1930 1960 1979 1980 1990 2000 2001 2002 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year Figure 1: Iranian population growth in Sweden over the years 1900-2019 (SCB, 2020b) This immigration wave continued till the end of the war in 1988. According to SCB, by the end of 1990, the Iranian diaspora population in Sweden were about 40,000; see Table 1 & Figure 1 (SCB, 2020b). This explains the age distribution of the Iranian diaspora population in Sweden, in which the majorities are in mid-aged (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Iranian-born living in Sweden by age, statistics of 2018 (based on data of SCB 2020b)

1.1.2.3 Tourism in Iran According to MCTH (2019), Iran, as a four seasons country, is a touristic country with numerous monuments, hospitable people, historical, cultural and natural attractions, which has welcomed over 7 million visitors in 2018 and demonstrated an increase in international tourist arrivals despite of economic sanctions on Iran. Then tourism can be seen as an alternative source of income for the economy and this result demonstrates the strength and potential of the tourism sector. Looking from another perspective, tourism connects people today in ways that would have never been possible decades ago. As defined by UNWTO (2019a), purposes of visit by tourists include

“leisure, recreation, and holidays”, “visiting friends and relatives (VFR), health, religion, and other”, and “business and professional” (Figure 3). Among these, leisure, recreation, and holidays are the dominant ones that are accounting for 56% of all international tourist arrivals in 2018 (UNWTO, 2019a).

Purpose of visit 4% 13% Leisure, recreation, and holidays VFR, health, religion, and other Business and professional 27% 56% Not specified

Figure 3: Purposes of visits in 2018 (UNWTO, 2019a) The share of leisure travel has grown from 50% in 2000 to 56% in 2018. Leisure travel is the main purpose of visit in all regions except the Middle East, where VFR, health, and religious purposes leads. Results were driven by South Asia, with double growth in Iran, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India with more than 32 million international tourist arrivals, and Iran had 7,295,000 international tourist arrivals with 2.1% share in 2018; see Figure 4 (UNWTO, 2019a).

International tourist arrivals - Iran

8000000

7000000

6000000

5000000

4000000

Population 3000000

2000000

1000000

0 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year

Figure 4: International tourism, number of arrivals – Iran (UNWTO, 2019a)

There has been a steady increase of international tourist arrivals in 2018, see Figure 4 (UNWTO, 2019c). According to MCTH (2017), Swedish visitors in Iran were 16,207 in 2016 and 12,698 in 2017. What is significant from diaspora tourism point of view on is that the majority of Swedish visitors to Iran are indeed Iranians returning to their homeland.

1.2 Problem Statement and Purpose of the Study Social media has provided a new way that allows people to connect socially by merging social interaction, information and communication technology, and the construction of pictures, videos, and words. Many countries consider social media as a main tool to boost their tourism sectors (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). Social media applications on smart phones can work as tools to find more travel information through direct access to them with search engines (Chung & Koo, 2015; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). Hence, social media, as an important source of tourism information, is changing the way how tourists search, ﬁnd, and read information about tourism destinations. Tourists can interact with other social media users by reading about their experience in and around a specific destination. So, tourists can find real time information among network members. The social media users who provide such information receive appreciation from tourists all over the world (Kim at al., 2017; Chung & Koo, 2015). However, social media is rather a new topic in the academic research. Mortley (2011) claims that diaspora tourism is also a relatively new study and Duval (2003) explains that diasporic community comes home for a broader range of activities including business, heritage, culture, and events. They can share information about tourism attractions of their home country. Hence, diaspora tourism can help new destinations to join the international tourism market, and there are many cities and regions paying attention to the tourism sector for many reasons including economic and cultural ones. Therefore, many scholars have researched the diaspora phenomenon as a niche market in the tourism sector (Vong et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2017). Existing literatures demonstrate a demand on diaspora tourism to visit or revisit their home country. Hughes and Allen (2010), emphasize that home country was a key subject in tourism decisions. Among the existing literatures, there are more studies which focused on first generation immigrants and few studies including subsequent generations. Iorio and Corsale (2013) argue that the experience of subsequent generations may be rather different than first generations. They do not have their own individual memories about the places, where they lived in the past. So, trips to their homeland as a motivation is to revive personal heritage and seek their ancestral roots. Although there are a lot of research on social media topic and diaspora tourism separately, there are a few studies done on subsequent generations immigrants in the field of diaspora tourism. Consequently, the relationship between social media and diaspora tourism is relatively unexplored. The author was not able to find any previous studies that worked on social media effects on diaspora tourism for the second generation of Iranian immigrants in Stockholm. Knowing that social media effects on diaspora tourism has received less attention in literature and reviews, and additionally knowing the importance of social media platforms in tourism sector, it is now vital to understand the crucial role of social media on second generation of diaspora community. It is also important to know if social media has a motivation role effect on second generation of diaspora community while traveling to their home country. Therefore, here the author has attempted to contribute further to an understanding of impact of social media on diaspora tourism, by studying a case on second generation of Iranian living in Stockholm. Iran with many

9 tourism destinations and historical and cultural cities has a potential to attract visitors and diaspora members who have strong ties to their homeland. Thus, diaspora tourism for Iran can also be seen as a niche market to introduce untouched destinations.

1.2.1 Dissertation Aim The main objective of this study is to determine the role, impact, and relationship of social media platforms in diaspora members as a segment of tourism market when travelling to Iran.

1.2.2 Research Question The author tries to answer the following questions in general but using the second generation of Iranian immigrants in Stockholm as the case study. 1. What role does social media play in diaspora tourism? 2. Are there any relations between social media and visiting the origin country among second generation of immigrants? 3. Does social media have a motivational role for diaspora tourism on second generation of immigrants’ trip to their origin country?

1.3 Delimitation This study has some limitations. First, the author has focused on social media as a whole entity, and there was no intention to apply or investigate a specific theory on social media itself or any specific platform or application. So, social media is used only as a base or canvas in were the research is conducted over it. Another limitation is the geographic location, which is limited only to Stockholm area. Stockholm has the largest immigrant community among Iranians living in Sweden according to SCB, which is the reason of choosing Stockholm as the target city by the author. Another criterion is age limitation of social media users to gain a better and reliable data. For collecting the required data, the author only sent the questionnaire to participants over 18 years old. The target population comprises of second-generation Iranian diaspora between the ages of 19 and 50 living in Stockholm in 2019 who have met the following conditions: 1. They are at least 18 years old 2. They had visited Iran at least once during their lifetime 3. At least one of their parents is Iranian 4. The participant is born and raised in Sweden or he/she came to Sweden when he/she was a child

1.4 Dissertation Outline In order to give a reader a clear map of the dissertation this research is organized into six main sections. The first section entitled introduction includes background on social media in tourism and diaspora tourism, problem statement, dissertation aim, research question, delimitation, and

10 dissertation outline. In this part the author focuses on the definition of second generation and the facts about migration and tourism and social media users. Thereafter, method as the second section starts with discussion about the research approach and which method was appropriate for this research. This is followed by discussion and explanation about data collection method, data analysis method, validity and reliability of the research, and ethical issues. Third section presents literature reviews as a source of information about social media in tourism and diaspora tourism regarding the main research questions. Established literature, relevant theoretical models, concepts, and explanations are provided. Fourth section entitled empirical results includes empirical research in detail conducted among second generation of Iranian diaspora in Stockholm as the primary source of information. Data are analyzed in section five which is followed by a discussion in relation to the previous studies and obtained empirical results in order to answer the research questions. Finally, the study is concluded in sixth section, where also some recommendations for further research are suggested.

2. Method In this chapter, the methods and the research approach that are used in this research are presented and explained. The data collection and analyzing methods are also discussed. Finally, validity, reliability, and ethical issues are explained.

2.1 The Research Approach

2.1.1 Deductive vs. Inductive According to Veal (2011, p.39), appropriate research methods can make the research processes easier. The research approach can be either deductive or inductive (Saunders et al., 2006, p.145). Deductive and inductive approaches show the relationship between theory and social research (Bryman, 2012, p.26). The deductive approach develops a theory and hypothesis and design a research strategy to test the prior hypothesis (Saunders et al., 2006, p.117; Veal, 2011, p.40). The deductive approach is used for studies which already, at their basis, have an existing theory. Thus, researchers shape a hypothesis, deduce the hypothesis, and change it to a researchable object. The theory then should be proven or disproven by the collected data. For this aim, how the data is collected should be clarified (Bryman, 2012, p.24). In inductive approaches, however, data should be collected first and then a theory is generated as the result of the data analysis. Hence, in inductive approach theory is an outcome of the research (Saunders et al., 2006, p.117). The chosen approach: Based on the data collection process in this study, and considering the creation of more details and theory as an outcome of research in this study, the inductive approach was the one that seemed to be more proper to be followed in this study (Bryman, 2012, p.19 & p.401), and is in fact the approach that is used here.

2.1.2 Exploratory vs. Explanatory vs. Descriptive Research design is generally classified with the use of the following three categories: exploratory, explanatory, and descriptive (Saunders et al. 2006, p.133). An exploratory study is a method of finding out “what is happening; to seek new insights; to ask questions; to assess phenomena in a new light; to create hypotheses for future research” (Robson, 2002, p.59). Therefore, interviewing and focus group interviews as well as a search of the literature are three main ways that carry out exploratory research (Saunders et al., 2006, p.133). The exploratory research is flexible and changeable, which could be an advantage for a study. So, when researchers are carrying out exploratory research and gaining new data and new knowledge on the way, they could change the path for the research (ibid). According to Veal (2011, p.33), descriptive research describes what is in the study. Thus, a descriptive study aims to provide a clear outlook of a situation or event, previous knowledge of an event, or profile of a person (Robson, 2002, p.59). This may be a preliminary research prior to an exploratory research or a piece of explanatory research prior to the data collection (Saunders et al. 2006, p.134). Explanatory studies explain the causal relationships between variables in a situation

12 or a problem that was studied (Saunders et al. 2006, p.134). The aim of explanatory research is to explain how or why things are as they are, and using this to predict a phenomenon (Veal, 2011, p.33). The chosen approach: Since this study is a research on diaspora tourism, and since according to Veal (2011, p.6) descriptive research is very common in tourism studies, to explore this new area of research, descriptive study and exploratory approach seemed to be the most suitable for this research, and thus were the ones in fact used for this study.

2.1.3 Qualitative vs. Quantitative According to Saunders et al. (2006, p.145), the study approach can also be classified as either a quantitative study or a qualitative one. Berg defines qualitative method as: ‘‘Qualitative research focuses on innovative ways of collecting and analyzing qualitative data collected in natural settings. Qualitative research refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things. In contrast, quantitative research refers to counts and measures of things’’ (Berg, 2009, p.2 & p.3). The principle difference between qualitative and quantitative approaches are data collection techniques and data analysis procedures. One way of distinguishing between the two to carry out the study is the focus on numerical or non-numerical data (Saunders et al., 2006, p.145). When the research method is based on numerical data to test the hypothesis of the study through numerical evidence, the research is a quantitative study (Veal, 2011, p.35). In quantitative studies, the data collections techniques generate numerical data, and consequently the data analysis procedures use the generated numerical data (Saunders et al., 2006, p.145). Alternatively, when the research method is based on non-numerical data, the research is a qualitative study. Qualitative study is used in order to create a more detailed understanding of the studied subject with the data that is not quantifiable, and it includes words, images, and video clips (Saunders et al., 2006, p.17 & p.472; Veal, 2011, p.35). Similarly, when carrying out a qualitative study, the data collection and analysis procedure tackle non-numerical data. Examples of qualitative data collection and analysis techniques and procedures are informal and in-depth interviews, observation, documenting and maintaining researcher’s diaries, and context analysis (Saunders et al., 2006, p.508; Veal, 2011, p.35). Briefly, there are some contrasts between quantitative and qualitative researches, which are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Contrast between qualitative research and quantitative research (Bryman, 2012, p.408)

Quantitative Qualitative Numbers Words Point of view of researcher Point of view of participants Researcher is distant Researcher is close Theory and concepts testing Theory and concepts emergent Static Process Structured Unstructured Generalization Contextual understanding Hard, reliable data Rich, deep data Macro Micro Behavior Meaning Artificial settings Natural settings

There are distinct differences between the two approaches, in which they can be listed as below (Bryman, 2012, p.408): o Qualitative research is based on non-numerical data, while quantitative research is based on numerical data. o In quantitative research, what guides the investigation is the researchers’ point of view, while in the qualitative research it is the participants that are mainly drawing the path for the research to be conducted. o When researchers are distant to their participants it could be advantage for quantitative and disadvantage for qualitative methods; and the other way around, when researchers are close to their participants which it could be disadvantage for quantitative and advantage for qualitative methods. Additionally, in quantitative research, this lack of relationship between researchers and questioned people are not compromising objectivity of their study. The qualitative researchers are close to interviewed people to gain better understanding of what their participants say. o In quantitative research, existing theory and concepts are tested in research process, while in qualitative research theory and concepts are generated out from data collection. o Quantitative research is structured, which it could be an advantage to examine the exact theories that are the focus of the study. Qualitative research is unstructured which could be an advantage offering flexibility (Bryman, 2012, p.404). o Quantitative methods can generalize their findings to a relevant population. This is an advantage for quantitative method. In contrast, qualitative methods are contextual approach and their findings cannot be generalized which it could be a disadvantage (Veal, 2011, p.35).

o Quantitative methods are showed large-scale social’s aspects or macro-scale, in contrast, qualitative methods are showed small-scale social’s aspects or micro-scale. o Quantitative data are presented as hard and reliable data while qualitative data are presented as rich and deep data. One of the advantages of qualitative methods is to produce thick and detailed description of participants (Saunders et al., 2006, p.472). Nevertheless, qualitative data are full of information about the social life that some of them might be irrelevant. Therefore, it could be a disadvantage that the researcher may getting into difficulties with this detailed description (Bryman, 2012, p.401). The chosen approach: According to Veal (2011, p.36 & p.235), qualitative research is as common as quantitative research in tourism studies. Use of qualitative method in tourism research has increased significantly in recent years. Additionally, since for this research the author is interpreting previous research studies in related to diaspora tourism, hence the author of this study is confronted with detailed description of participants’ feelings, opinion and experience, which according to Saunders et al. (2006, p.472) is the aim of a qualitative study. Nevertheless, choosing both qualitative and quantitative approach seems more appropriate for this research because the methodological purpose of this study is to collect data through inspecting previous research studies that have been carried out on related and relevant topics, and to collect the information pertaining to the benefit of this study and combining it all together in one study, which aims to deepen the understanding and further researching the chosen topics of diaspora tourism and social media platforms.

2.2 Data Collection Method According to Saunders et al. (2006, p.147), the results of any research will be influenced by the data collection techniques and the used procedures. Therefore, it is essential to understand which data category, data collection techniques, and analysis procedures are the most appropriate for the research in hand. This is essential in order to answer the research question(s) (ibid). Furthermore, clarifying the research questions and objectives of the studies is vital to ensure that the research will be conducted within the correct path (ibid). Regarding data sources, there are two categories of data that can be used in a research study: Primary and Secondary data (Saunders et al., 2006, p.246). Primary data is new data which has been directly collected by the author of a research study, normally through observation, questionnaires, or interviews (Saunders et al., 2006, p.248), to answer the research question(s) for specific purpose. In contrary, secondary data is when one uses the existing data gathered by other people or organizations for other purpose than the one the data is gathered for in the first place (Veal, 2011, p. 45; Saunders et al., 2006, p.246). Nevertheless, secondary data including raw data and published summaries, still could be a useful source to answer the research question(s). This type of data saves time and money for the new conducting research and it could be an advantage for researchers (Saunders et al., 2006, p.246 & p.257). Saunders et al. (2006, p.248) mention three main types of secondary data including documentary, survey, and those from multiple sources.

Multiple sources data can be based on documentary or on survey, or it can be mixture of two (Saunders et al., 2006, p.251). Secondary data also could include both quantitative data and qualitative data, and they are used in descriptive and explanatory research (ibid). As mentioned above, interview is one of the methods to collect primary data. According to Saunders et al., (2006, p.311 & p.313), interview can be categorized into three categories: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured in-depth interviews; in which semi-structured and unstructured interviews can be useful for exploratory researches, while structured interviews can be useful for descriptive researches. Saunders et al. (2006, p.355) mentioned that many researchers only use questionnaires, as a form of structured interview, to gather data without using secondary data or performing any observation. Questionnaires can be used for descriptive and explanatory research (ibid). There could be three types of questionnaire in research studies including open- ended questions, closed-ended questions, and forced-choice questions with alternative answers (Saunders et al., 2006, p.268). This study uses both secondary and primary data. The choice of utilizing secondary data is only because the author aims to gain a better understanding of the research which have been previously carried out in the field of diaspora tourism. The reason of using primary data is to achieve data about social media effects on second generation of Iranian’s immigrants as a case study in this research through questionnaire. Hence, the author has used questionnaire and three in-depth phone interviews as pilot interviews for testing the questionnaire. The questionnaire is then revised according to the pilot interviews before sending it out to the participants through e-mail. The questionnaire of this study includes a mixture of demographic, open-ended and multiple-choice questions (see Appendix 1: Questionnaire).

2.2.1 Participants in the Research Study To investigate the role of social media platforms on diaspora tourism, participants in this research study were chosen among second generation of Iranian-Swedish living in Stockholm. The rationale behind choosing Stockholm city as the target of this study is that Sweden has one of the largest number of Iranian diasporas’ inhabitant with more than 80,000 Iranian-born population, in which majority of them reside in Stockholm (Hakimzadeh, 2006; Böll, 2016; SCB, 2020b). It is worth to mention that most popular social networks and online social media such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are based in the US or are American corporates. Thus, they have to follow US policy that restricts children below 13 years old to create an account (COPPA, 2020). On the other hand, to fill up a questionnaire in Sweden, children under 18 years old of age need to have somehow consent of their parents. Hence, to gain a better and reliable data, considering age limitation of social media users, the author only sent the questionnaire to participants who are over 18 years old.

2.2.2 Procedure of Choosing the Participants In this research study, the author has used a snowball sampling technique. Bryman (2016, p.202) explained the snowball sampling method as when the scholar initially contacts a small group of people relevant to the research questions and topic of the survey, and then these sampled participants contact other participants who have the required conditions for the research study and thus are eligible to be participant of the study. Bryman (2016, p.425) emphasizes that sample size in qualitative method should not be so small or so large which makes it difficult to analysis the data. Having that in mind, the author first approached a small group of Iranian diaspora community in Stockholm containing eight participants and took their email addresses to send the questionnaire. Then goal was to collect at least fifteen responses that could be representative of second-generation Iranian diaspora in Stockholm. Therefore, the author has requested the initial group of the participants to pass the questionnaire to their relatives and friends, who fulfill the criteria of the study (see Delimitation), as the snowball sampling method. As the result of snowball sampling, the total number of participants in this study resulted to be twenty-two respondents.

2.2.3 Data Collection Tools According to Bryman (2016, p.670), there are two types of email surveys: 1- embedded questionnaire; and 2- attached email questionnaire surveys. The author made the questionnaire in Google Forms. The questionnaire was sent through email as a link to access the form with a short note in the body of the email introducing the author, explaining the purpose of the study and the criteria for being accepted as a participant of the study, and finally the general rights of the participants. As mentioned before, the author has also used telephone for the pilot interviews to test the questionnaire prior to distributing it.

2.2.4 Data Collection Procedure The author designed the questionnaire in English language to collect the required data for conducting the research study. The pilot interviews were also conducted in English. The author conducted the pilot interviews to verify how well the questionnaire designed and can fulfill the purpose of the study. Thus, the author also specifically asked the pilot interviewees to criticize each question individually with regard to the clarity of the questions, and also overall on how well the questions are related to each other as a whole survey. The author piloted the questionnaire with three respondents who knew them personally. The pilot in-depth interviews were conducted via telephone and face to face discussions. After applying the comments from the pilot interviews the author sent the questionnaire to her thesis supervisor for the final approval. After applying the suggested comments from the supervisor, the author sent the questionnaire to the initial group of respondents via email. The questionnaire consisted of five parts with 24 questions including demographic status questions. The questions were in general about the activity on social media, trip to different cities of Iran,

17 motivations and social media impact, and travel experience while visiting Iran (see Appendix 1: Questionnaire). The author personally contacted Iranian-Swedish community living in Stockholm to find participants who are eligible to respond the questionnaire. After finding the initial group of eligible respondents (i.e. eight respondents), the author sent the questionnaire to them and also asked them to send the questionnaire to other Iranian-Swedish people they may know who fulfill the study’s criteria. Finally, the answers all were collected anonymously, and all responses were kept confidential.

2.3 Data Analysis Method Quantitative data are numerical data that are resulted from the collection of standardized and numerical data. Quantitative data are normally analyzed using quantitative analysis by means of statistics and diagrams (Saunders et al., 2006, p.472). In contrast, qualitative data refers to non- numerical data that are resulted from the collection of non-standardized data. Such data should be categorized and analyzed by using conceptualization (ibid). Qualitative data analysis procedures include categorizing data, assigning data to proper categories, identifying relationships between categories and data, and finally developing theories and testing hypotheses (Saunders et al., 2006, p.470). Both quantitative and qualitative analyses can be used for content analysis. Content analysis is a systematic approach, in which the content of documents and texts that may be printed or are in visual format, are analyzed using different methods in order to recognize characteristics of messages in a systematic way (Bryman, 2012, p.289). Content analysis is a method for compressing key words into a few content categories, called coding (Marine-Roig, 2017; Bryman, 2012, p.291). It is important to specify research question prior to carrying out the content analysis and coding (Bryman, 2012, p.291). In this study, in addition to quantitative analysis of the standardized data collected by the questionnaire, the author has used content analysis as completing method for analyzing the collected data. After collecting the responses to the questionnaire, the author reviewed all the received responses several times in order to get the sense of the whole collected data. The author then transferred the whole raw data from Google Forms to MS-Excel sheets. Thereafter, the author divided the qualitative questions and the received answers based on the parts of the questionnaire into five main sheets in MS-Excel. Then, meaning units from the answers were discovered based on the relevant phrases to the objective of research. To classify the phrases, the author needed to know which words are considered keywords and which words are not. For that the author had to revise the collected text and sentences and use the relevant reviewed literature and theories to define codes and sub-codes. In the last column in every sheet, the author identified final code and put them in a category with the name for every category. Finally, themes were discovered through these categories. Thereafter, these phrases were copied in a separate column in every sheets. In the next step, all these phrases from all sheets were condensed in a new column in a separate sheet. Then

18 the frequency of appearance of each keyword is counted for the quantitative analysis of the responses. So, the content analysis was based on counting the frequency of these keywords.

2.4 Validity and Reliability of the Research The quality of any research depends on the used methods. There are two dimensions in this context as validity and reliability. The validity of research shows how accurately the research identifies what is intended to be identified. Validity includes external validity and internal validity. External validity refers to the generalization of results to a population wider than the particular sample in the research. Therefore, it is important to know how the members of the sample are selected. Internal validity refers to the characteristics of the phenomenon represented by the variables and data collection (Veal, 2011, p.46). Reliability, on the other hand, means that the repetition of the research would produce similar findings (Veal, 2011, P. 46). However, since the data collection methods and the design of the questionnaire for collecting the data may affect the response of the participants, the reliability of this research is discussed assuming that the same method and similar questions will be used for the repetitive studies. The respondents of this study all met the criteria of this study; among them, all participants were the second generation of Iranian immigrants living in Stockholm who have visited their home country (i.e. Iran) at least once during their lifetime. This qualifies their visits to Iran as diaspora tourism, which is the target intention of this study. Therefore, their responses are considered as accurately fulfilling the intention of the research, and thus fulfills the general validity requirements of the research. Additionally, using snowball sampling, all the participants in this study were selected from the bigger population of the Iranian-Swedish community living in Stockholm. Therefore, the results can comfortably be considered as applicable to a bigger community than the selected sample population. This fulfills the external validity of the study. On the other hand, since the defined questions of the distributed questionnaire are pilot interviewed prior to the distribution, and thereafter reviewed by the author’s master thesis supervisor, who is an expert in the subject area of the study, it is considered that the characteristics of the studied topic (i.e. diaspora tourism) are correctly represented and covered by the questions included in the distributed questionnaire used for data collection. This then fulfills the internal validity of the study. It can also be argued that the results of this study are reliable because firstly the author collected the responses through a unified method as a questionnaire. This has eliminated the risk of discrepancies that may occur when asking the questions in an interview-like setup rather than a questionnaire. Additionally, the author has tried to minimize personal bias while performing the analysis by using a systematic approach of creating codes and sub-codes for the collected responses. Although this may have not eliminated the risk of bias entirely, it has minimized its possibility. Additionally, the author has tried to minimize the risk of different interpretations of

19 each individual question by each participant by conducting three pilot interviews prior to sending out the questionnaire. Again, although this cannot eliminate the risk completely, it has decreased it with certainty. Moreover, since Saunders et al. (2006, p.356) have indicated that pilot testing will maximize the validity and reliability of the studies that their data are collected through interviews and questionnaire, the validity and reliability of this study are considered to be even further improved due to the three performed pilot interviews prior to the data collection process.

2.5 Ethical Issues In relation to conduct of any research, ethical issues are important. There are four areas form ethical principles in social research: 1- if there is a lack of informed consent; 2- harm to participants; 3- an invasion of privacy; and 4- deception (Bryman, 2012, p.135). The purpose of the questionnaire distributed in this study was clearly explained for the participants. Also the author explained to the participants that they are not obliged to answer the questionnaire, but if they are willing to support the research by answering the questionnaire, participants can answer all or part of the questionnaire, and they can leave the survey at any time they want even after starting the survey. Thus, the consents of the participants are considered as informed, meaning the principles no. 1 and no. 4 from above are fulfilled. The author also mentioned the answers are collected anonymously, and all responses will be kept confidential, which guarantees the privacy of the participants, which itself fulfills the principle no. 2 and no. 3 from the above. Finally the author asked interviewees to continue with the response only if they meet the explained criteria, which can be argued that itself additionally fulfills the principle no. 2 from the above, because one of the criteria of the survey was that the participant should be at least 18 years old.

3. Literature Review This chapter provides a foundation for understanding the concept of diaspora tourism through literature review; and it presents a framework of social media based on tourism sector. This literature review focuses on diaspora tourism, second generation immigrants, and social media.

3.1 Social Media in Tourism

3.1.1 Social Media and its Types Social media development has been exponential over the past years (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). Zeng and Gerritsen (2014) claim that social media in tourism and hospitality literature have been received more attention recently. The Internet was functioning in a reading-only format at the time that is now called Web 1.0 era (Fotis et al., 2012). Since, the advent of social media and the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, users can read, write, and interact with other Internet users more easily. Hence, people were enabled to collaborate and share their information and experience over the Internet with others (Kim et al., 2017; Hays et al., 2013). The term Web 2.0 was first used in 2004 to refer to a new way software developers and end-users commenced to utilize the World Wide Web (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). More specifically, Web 2.0 is a platform where applications and content are modified by all users in a sharing and collaborative way (a.k.a. User Generated Contents or UGCs). While Web 2.0 represents the ideological and technological foundation, UGC is the way that people make use of social media through Web 2.0 foundation. A UGC could be in different forms like idea, thought, experience, perspective, or simply information; but what is shared between UGCs is that all created by the consumers of Internet and in different platforms and Internet-based applications with differing functions like blogs, microblogs, and social networking sites (Kaplan, & Haenlein, 2010). This foundation and usage relation between Web 2.0 and UGCs are what Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) have defined as “social media”. The same definition is used by other researchers when referring to social media in the recent related studies. For example, Fotis et al., (2011) has defined social media as a group of online software platforms that empower and facilitate sharing of consumer generated content. Brake and Safko (2009, p.6), on the other hand, see the social media from behavioral point of view as “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media”. Their definition of conversational media is more or less aligned with what is accepted as the definition of Web 2.0. All in all, it is generally accepted among the scholars that social media gives the Internet users from all over the world the possibility to interact and communicate with each other, create relationship, and produce UGCs. There are variety of applications and websites that allow users to generate content and share them through the Internet by the means of posts, tags, digs, or blogs. The ultimate aim, however, is to share the contents on the Internet for easy access of the other users regardless of place or time (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010; Zarezadeh et al., 2018; Yoo et al., 2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Leung et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2017; Chung & Koo, 2015).

When there is more or less general agreement on the definition of social media, same situation seems questionable when it comes to the types of social media. For instance, Fischer and Reuber (2011) propose eight types of social media while Mangold and Faulds (2009) propose more than ten types. At the same time, Kim et al. (2017) propose only two types of social media as social networking sites and social media sites. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) also identify some types of social media including social networking websites (e.g. Facebook, Linkedin), blogs, content communities (e.g. YouTube, Flickr,), collaborative projects (e.g. Wikitravel), virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life), and virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft). Fotis et al., (2012) add to this list microblogs (e.g. Twitter), consumer review and rating websites (e.g. TripAdvisor,) and Internet fora (e.g. ThornTree,). Despite of this variety of views, one can argue that social media generally consists of social networking sites, review sites, wikis, forums, community sites, and location based social media (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). A social networking site (SNS), such as Facebook and YouTube, is a platform that enables users to share personal information and to connect to others (Leung et al., 2013). Travelers collect travel information from friends and relatives in their SNSs and from Internet users all over the world. For example, a new UGC by travelers, so-called electronic world- of-mouth (eWOM), is a new form of WOM that has recently been an important online source for travelers to gain a real, non-commercial, detailed, and experiential information on Internet due to its high perceived reliability. This has been affecting the planning process of a trip for the travelers, and marketing researchers often use eWOM to explain the degree of impact of social media content (Litvin et al., 2008; Leung et al., 2013; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010).

3.1.2 Social Media and Tourism As mentioned earlier, social media’s development has been speeded up in recent years. Such fast evolution in social media has led to various effects on tourism industry through travel information search, travel decision-making, and the recollection of travel experiences (Zarezadeh et al., 2018). Nowadays, travelers can share their experience and information about their trips on different websites and applications where they can generate their own content (i.e. UGCs) by expressing themselves, and posting their comments, pictures, movie clips, and stories2 (Benckendorff et al., 2014, p.39; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). UGCs on consumer review websites like TripAdvisor represent important contents for travel purposes (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). In fact, one of the most attractive UGCs on social media are the pictures uploaded by tourists (Statista, 2019e; Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). Hence, UGCs that are produced by tourists and travelers help other fellow travelers, especially during the research phase, for planning their trips. However, in order for a UGC to be used and trusted by the users for their travel planning and decision making process, the trustworthiness of the source who have generated the content is a key factor (Leung et al., 2013; Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014).

2 Stories are features of some applications that let their users to post sequential time limited photos and videos. 22

The Internet has reshaped the way people plan for a travel (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Nowadays, travelers can search travel information according to their demands and needs and find reliable information about appropriate prices, destination features, and different activities through websites and social media platforms. Social media, which consist of texts, comments, images, video clips, and word of mouth, allow tourists to pay attention to others’ experience, to interact easily with other travelers, and to trust each other’s information. Travelers can search for a destination and find information about the location and the destination and use social media in decision making process. Therefore, people have realized the usage need of social media in tourism sector (Chung & Koo, 2015).

The The Web Interface The Tourism traveler Information Space

Situational Internet Browsers Conceptual Structure Affective Search Engines (Metatags, full-text) Knowledge Skill

Figure 5: Travelers Interacting with the Internet when searching information, (Pan & Fesenmaier, 2006) Pan and Fesenmaier (2006) have introduced a conceptual model of travel planning through the Internet browser based on the interaction between information searchers and tourism websites (Figure 5). The three main components of this model are the traveler, the travel information space (the web), and the interface between these two. The results of the search for information depends on the situation, knowledge and skills of the traveler, online tourist domain, and the interface. So, search engines and Internet browser together with social media platforms, have become powerful interfaces that are being used to facilitate the search for travel information, and they have become an essential source of information to validate the choices for travelers. They are also important marketing means for destinations and tourism companies to reach the potential customers and attract them (Pan & Fesenmaier, 2006; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). Fondevila Gascon et al., (2016) have studied the social media power on attracting visitors to Barcelona (Catalonia) used by tourists who are on business trips. Fondevila Gascon et al., (2016) have demonstrated how smartphones are helping tourists on their trips, and how important is the

23 impact of such technology on travelers’ activities. Today travelers are in continuous search for information to decrease uncertainty; thus, they make the most use of their smartphones as assistants during all stages of decision-making process, particularly before and during the trip. Travelers rely on mobile devices or tablets to make their trips easier by searching useful information for accommodation, transportation, attractions, and interesting activities to do. Additionally, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are self-entertainment tools that enable users to play games, listen to music, take and share photos and videos, watch movies, and read news while on the go. Furthermore, they have enabled travelers to connect with others by making phone calls, sending text messages, pictures, and videos, as well as accessing emails and connecting and using social media platforms. The most used social media platforms among tourists are opinions platforms such as TripAdvisor (Fondevila Gascon et al., 2016). All of these demonstrate that the role of social media platforms in the decision-making process are increasing. Information on applications and websites assist the users during decision-making process. Those platforms which focus on images and videos, such as Instagram and YouTube, increasing their presence in such roles. This is because the travelers share their experiences and opinions about services and products through UGC as pictures, comments, and videos during the post-travel phase. These are the same information that are consumed by other travelers in pre-travel phase, when they search about travel information or when they do various online bookings prior to their trips (Chung & Koo, 2015).

3.2 Diaspora Tourism In existing diaspora literature, researchers describe origin and advent terms of diaspora. The term diaspora was originally used in the context of the dispersion of Jews from Israel (Cohen, 1997), while diaspora is actually a term originating from Greek in 1931. The classic examples of diasporic populations include Jewish, Armenian, and Greek people (Safran, 1991; Huang et al., 2016). In existing diaspora literature, there are many types of tourism in related to people with migrant ancestry travelling back to their homeland (Sim & Leith, 2013; Huang et al., 2016; Li & McKercher, 2016; Mortley, 2011). Such concept of diaspora tourism in the related literature has been referred to by other terms like ‘personal heritage tourism’ (Timothy, 1997), ‘ethnic tourism’ (King, 1994), ‘ethnic reunion’ (Stephenson, 2002), ‘ancestral tourism or tourists’ (Fowler, 2003), ‘genealogy tourism’ (Meethan, 2004) or genealogical tourism (Santos & Yan, 2010), ‘genealogy tourists’ (Birtwistle, 2005), ‘legacy tourism’ or ‘legacy tourists’ (McCain & Ray, 2003), ‘pilgrimage tourism’ (Schramm, 2004), ‘roots tourism’ (Basu, 2004a; Bruner, 1996), diaspora travel (Kim & Stodolska, 2013) or diaspora tourism (Coles & Timothy, 2004; Moufakkir, 2011; Holsey, 2004), and ‘visiting friends and relatives tourism’ (Uriely, 2010; Williams & Hall 2000), ‘the return visit’ (Duval, 2003), home return travel (Hughes & Allen, 2010; Kang & Page, 2000), ‘domestic tourist’ (Erb 2003, Scheyvens, 2007), and ‘heritage tourists’ (Garrod & Fyall, 2000). Having different terms for a same concept and also the fact that diaspora is a multifaceted concept (Coles & Timothy, 2004) indicates that scholars may also have various definition for it.

Huang et al. (2016) have found diaspora tourism experiences are different based on various migration histories and national origins. In this regard, there are some examples in diaspora literature consist of African diaspora to visit the historic sites of slave trade (Bruner, 1996; Holsey, 2004; Schramm, 2004), the Chinese government sponsors summer programs for young Chinese abroad, and diasporic Jews in the form of educational group tours for religion and identity purposes. For other immigrant communities, diaspora tourism may have other purposes that are more family oriented such as visiting family and relatives, or the purpose of traveling to homeland (Uriely, 2010). Etemaddar et al. (2016) have explored the connections between different diasporic travels and have introduced the concept of ‘moment of home’ with focusing on the Iranian diaspora in the South Island of New Zealand. The concept of ‘moments of home’ shows how diaspora members use traveling to find and make homes (Safran, 1991; Sheffer, 2003). Etemaddar et al. (2016) explain a tradition perspective of diaspora tourism that is about the people who have left their homes behind, so they have often suffered because of forcible displacement. This has forced them to enter into a painful situation of homelessness, while all what they want is to return to their homeland. Coles and Timothy (2004) have defined diasporas in connection with such situation, as groups of people scattered around the world from their origin countries but gathered together as a community by their common unity of ethnicity, culture, religion, national identity and race. Etemaddar et al. (2016) and Huang et al. (2016) have almost a same approach on diaspora tourism. Huang et al. (2016) have suggested that diaspora members may seek alternative destinations according to their ethnic origins if they do not access to their origin country due to political and social issues. Examples of that are Chinatowns and Little Italy all over the world. Etemaddar et al., (2016), on the other hand, have mentioned that contemporary diaspora members may have unique experience about home in different locations and various occasions which may not necessarily be their homeland. Several diaspora studies found that diaspora tourists describe their travel back to the homeland as Homecoming, quest, and pilgrimage. The notion of the Homecoming event has been increasingly applied for when diaspora members are welcomingly back to their homeland (Sim and Leith, 2013). The Homecoming may also include leisure activities such as tours and excursions, as well as opportunities for genealogical research (Basu, 2004b). Mortley (2011) claims that diaspora tourism is a relatively new study, while investigating the effects of tourism and travel on Jamaican diaspora living in city of London. So, conceptualization and definition of diaspora tourism remains problematic. Mortley (2011) mentions that VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) concept is most often similar to diaspora tourism. He defines VFR as tourism when persons travelling only for the purpose of visiting friends and family. Nevertheless, diasporic communities normally return homes for various other reasons also, including business, heritage, culture, and events. Hence, VFR is not enough in depicting visits by the diaspora people (Duval, 2003). Thus, Mortley (2011) describes the term diaspora tourist as a concept that people living in big cities whose socialization, values, and heritage link them to

25 communities and kinship ties in their homeland. So, they return to these communities mainly to (re)connect with people and places that they feel more connected to. Therefore, VFR shall instead be considered as one type of diaspora tourism. Similarly, Vong et al. (2017) define diaspora as groups or individuals such as political refugees, deported people, ethnic and racial groups, immigrants, and guest workers who keep or revive the connection with their previous home. Therefore, the characteristics of diaspora members can be defined as the shared history of dispersal, feeling foreignness in the host country, memories, nostalgia, desire to return home, and ongoing support of the homeland (Huang et al., 2011; Duval, 2003).

3.2.1 Second Generation Diaspora In existing diaspora literature, there are a few studies about the view of the different generations and separate identified descendants. The Duval (2003) study focuses on ﬁrst generation only while the King and Christou (2009) study focuses on Second generation only. Hughes and Allen (2010) study, however, focuses on first, second, and third generations. In the Huang et al. (2016) study, the differences between first- and second-generation’s experience are investigated. Second generation immigrants tend to perceive their parents’ country as a foreign destination rather than as a home. Hughes and Allen (2010) have studied first generation and descendant’s Irish diaspora who live in Manchester city. Irish diaspora travel to Ireland for visiting friends and relatives, but also there is a desire to reinforce heritage and identity for subsequent generations. Diaspora communities consider homeland as their source of identity and values rather than a host community.

Irish state’s ‘inclusion’ of diaspora

visit friends and ‘internal’: relatives • Communities ‘the other’

• Social and • Negative identity: search or cultural stereotypes confirm organizations • Racism

• Family comfort and safety • ‘Intent to return’

Images: • Films • Books • Tourist boards • Pictures

Figure 6: Suggested theory influences on decisions of the Irish living in England to visit Ireland, (Hughes & Allen, 2010)

Hughes and Allen (2010) suggest the theory of possible influences on tourism by the Irish diaspora living in England to visit Ireland (Figure 6). They represent likely push factors and pull factors that affect Irish diaspora to visit their homeland. Close communities and strong family ties that are representation of their homeland in an idealized way, as well as positioning of Irish as “the others” by the domestic population both may act as push factors to visit Ireland. On the other hand, there are two outside pull factors as the assertion of inclusion of the diaspora by the Irish state and idealized images of Ireland generated through films and books by tourist boards and pictures. Finally, in Hughes and Allen’s theory, the terms of VFR as well as identity confirmation and rejection were considered as the outcomes of the visit to Ireland. Figure 6 above shows suggested influences factors on Irish diaspora to visit Ireland as presented by Hughes and Allen (2010). In an effort to research on diaspora tourism, Huang et al. (2016) studied the experience of Chinese Americans’ second-generation immigrants who are born in the USA as their new country, when they travel to their home country. They found that the difference between first- and second- generation diaspora members should be considered in such studies. Diaspora tourism permits first- generation immigrants to revisit homeland and reconnect with their relatives. Nevertheless, in comparison, second-generation may or may not have the same experience when they travel to their homeland. What was found was that the real experiences of most second-generation participants happened with their new Chinese friends that have been made during the trips in their homeland. In fact, those who joined the family gatherings often felt trapped inside the family bubble, which disallowed them to explore the destination. Additionally, they felt negative experiences due to language retention and language barriers. Therefore, in general such reasons can be considered as why second-generation immigrants may not identify their parents’ hometown as their own home. Iorio and Corsale (2013) argue on different aspect of diaspora tourism, which is the perception of the discovered places that can affect the sense of belonging in diaspora members. The experience may be different between first and second generations. Second generations may know family stories and cultural customs, but they do not have their own individual memories about their motherland; the situation that is different for the first generation. Nevertheless, despite of the differences, most of diaspora tourists tend to achieve the sense of belonging to the hometown. Thus, it can argued that visiting one’s country of origin is motivated by a desire to experience and link to their roots and landscape of personal heritage, and also desire to know about individual ancestors (Bruner, 1996; Basu, 2004b; Schramm, 2004). In one study, Iarmolenko and Kerstetter (2015) found that immigrants usually do not participate in familiar leisure activities while visiting their hometowns. In order to cope with this issue and also to connect immigrants to their heritage and roots, diaspora tourism identifies special form of leisure activities to help second-generation immigrants feel at home and making connections to their parents’ country while visiting homeland. Examples of such activities are Israeli birthright movement (Kelner, 2010) or Homecoming events (Sim & Leith, 2013). In another study about second-generation immigrants, King and Christou (2009) studied the diaspora when the first-generation immigrants go back to their homeland after retirement. They

27 argue that such phenomena also influence the second-generation immigrants. The second- generation immigrants visit their homeland to meet their parents and ensure that the grandchildren as the third generation maintain connection with their grandparents and their heritage. Additionally, the second-generation immigrants will be involved in financial and emotional support as well as care duties regarding their parents. Therefore, it can be argued that the visiting homeland by second generation have results such as explore tourism destinations, VFR, and seek the ancestral culture. These outcomes reinforce the notion of second-generation diaspora who their parent’s country of origin can never become their own home.

3.3 Social Media, Diaspora Tourism and Motivations Diaspora tourism and vacation are notions that are more than often discussed in relation with each other in the tourism literature. Alignments between the motives of vacations and diaspora tourism may elaborate on the expansion of diaspora tourism and delivering a fulfilling vacation. In this regard, Crompton (1979) empirically identified motives for a vacation, including push and pull motivators. Push factors are socio-psychological motives, namely exploration and evaluation of self, relationship, security, nostalgia, romance, relaxation, escape from routine, enhancement of kinship relationships, prestige, facilitation of social interaction, and regression. Pull factors are cultural motives, namely natural attractions, climate, scenery, historical attractions, resorts, theme parks, cultural attraction, novelty (adventure, curiosity, different and new), and education (Crompton, 1979; Vong et al., 2017; Abbasian & Müller, 2019). On the other hand, diaspora tourists keep cultural attachment to their places of origin and ties with their homelands, even after descendants. Connections to the home countries are main motivators of the diaspora members and their several generations who wish to rediscover their roots and to reexperience their previous homeland (Iorio & Corsale, 2013). Vong et al., (2017) mention other motivations of diaspora tourists to return back and visit their home country including VFR, economic reasons, and keeping family relations and networks to rediscovering the ancestral culture and heritage (Duval, 2003; King & Christou, 2009). Sim and Leith (2013) mentioned that the relationship between diasporas and homelands is complicated. They applied the role of nostalgia in which the yearning to return home is rooted in a feeling of nostalgia for a motherland. As is defined by Boym (2001), nostalgia is a symptom of a yearning, to be in different time than the current age, possibly the childhood time when time seemed to pass so slowly. Sim and Leith (2013) claim that nostalgia can be learned by individuals by getting knowledge about the past events through films and stories. However, here the question might be that “how it is possible to feel and remember a place which is unseen or lost?”, or “how memory can lead second generation immigrants to have feeling of a sense of loss of a place?”. To answer such questions, reflective nostalgia is defined, which is when one values parts of memory; such parts of a memory could be stories that are heard, pictures that are seen, texts that are read, or objects that are felt. Individuals who have gained reflective nostalgia, could use that as a form of identity maintenance.

Modern media have an important role in influencing diaspora behavior with such nostalgia (Sim and Leith; 2013); for instance, the rapid expansion of websites that are offering assistants with ancestral research. One example of the role of such nostalgia in diaspora behavior is in the field of the Scottish diaspora, in which the Mel Gibson film, Braveheart, has had an important effect on illustrations of Scottish identity. More examples are Bollywood films and new Disney Pixar film, Brave, with a similar effect. Sim and Leith (2013), however, argue that there is negative outcome about representations of diaspora identity. Such illustrations can be imaginary and unreal; hence, some diaspora members confuse between a real home and the imaginary home. As a result, this confusion leads some home comers to have a sense of disappointment that the home country is not as they imagined it. Nevertheless, nostalgia is a strong motivation for diaspora members to return home. Iarmolenko and Kerstetter (2015) examined the impacts of media on Ukrainian diaspora to travel home country. Todays, media is one of the most influential factors in society. Media modifies behaviors, including travelling behaviors specially because one of the most important factors in travel decision making is the destination image that one may have in mind from a special place; and media has the power to form that image. Image of a landscape can also have a positive connection with the decision to go back to home country because landscape is likely to remind the memories and nostalgia (Iarmolenko and Kerstetter, 2015). King & Christou (2009) mention diaspora members display landscape images, family picture, and religious symbols in their home or office to remind memories of their homeland. Nowadays, modern technologies and more rapid communications basically influence contemporary diaspora populations. Due to the fast growth of Internet, social media has found an important role on communities and consequently on immigrants as they can share images and stories with each other. Contemporary diaspora members have now more connections with their origin country than previous diaspora members. These communications and streams of information through Internet in diaspora communities allow them to be closer to each other culturally and economically (Kim et al., 2017; Etemaddar et al., 2016). Huang et al. (2016) emphasize that traveling to places where international migrants lived before was difficult or maybe impossible due to geographical distance or political barriers in the past. However, contemporary immigrants can now connect virtually and physically with their country of origin through modern technologies and keep their ties to the ancestral country. Nowadays, international tourism becomes accessible and affordable for tourists. So diasporic members have more opportunities to visit their homeland in comparison to the past that they probably could only visit their homeland once during lifetime. Nowadays, they can travel more and visit their homeland even annually. According to Huang et al. (2016), developments in communication technologies and transportation has affected diaspora tourism. Second generation diaspora may not have their own direct experience of a place, but they may learn about their country of origin by hearing memories and stories of these places from their parents, friends, teachers, and the media. These shape diaspora members’ perception.

4. Empirical Results The main objective of this chapter is to analyze the data collected by the questionnaire distributed by the author. The data is analyzed to answer the main research questions of this study and determine if social media affects diaspora tourism. This chapter consists of three main sections as characteristics of the participants, qualitative results, and content analysis of the collected responses.

4.1 Characteristics of the Participants The sample population of this study comprises of second-generation Iranian diaspora between the ages of 19 and 50 living in Stockholm in 2019. This part consists of demographic characteristics of the respondents and their social media usage.

4.1.1 Demographic Status Overall 22 responses were collected for this study as shown in Table 3. As per gender of participants, the majority of them were males (13 individuals) and the rest were females (9 individuals) with an average age of 34.6. As per the education of respondents, they mainly had either master’s (12 persons) or bachelor’s (5 persons) degrees, while few had doctoral (3 persons) or college (2 persons) degrees. Participants were mostly employed (17 individuals), while only few of them (3 individuals) were students and two of them were self-employed. All participants had Iranian parents, and the majority of them were born in Iran (16 persons) and the rest were born in Sweden (6 persons) as clear by the figures in Table 3.

Table 3: Demographic characteristics of participants

Sample population nr. = 22 Characteristic n Percentage Characteristic n Percentage Gender Occupation Male 13 59.1% Employed 17 77.3% Female 9 40.9% Unemployed 0 0% Age Self-employed 2 9.1% Under 20 2 9.1% Student 3 13.6% 21-30 4 18.2% Place of birth 31-40 12 54.5% Iran 16 72.73% 41-50 4 18.2% Sweden 6 27.27% Education Family status College 2 9.1% Single 5 22.7% Bachelor’s degree 5 22.7% Married 14 63.6% Master’s degree 12 54.5% With partner 3 13.6% Doctoral degree 3 13.6%

4.1.2 Social Media Usage A list of most popular social media platforms in travel and tourism sector were provided by author in questionnaire according to Statista and Digitalbuzzblog websites (Statista, 2019a; Digitalbuzzblog, 2020). The most used social media platforms by the participants were YouTube, Instagram, Google maps, and Facebook which are over the average according to the respondents (Figure 7).

100% 60%

80% 50%

60% 40%

40% 30%

20% 20%

0% 10%

0% Less than 1 1-3 hours per3-5 hours per 5 hours or hour per day day day more per day

Figure 7: Use of social media platforms Figure 8: Social media usage per day Exactly half of the participants (11 individuals) claim they spend between one and three hours per day using social media, while less than half of the participants (8 individuals) use social media between three and five hours per day. One of the respondents uses social media five hours or more and a minority of the respondents (2 individuals) declare they use social media less than one hour per day (Figure 8).

As it can be seen in Figure 9, most participants claim a few social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube give them more reliable information about Iran than other social media platforms as mentioned in the questionnaire (see Question 12 in Appendix 1: Questionnaire).

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Figure 9: Reliable information on social media platforms

4.2 Qualitative Results This part presents qualitative answers of participants that includes twenty-two respondents of second-generation Iranian diaspora living in Stockholm. This part is divided into three main sections with some subsections in between. Main sections are: 1- trip to Iran and visit cities of Iran, 2- motivations and social media impact, 3- travel experience while visiting Iran.

4.2.1 Trip to Iran In this study, almost half of the participants (10 persons) have stated that they have traveled to Iran between two and ten times, while less than half of the respondents (8 persons) who have visited Iran more than ten times (Figure 10). For the duration of trip, majority of the participants (12 individuals) stayed in Iran between two and four weeks. A minority of the participants (6 individuals) stayed in Iran more than one month and the least length of stay for the participants were less than two weeks (4 individuals) as clear in the Figure 11.

50% 60%

40% 50% 40% 30% 30% 20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0% 0-1 time 2-10 times More than 10 < 2 weeks 2-4 weeks More than 1 times month

Figure 10: Number of visits to Iran Figure 11: Length of stay in Iran

The dominant majority of the participants (20 individuals) have gone to Iran to visit friends and relatives (VFR). The data shows that some of the participants also went to Iran for leisure and holidays (9 individuals), some went because of a sense of belongings to Iran (9 individuals), and few went also to visit tourism attractions (historical and cultural places) (7 individuals). Only one participant mentioned that he/she visits Iran without any particular reason. Business is one of the purposes of visit that is defined by UNWTO, but none of the participants of this study have chosen business as the purpose of their visits to Iran as clear by the Figure 12. Respondents of this survey visit homeland for a range of reasons, as one of participants mentioned a reason to visit Iran is ‘‘special events like uncles’ weddings’’. Another participant stated ‘‘finding a partner’’ as a reason of trip to Iran.

Other (Finding a partner, visit grandparents, events)

No particular reason

Visiting tourism attractions (historical and cultural places)

A sense of belongings to Iran

VFR

Business

Leisure and holidays

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Figure 12: Purpose of visit The data show that all participants visited Tehran, and majority of them visited one or two more cities; indicating that probably Tehran is a first destination due to the direct flight from Stockholm to Tehran. Those who visited one or two cities could mean they have landed in Tehran and then they traveled to their hometowns in Iran. In general, most visited cities in Iran by participants are Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Kish Island, Sari, Mashhad, Yazd, Khorramabad, Tabriz, Urmia, Rasht, and Semnan.

4.2.2 Motivations and Social Media Impact One of the main objectives of this study is to determine the relation between diaspora members and social media effects. So, the two last parts of the questionnaire were for that purpose including motivations and social media impact, and travel experience while visiting Iran.

Iranian diaspora motivation In accordance to the literature, there are different motivations to visit homeland by diaspora members. One of the purposes is visiting friends and relatives as a push motivator (Abbasian & Müller, 2019) for diaspora community. Most of the participants emphasized that they visited Iran to meet their family and relatives. As a participant stated: ‘‘My family has been my main motivation for visiting Iran. When I was younger up until high school almost every summer my mom would take us to Iran. Her entire family lives there, parents, aunts/uncles, cousins. I wanted to see my grandparents and cousins too. Visiting Sweden is difficult for many so the only way I can see my uncles, cousins, grandparents was by going to Iran.’’ In addition to VFR reasons by second generations to return homeland, another reason is exploring tourism destination. “Mostly my parents want to meet my relatives. But also my cousin who lives in Iran and normally travels a lot inside Iran. She normally encourages me to go to Iran and visit different cities and various tourist attractions in Iran. I never saw a desert before, but because of her encouragement, I finally saw couple of deserts in central

Iran. I did not have any idea that a desert can be so beautiful, and also I didn't know people do farming in deserts. It was fantastic. I even swam in one of the villages in central desert of Iran.” Second generation immigrants also travel back to homeland to discover their roots, heritage, and former homeland and have a connection to the ancestry (Iorio & Corsale, 2013). “My mom so much wanted me to go with them to Iran just to meet my whole family and relatives, but also to see what life looks like in Iran. I didn't remember what everything looked like in Iran just because I moved here when I was so young but with going back, I could see how much difference there is between Iran and Sweden.” The respondents were curious of differences between their homeland and current country and they also wanted to explore parents’ hometown. Four more of the participants mentioned about comparison and curiosity of Iran: ”… just curious how it is compare to what I hear… “ and “I wanted to see Iran and my mom’s home and the other relative” and “I wanted to know where I am coming from… my roots” and “My Heritage and Iran” and “…I like being in Iran cause it’s where my background is from...” Therefore, the results of this study also confirm that visiting homeland by second generation are due to VFR, explore destination, and seek the ancestral culture (King and Christou, 2009). A few participants also had partners who came from Iran, which were their motivation to visit Iran. The respondents did not just concentrate on VFR, but they also focused on Iranian unique culture, history of Iran, untouched nature, great weather during spring and summer, Iranian cuisine, hospitality, special events (e.g. New year and weddings), historical and cultural cities and villages to discover. “Every visiting is unique because of kindness, warmth and hospitality of People who I know them or not.” Another participant stated: “Attractive nature like hiking in mountain, great weather… celebrate Persian new year and big events (wedding), eating delicious food, and interest in Persian history and culture…”

Motivation by social media Half of the participants mentioned that they were persuaded to travel to Iran through contents generated by users in social media platforms. As described by a participant: “On Instagram I have been motivated to visit Iran. That is because half of the people I follow live in Iran and they go to pretty places and tag the locations. For example, the mosque in Shiraz I have seen pictures and I really want to visit the architecture

is amazing and very unique. My friend that lives here in Stockholm visited Iran last month and she posted a lot of pictures and Instagram stories when she was in Kish, now I really want to go. It looked beautiful.” Fotis et al., (2012) indicates that travel related pictures and videos in social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram generate interest to viewers and can very easily become part of the viewer’s travel plans. “… I follow some of Iranian influencers in Instagram that travel in Iran and post their stories and pictures in their page that always encourages me to go back to Iran and visit more places of my homeland.” Some participants even noticed and mentioned that many tourists and bloggers share their experience and stories through social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. “Some bloggers or tourist who have already visited Iran and they took video and photos to introduce lovely places, such as different small cities/village with traditional culture and untouched nature, cozy coffee shop, and introducing various activities or hobbies on YouTube and Instagram.” Some participants mentioned that contents generated by people and tourists on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are “videos of historical places and reviewing food in Iran” and “Iranian cuisine”. As Zeng and Gerritsen (2014) mentioned, social media platforms have enabled tourists to share their experiences when they travel, and this useful information generated by users influence on travelers’ decision-making process. This is also indicated in one of the respondent answers: “…if something got me thinking that maybe I should visit Iran, there are probably pictures of different restaurants and all the good food they serve…” On the contrary, half of participants emphasized that they were not motivated by social media platforms to visit Iran. One participant stated: “I have become less motivated to visit Iran when I am on social media and look around.” and another participant emphasized: “nowadays videocalls with family and friends in Iran and News on social media convince me to do not go to Iran.” In related to impacts of social media on second generation of diaspora members to visit Iran, both positive and negative impacts were identified through the answers of the respondents.

Social media influences on decision-making process to visit Iran In order to determine if second generation diaspora members are influenced by social media in order to visit Iran, participants are asked to rate in which of the ways they think social media influences their decision to visit Iran. As the results shown in Figure 13 below, pictures of family and friends and sense of belongings to Iran is the most rated factors among the participants (15 individuals).

1.Pictures of your family and friends and this sense of belongings to Iran 16 14 12 6.Reviews available on social 10 2.Pictures of place(s) you were media platforms 8 born or raised or visited in Iran 6 4 2 0

3.Pictures and videos of the 5.Pictures and/or videos and/or famous and beautiful places in texts at influencers’ accounts Iran available in social media in social media platforms platforms

4.Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM)

Figure 13 Influence of social media on decision to visit Iran

Most of the participants (15 individuals) emphasized that their decision is only for visiting their relatives: “…Nothing really makes me want to go there except from family of course. Otherwise I do not really think much about it...” and “…which causes me to feel the need to meet my cousins and uncles and aunts and review the good memories.” and “…pictures of friends and family in Facebook were great temptation to travel to Iran…”. One of the participants described: “Although Iran is very beautiful [and has] many sightseeing places, which pictures and videos of the famous and beautiful places in Iran available in social media platforms does tempt me to want to go. But ultimately the number one reason I go to Iran is actually 1) pictures of my family and friends and this sense of belonging to Iran. I was born in Sweden but still going to a country where everyone speaks the language of Farsi which was spoken to me by my parents it is a good feeling. Mainly though I visit Iran for my family. I look forward to seeing my grandparents, cousins, other family members. That is my main priority. I would rather go to Iran and even just visit my family in different homes spend quality time with them, make memories.

Family is the most important thing and to be able to be surrounded by all of them is an amazing feeling. Those are moments I will cherish forever. In Sweden I only have my mom brother, aunt and my mom’s cousin. Everyone else they are just our friends. But Iran I can be surrounded by 60 or so people all family.” The other factors of social media influencing the decision of travel to Iran are pictures and videos of the famous and beautiful places in Iran available in social media platforms (selected by 7 individuals) and pictures and/or videos and/or texts at influencers’ accounts in social media platforms (chosen by 5 individuals). Participants who rated these factors commented about “the pictures they post on different locations and their experience” and “pictures of different restaurant” and “Iranian cuisine”. The data shows that pictures of place(s) where the participants were born or raised or visited while in Iran (chosen by 4 individuals), Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) (selected by 2 individuals), and reviews available on social media platforms (selected by only 1 individual) are the least influential factors for the respondents.

4.2.3 Travel Experience while Visiting Iran Traveler experience was divided by two main questions in the questionnaire including satisfaction of visiting Iran and correspondence traveler experience with social media platforms (see Questions 21 and 22 in Appendix 1: Questionnaire). Although it is noteworthy to investigate satisfaction of visiting Iran among second generation diaspora members.

Satisfaction of visiting Iran Accordingly, there were two questions about satisfaction in the questionnaire that asked how satisfied they were with their trip to Iran, and if they would return to Iran for another visit (see Questions 21 and 23 in Appendix 1: Questionnaire). Consequently, a pre-dominant majority (18 individuals) want to travel to Iran for another visit and a minority of them (4 individuals) do not. Some participants emphasized that they are satisfied when they travel to Iran: “Very much. I got what I expected and more. The Iranian people warmth and hospitality. The excellent food in restaurang [restaurant] and home cooked …The amazing culture sites and historical cities like Hamedan and Esfahan.” and “Iran is my home country and definitely I love to visiting [visit] my country and family”. One participant described his/her satisfaction of experience of visiting Iran: “I am satisfied because my purpose for going to Iran is to visit family that is all. But when it comes to other things Iran is not ideal. There are so many issues … It upsets me to see so many poor people, young children as beggars in the streets. … But when I go it is a completely different experience, my family in Iran they are all well off money wise. So, I experience what maybe 5% of the country does. I go to luxury homes, places, parties. My family there is rich ... I have a lot of fun. But that is not the reality of Iran.”

Some participants had similar opinion about their experience and satisfactions: “Visiting family and friends is always a joy, so it’s a total satisfactory. But at the same time, it’s a headache seeing the people of my country suffer as they do. It has been a clear path. Each year while visiting, the sense of them being under pressure grew and you could feel it more.” “It was exciring [exciting] to sea [see] the land I am related to but in the other hand there were boring … I could not move free.” “From 1-10 I would probably give 5 to the whole. This is because … that everyone in Iran is depressed and has it so hard. But at the same time they have good food and I can meet my whole family, which gave me 5 points.” King & Christou (2009) indicate that one of the reason the second generation immigrants visit their homeland is to see their retired parents who have returned to their former country, and to ensure grandchildren as third generation maintain connection with their grandparents and their heritage. This is more or less also indicated in the answers of the respondents: “I was pretty satisfied. I got to meet with my close friends and my grandfather before he passed.” Huang et al. (2016) mentioned the notion of family bubble which second generation feel trapped inside it when they travel to their homeland. Some respondents commented about this situation as “Not alot. Most of time is spent at home with elder relatives.” and “So so. Family good otherwise not so Good.”. One of participants described: “I would say satisfied, though sometimes it is hard to manage time to do all what I want to do, specially since I have quite many cousins and relatives still living in Iran, I have difficulties to manage my time to meet all of them and also have time for myself to travel. You know, Iranians always wanna invite you to parties when you go there from abroad! That's fun, but of course I also wanna travel, and not always be at the parties and eat.” Visiting homeland by second generation have some results including explore cities and places, VFR, and seek the ancestral culture. These outcomes reinforce the notion that second-generation diaspora can never feel their parent’s homeland as their home (King & Christou, 2009). This visiting to the home country did not always have a positive result; it sometimes was about differences and had a guest rather than a home facet (Hughes & Allen, 2010). This is also indicated in one respondent’s answer: “Not satisfied. Sad to see the country fall apart. Not knowing people and being a tourist in your home country. The level of gool-zadan [the level of deception, or how people may trick you].”

Travelers experience and correspondent on social media To investigate what is the perception of travelers, participants are asked to explain if they think their experience in Iran corresponds to the image (negative or positive) they got from social media before traveling to Iran. One respondent said: “… I normally filter the negative images from Iran in social media. The point is that because of my family, my experience and image from Iran (its culture and its people, not the government and the economy situation) is always positive. For that reason, I normally ignore/filter any negative image, either because they are not true and are just propaganda of the media, as I believe, or just disappointing that I don't want to get involve in those. So, yes, my positive experience is matched with the positive Image that I see in social media.” Similarly, another participant shared its sentiment by stating that: “My experiences in Iran are not correspondent to the negative image I got from social media before traveling to Iran. Things I see on social media news related to Iran is all about protests and people not having enough money to even eat. But that is because my family there are part of the limited population in Iran that are wealthy. So accounts on Instagram that I follow like my mom’s cousins, or my own cousin who lives in Tehran I get a positive image of Iran …” The perception of travelers depends on searching which type of information is spread. Some of participants shared their similar sentiments: “…can b[e] better or worse. Depending on what you see. Can see both Mor[e] positive and negative pictures online then the reality” and “…The social media image of Iran is very limited only focused on all the bad things happening there.” and “I never take the information about Iran from social media.” and “Better than media for sure”. As described by a participant: “…Depends on which type of information that is spreading. When it comes to the channels that advise beautiful locations and trips, then yes the image is correct. But when it comes to the news and things going on with the people and government, then no. It’s clearly twisted and not fair way of showing the reality.” Some respondents mentioned that their experiences of traveling to Iran corresponds to tourism information got from social media: “The pictures I saw on the food were as good as they looked. But otherwise I have had a negative view of Iran thinking about everything that is happening there.” and “…some times when i don.t know about some place i Iran , and i gett [get] My information by social media.” and “Yes of course, it makes me to understand more how my country

39 is so beautiful and how dynamic it is”. As Huang et al. (2016) mentioned, people may be indifferent in related to social media and they feel obligated to visit their home country. Accordingly, few respondents are showing the same trend of indifferency in related to social media and they felt obligated to visit Iran: “I just went to visit friends and family and it was just an ordinary visit.”

4.3 Content Analysis Content analysis is based on counting frequent words. Large amount of data was deducted from the text and key words or phrases were put in categories. In this study, after defining codes for the condensed meaning units based on the objectives of research, and the relevant reviewed literature and the theories, to analyze the contents of the responses here, three themes and six categories were created: Iranian diaspora motivations to visit homeland: this theme is classified into two categories, namely push factors, and pull factors. Push factor is related to socio-psychological motives. According to the responses of the participants push factors include VFR, relationship and finding a partner, nostalgia (making memories), romance, enhancement of kinship, seek roots and heritage, background comparison (between Iran and Sweden), curiosity (explore parent’s hometown), and special family events (Iranian New year and weddings). Another category is pull factor which is cultural motives. According to the participants, pull factors include Iranian culture, untouched and attractive nature (highking in the mountains), great weather, Iranian cuisine (good restaurant and cozy coffee shop), hospitality (Iranian people kindness and warmth), historical and cultural cities, villages, and social media platforms. Feelings: this theme is divided into good feelings, and bad feelings. According to the data reviewing good memories, language of Farsi, good feelings and moments, quality time with families, sense of belonging, making memories, represent good feelings. According to the responses by the participants, seeing poor people, young children as beggars, economy situation and economy sanction, stay at home with elder family and getting bored, trapped inside family bubble, managing time hardly, being a tourist in home country, sense of obligation are representative of bad feeling. Traveler experience by social media: this theme is divided into two categories, namely trustworthiness, and impacts. According to empirical results trustworthiness category includes reliable applications, news, media, propaganda of media, positive and negative image on social media, worse and better, negative images are unfair, unreality, and reliable. Another category is impacts which includes UGC (Iranian influencers, tourists, and bloggers), travel information on social media, pictures and videos of family and friends on social media, and pictures and videos of tourism places in Iran.

5. Discussions In this study, in order to answer the research questions, sub-categories, categories, and themes were explored from the collected data. Three themes emerged from the collected qualitative answers based on the objectives of research: 1- Iranian diaspora motivations to visit homeland, 2- feelings, and 3- traveler experience by social media. These three themes were classified under six categories as push and pull motives, good and bad feelings, trustworthiness and impacts. To answer the research questions, using the discovered categories as influential factors, a flowchart model is created (Figure 14). The output of the model shows the outcomes of traveling to Iran. All concepts in this model are based on the reviewed literature and were tested by the distributed questionnaire within this study. In this model there are two outside factors, which are pull motives and traveler experience by social media. The inside factors of the model are push motives and feelings. The term of VFR and visiting tourism attraction are the outcomes of travel to Iran. Figure 14 shows the flowchart model as a summary of the findings of this study, which helps to understand the outcome of this study.

Pull motivators • Cultural & natural attractions • Climate • Cuisine • Historical cities and villages • Hospitality • Social media platforms

feelings: Push motivators: Travel to Iran: • Sense of belonging • Family events • Visit friends and • Language • Background relatives • Quality time & Good • Roots and heritage • Visiting tourism memories • Comparison and curiosity attraction • Family bubble • Nostalgia • Sense of obligation • Relationship • Guest facet

Traveler experience by social media: • Pictures & videos of places and family • UGC (blogger, influencer & tourists) • Propaganda of media & news • Trustworthiness • Positive & negative content

Figure 14: Effects on second generation of Iranian diaspora living in Stockholm to visit Iran - summary of the findings, Author’s illustration, inspired by Hughes and Allen (2010)

5.1 Iranian diaspora motivations to visit homeland In the literature, as defined by UNWTO, three purposes of visit include “leisure, recreation and holidays”, “VFR, health, religion & other”, and “business and professional”. Based on these three purposes the author recognizes three main types of diaspora tourism travel in the respondents of this study as 1) VFR, family events, 2) seeking roots, background, and a sense of belonging to Iran, and 3) visiting tourism attractions and sightseeing. None of the participants have chosen business as the purpose of visit to Iran, indicating current situation of Iran and economic sanction. The results from the content analysis have shown that the first important theme in the results of the study is the motive factors. Motivations are generally classified into two categories, namely push and pull factors. Push factors: this category is related to psychological needs (Abbasian & Müller, 2019). According to the results of the questionnaire, push factors include VFR, finding a partner and relationship, family events, nostalgia, comparison between Iran and Sweden, curiosity, seek roots, heritage, and background. In the existing literature curiosity is categorized under pull factors (Crompton, 1979); however, the author believes for the results of this study, curiosity should be considered in push category due to psychological nature of it. Because after all the curiosity in this study means the needs to discover parent’s hometown and the desire to seek one’s roots. Similarly, Mensah (2015) emphasizes that root tourists intend to seek family history and heritage. This study shows that majority of second-generation immigrants define VFR as the purpose of their visit to Iran. In this study, second generations of Iranian immigrants have strong tie to Iran in terms of being born there (backed up by the responses of 16 participants) and thus having their parents or other relatives living there. VFR purpose as a push motivator (Abbasian & Müller, 2019) is one of the main purposes for diaspora members. Most of the participants in this study also mentioned that their purpose to visit Iran was just to meet their family and relatives. So, it can be argued that the data of this study suggests the second generation of Iranian diaspora are motivated to visit their ancestral country because they have roots and background there, and also because their parents come from there, and their families and relatives live there. This is a strong motivation and desire to travel to Iran in diaspora tourism. In this regard the motivations vary from VFR, maintaining link to the communities and kinship tie, and nostalgia to rediscovering the heritage and culture (Iorio & Corsale, 2013; Vong et al., 2017). Moreover, King and Christou (2009) have mentioned that second generations members sometime seek or are persuaded by their family to find partners from their homeland. This is something that few participants in this study have also stated. Pull factors: this category is related to cultural motives which is another important motivator (Abbasian & Müller, 2019). The results from content analysis have shown that the respondents did not just concentrate on VFR, but they also focused on Iranian culture, untouched nature, climate, cuisine, hospitality, historical and cultural cities, and sightseeing as they are pull factors. Similarly, Hughes and Allen (2010) share similar sentiments. They state for most descendants, their trip to their homeland are a combination of VFR and other activities such as explore a destination and sightseeing. There is another outside pull factor including social media platforms. Almost half of

42 the respondents gave an importance to the social media platforms as a motivation-pull factor influencing them to visit Iran, in much the same as other pull factors do. This is not surprising as social media has a comprehensive knowledge on tourism destinations, and so in effectively equipping tourists for their trips (Leung et al., 2013).

5.2 Feelings Good feelings. Sim and Leith (2013) state individuals may get knowledge of past events through films, stories, pictures, texts, and objects and diaspora members are motivated by nostalgia and exploring their heritage. Second generation immigrants use such nostalgia and memories as a form of identity maintenance. As it is shown in the results, participants emphasize on sense of belonging, language, reviewing good memories, and quality time with family gives them a good feeling. Similarly, Mensah (2015) emphasizes that root tourists intend to join special events and ceremony, and gatherings. According to the empirical results, Farsi language has a good feeling for Iranian second generation in contrast with Huang et al. (2016) who found second generation Chinese’s Americans immigrants felt negative experiences due to language barriers. Bad feelings. Family bubble and sense of obligation. the results of this study confirm the notion of family bubble, in which second generation of immigrants feel trapped inside it when they travel to their homeland (Huang et al., 2016). The second generation of immigrants have more feelings of being tourist, and so they want to explore the cities and places. Therefore, they are less engaged in tourism activities on VFR visit, in compare with the first generation of immigrants whom their purpose of visit is more VFR than leisure activities and tourism. This is a difference between first and second generations diaspora tourism (ibid). Furthermore, as the data shows, all respondents visited Tehran as the first destination and majority of them visited just one or two more cities, which probably the reason is the direct flight from Stockholm to Tehran. Those who have visited other cities, have mostly visited their hometowns. This data shows traveling to Iran was limited to visit one or at most two cities. Moreover, the data of this study also confirms what Huang et al. (2016) and Hughes & Allen (2010) stated, that trip to home country (in this case Iran) as a duty and familial obligation, and staying at home with elderly family sometimes have compromised the experience of younger respondents, so their visits were less voluntarily. Finally, the results indicate that the second-generation diaspora have less chance to have sightseeing and tourism activities during their trip to Iran, which may have affected their experience of the visit in a negative way. Guest facet. Traveling to the ancestral country by second generation immigrants are done due to various reasons such as exploring destination, VFR, tourism, and discovering the ancestral culture. This may mean that they can never feel their parent’s home country as their own (King & Christou, 2009). Similarly, Hughes and Allen (2010) also emphasize this visiting to the home country sometimes was different and had a guest rather than a home facet. Nevertheless, Huang et al., (2011) stated that although second generation immigrants may be foreigners or feelings as foreigners in their homeland, even though they share the same cultural background. As a result, with these two perceptions of visiting homeland (guest or home), making a return visit helps second

43 generation immigrants to achieve more sense of belonging and explore the destination (Iorio & Corsale, 2013; Huang et al., 2016). Satisfaction for diaspora members are different and their perceptions are varied. There are a lot of changes in their homeland since diaspora members left that can affect that perception, including physical appearance of cities, standards of living, political structures and living conditions in the homeland (Iorio & Corsale, 2013). This is also seen in respondents’ answers as some participants complained about economy situation, young children as beggars, and seeing poor people, government, and economic sanction. nevertheless, there can still be a strong desire to travel to Iran to visit them. (Iorio & Corsale, 2013).

5.3 Traveler experience by social media Travel experience of diaspora members with social media could be classified under two categories, namely trustworthiness and impacts. Trustworthiness. In this category, participants expressed their opinion about trustworthiness or propaganda of news and mass media. According to the results, half of the participants claimed they spend between one and three hours per day using social media. A few social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube give them more reliable information about Iran than other social media platforms. The perception of travelers on social media depends on searching which type of information that is spread. Participants explained that their experiences are correspondent to the positive images existed on social media, while the negative images come from the news and media do not show reality and they are just propaganda of the media. Fotis et al., (2011) declare among all the information sources such as friends and relatives, travel agents, information from other travelers in various websites, and official tourism websites, the information come from friends and relatives are the most trustworthy information, followed by information provided by other travelers in various websites; while mass media are the least trustworthy source of information as also mentioned by the participants in this study. According to the data in this study, participants do not trust media and news which they show negative image of Iran. However, the part of social media that shows positive image of Iran related to attraction tourism are considered as more trustworthy source for them. Therefore, it can be argued that the tourism information about Iran on social media is perceived as reliable information. Impact. In related to impacts of social media on second generation of diaspora members to visit Iran, both positive and negative impacts were identified through the answers of respondents. Social media plays an important role in tourism industry, which its rapid growth affects tourism sector. Social media changes and reshapes this industry (Hvass & Munar, 2012). Social media has an essential role on travel information search. Tourists search the content on social media and collect travel information from friends and relatives who are within their social media network (Leung et al., 2013). Additionally, videos and pictures on social media about family and friends and many tourism destinations have given the majority of the respondents a desire to visit Iran. UGC generated by social media includes variety of new information in detailed, and experiential

44 information (Litvin et al., 2008). Social media platforms made tourists able to share their experiences. Shared and archived information on social media sites are an important information source for travelers (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). According to the responds of the participants, UGCs created by Iranian influencers, tourists, and bloggers, who travel to Iran, have encouraged them to travel to Iran. The UGCs were posted pictures and videos and shared personal stories on social media platforms. This confirms what Fotis et al., (2012) indicated that travel related pictures and videos in social media platforms generate interest to viewers.

6. Conclusions This study has investigated the effect of social media platform on second generation of Iranian diaspora living in Stockholm while traveling to Iran. The main objectives of the research study were to find out what role social media plays in diaspora tourism, and to determine if there are any relations between social media and visiting homeland among second generation of immigrants. Further, the research has examined if social media has a motivation role for diaspora members to trip to their homeland. To answer the research questions, the author investigated second generation Iranian Swedish who are living in Stockholm as a case study. In thus study, a model is created for ‘‘the effects on second generation of Iranian diaspora living in Stockholm to visit Iran’’. According to the model and the empirical results of the study through content analysis, outside and inside factors and the outcomes of visiting Iran by second generation Iranian Immigrants were determined. The outcomes of this study with regard to visiting Iran by the Iranian immigrants are explained below as the answers for the previously defined research questions. However, if the results need to be presented in nutshell, they can be expressed in two folds. It has been found through this study that the priorities of first- and second- generation Iranian immigrants while traveling back to the homeland are different. This means VFR is the top priority for the first generation while the purposes of the second-generation immigrants are both VFR and explore destinations. What role does social media play in diaspora tourism? The results of this study show that social media helps diaspora members to easily make virtual contacts with families and friends, who already have account on social media platforms, and keep tie to their homeland. For diaspora members, the shared travel experiences are useful source of information existed on social media in details and with direct access. Another finding is that the users, who generate contents such as blogs or touristic posted videos and pictures on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, introduce new destinations in their homeland that persuades the second generation immigrants to travel back to their homeland (Iran) and visit more places. Furthermore, this information generated by people and tourists, when perceived as reliable, it can influence the travelers’ decision-making process (Zeng & Gerritsen, 2014). Therefore, it can be argued that the second generation diaspora who wants to explore their parents’ homeland are a very niche market in tourism sector, in which the social media can be used as a mean to highlight various tourism destinations and enter into the international tourism market. Are there any relations between social media and visiting the origin country among second generation of immigrants? It is more difficult to give a clear answer to this question, or at least it is hard to give a simple yes or no answer. Knowledge about the role of social media in diaspora tourism, for example introducing new destinations to the international market and being a travel information source, can make the social media as a main tool in social online marketing. Therefore, as an answer to this research question, it can be argued that the introduction of new destinations and places in the

46 parent’s homeland by travelers on social media, encourages the second-generation diaspora to travel back to Iran again and visit more places. Does social media have a motivational role for diaspora tourism on second generation of immigrants’ trip to their origin country? A simple answer to this question, according to the findings, is yes; second generation Iranian immigrants in this case study have been persuaded by the UGCs in social media platforms to travel to Iran in much the same as by other pull factors. Diaspora members travel to Iran to visit friends and relatives. VFR as a push motivator is quite massive influential factor among diaspora members. Second generation immigrants, who have the feelings to be more touristic, want to explore their parents’ homeland, besides VFR purposes. Second generation immigrants fulfill their tourism activities by searching travel information about places and sightseeing in Iran through social media platforms which generated by tourists, their friends, and families. Such findings affect their decisions in planning their travel to Iran. Basically, social media platforms might be of secondary importance in pull factors as outside factor alongside other pull factors such as hospitality, cuisine, sightseeing, and climate.

6.1 Further Research This study investigated the effects of social media on second generation of Iranian immigrants living in Stockholm. The model created in this study and based on the findings of this study may not be the most appropriate one to be generalized over the other immigrant subsequent generations and communities, or over other regions and destinations, due to the delimitations and definitions of second generation in this research study. Iran, as the diaspora tourism destination for Iranian immigrants in Stockholm investigated in this research study, has a quite different situation in comparison to other countries and from the geographically, economically, and culturally point of views as well as its situation in the world and its diverse ethnicity. Although the findings of this paper provide a framework and model that can be used for specific area and community close to the area of the case study, it is recommended that further researches should investigate the same topic as the effects of social media on diaspora tourism over other destinations and other diaspora groups.

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Appendix 1: Questionnaire

Terminology:

Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM): Person-to-person communication that occurs over the Internet or another electronic form of communication.

Social media platforms: a social media platform enables communities, sharing of content, adding friends, setting privacy controls and other native social media network features.

N/A: Not Applicable

Demographic questions: These questions are for statistical purposes. 1. Gender: □ Male □ Female □other 2. age: ------3. Education: □ (2 years) college □ Bachelor’s degree □ Master’s degree □ Doctoral degree □ N/A 4. Occupation: □ Employed □ Unemployed □ Self-employed □ Student 5. Place of birth (country): ------6. If you were born in Iran, when did you move to Sweden? (Year)------7. How many years have you been living in Sweden? ------8. Family status: □ single □ with partner □ Married □ other 9. Are both of your parents of Iranian origin? If not, please clarify where are they from. Social media and your activity on there: 10. Which of the below Social Media Platform(s) do you use? □ Facebook □ Instagram □ YouTube □ TripAdvisor □ Yelp □ Foursquare □ Google maps □ Airbnb □ Skyscanner □ Twitter □ other ------11. How much time in average do you spend on social media per week? 12. Which of the social media platform(s) gives you more reliable information about Iran?

□ Facebook □ Instagram □ YouTube □ TripAdvisor □ Yelp □ Foursquare □ Google maps □ Airbnb □ Skyscanner □ Twitter □ other ------Trip to Iran: 13. When was your last visit to Iran? (year) 14. How many times have you visited Iran since moving to/born in Sweden? 15. In average, how long have you stayed in Iran each time you travelled there? 16. Which cities and towns have you ever visited in Iran when you travel there? Please specify. 17. What are the reasons for you to visit Iran? Please select at least your three main reasons. □Leisure and holidays □Business □visiting friends and relatives □a sense of belongings to Iran □visiting tourism attractions (historical and cultural places) □No particular reason □other------Motivations and social media impact: 18. What/who have motivated you to visit Iran? Please explain how. 19. Have you ever, somehow, been motivated by any social media platform to visit Iran? Which one? Please explain how. 20. In which of the ways below do you think social media influences your decision to visit Iran? Please explain. 1.Pictures of your family and friends and this sense of belongings to Iran 2.Pictures of place(s) you were born or raised or visited in Iran 3.Pictures and videos of the famous and beautiful places in Iran available in social media platforms 4.Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) 5.Pictures and/or videos and/or texts at influencers’ accounts in social media platforms 6.Reviews available on social media platforms Travel experience while visiting Iran 21. In general, how satisfied are you with your travel/travels to Iran? Please explain. 22. Do you think that your experiences in Iran are correspondent to the image (negative or positive) you got from social media before traveling? please explain. 23. Would you return to Iran for another visit? 24. Would you recommend a trip to Iran to your any other Iranian friends?