A virtual ethnography of the Black Flag Café: A forum for people who travel to dangerous places
Victoria Lindsay-Towner
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Bournemouth University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
July 2011
This copy of the thesis has been supplied on the condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and due acknowledgement must always be made to the use of any material contained in, or derived from, this thesis.
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Abstract
This research explores the followers of the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places. These tourists deliberately travel to dangerous destinations where there is a high level of violence due to civil unrest, conflict or war. The research has focused on the Black Flag Café, an online tourism-based community created by the writer Robert Young Pelton, author of the books Come Back Alive and The World’s Most Dangerous Places. This is a case study that has made use of virtual ethnography and descriptive content analysis to explore the forum and its members. The research has identified four factors which influence the forum members’ decision to travel to a dangerous place: a search for self- actualisation through “it” or peak experiences; a desire to improve self-image and to obtain status from travelling to dangerous places; a search for an “authentic” travel experience; and finally their awareness and perception of danger and acceptance of the residual risks involved in travel to dangerous places. The study shows that the forum members enjoy pushing the boundaries of risk, undertaking a form of edgework. The research also explores the forum members’ sense that travelling to dangerous places can result in other benefits including familiarity with death, gaining arousal from risk taking (flow) and the possibility of repeat travel to increasingly dangerous places. The conceptual framework developed from the research displays the danger tourist’s approach to travelling to dangerous places. This framework identifies five benefits which participants obtain from travelling to dangerous places: flow, self-actualisation, improvement to self-esteem, the achievement and/or maintenance of status and familiarity with death. While this framework has been developed for the tourists who travel to dangerous places, undertaking danger tourism, it could equally be applied to other high-risk activities.
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List of contents
1 Introduction...... 18
1.1 Research aim...... 18
1.2 Identifying a research topic: New Year in Kabul...... 18
1.3 Scoping the literature...... 19
1.3.1 War tourism...... 19
1.3.2 Dark tourism / thanatourism...... 21
1.3.3 During the war tourism...... 25
1.3.4 Beyond “during the war”...... 27
1.3.5 Danger tourism...... 29
1.3.6 Examples of tourism to dangerous places...... 31
1.3.7 Backpacker travel...... 33
1.3.8 Risk and danger...... 36
1.3.9 Contributing literature...... 40
1.4 Identifying the gap in the literature ...... 44
1.5 Relevance...... 45
1.6 Thesis contents...... 46
1.7 Conclusion ...... 47 2 The case study context ...... 48
2.1 Introduction ...... 48
2.2 Robert Young Pelton ...... 48
2.3 The World’s Most Dangerous Places ...... 49
2.4 A virtual community ...... 54
2.5 The websites: comebackalive.com and the Black Flag Café ...... 56
2.6 Moderation...... 64
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2.7 Uses of images ...... 65
2.8 Editing posts ...... 65
2.9 Forum members ...... 66
2.10 The role of RYP within the forum...... 69
2.11 Behaviour...... 74
2.12 Online identity ...... 77
2.13 Avatars...... 77
2.14 Usernames...... 78
2.15 Signatures...... 78
2.16 Conclusion ...... 80 3 Identifying a research method...... 81
3.1 Introduction ...... 81
3.2 Finding a method ...... 81
3.3 Undertaking Internet research ...... 83
3.4 Ethnography ...... 84
3.5 Virtual ethnography...... 85
3.6 Gaining access ...... 86
3.7 Participating online ...... 88
3.8 Being online ...... 89
3.9 Difficulties...... 91
3.10 Obtaining permission...... 92
3.11 Using informants...... 93
3.12 Ethical negotiations...... 94
3.12.1 Regulations / legislation ...... 95
3.12.2 Informed consent / perceived privacy ...... 95
3.12.3 Use of pseudonyms ...... 97
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3.12.4 Distressing information ...... 98
3.12.5 Exit strategy ...... 99
3.12.6 Ethical agreement ...... 100
3.13 Conclusion ...... 101 4 Research framework ...... 102
4.1 Introduction ...... 102
4.2 Framework...... 102
4.3 Content analysis ...... 104
4.4 Types of data ...... 105
4.5 Data collection ...... 107
4.6 Identifying dangerous places...... 108
4.7 Sampling...... 109
4.8 Hot threads and posters ...... 111
4.9 Identifying units for content analysis...... 114
4.10 Coding scheme...... 116
4.11 Identifying hot travel posters and threads...... 121
4.12 Coding of avatars / usernames...... 121
4.13 Qualitative textual analysis ...... 121
4.14 Key Word in Context Analysis ...... 128
4.15 Data displays ...... 132
4.16 Conclusion ...... 136 5 Life within the Black Flag Café ...... 137
5.1 Introduction ...... 137
5.2 Analysis of forum content ...... 137
5.3 Analysis of hot threads ...... 140
5.3.1 Sexual threads ...... 145
5.3.2 Political / war-related threads...... 146
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5.3.3 Travel related ...... 147
5.3.4 BFC posts ...... 149
5.4 Analysis of hot posters within the BFC ...... 150
5.5 Analysis of hot travel posters...... 158
5.6 Analysis of avatars...... 160
5.7 Analysis of usernames...... 163
5.8 Analysis of signatures...... 164
5.9 Conclusion ...... 164 6 Typology of posters ...... 166
6.1 Introduction ...... 166
6.2 Forum membership...... 166
6.3 Newbie posters ...... 171
6.3.1 Asking for specific travel advice about one particular destination or trip...... 171
6.3.2 About the possibilities of gaining work overseas ...... 172
6.3.3 Studying overseas...... 173
6.4 People who are interested in pleasure / leisure travel to DP’s...... 174
6.5 Posters who travel to dangerous places...... 175
6.5.1 People who travel to dangerous places for pleasure / leisure ...... 175
6.5.2 Posters who work in dangerous places ...... 179
6.6 Poster profiles...... 184
6.6.1 marie-angelique ...... 184
6.6.2 JamesInTheWorld...... 190
6.6.3 Kurt...... 197
6.6.4 south_sea_bubble...... 204
6.6.5 El Pelon...... 214
6.7 Conclusion ...... 222
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7 Forum-level descriptive content analysis ...... 223
7.1 Introduction ...... 223
7.2 Having an “it” experience...... 223
7.3 Improve status and self-image ...... 225
7.4 Search for an authentic travel experience...... 228
7.4.1 Avoiding mainstream tourists and tourism...... 229
7.4.2 Interacting with the tourism infrastructure...... 232
7.4.3 Destination novelty value and escape from normality ...... 235
7.5 Approach to risk, danger and death ...... 237
7.5.1 Perception of the risks involved ...... 237
7.5.2 Misadventure, death and sensation seeking ...... 247
7.6 Conclusion ...... 250 8 Discussion and conceptual framework...... 251
8.1 Introduction ...... 251
8.2 Having an “it” experience...... 251
8.3 Improve status and self-image ...... 254
8.4 Search for an authentic travel experience...... 263
8.5 Approach to risk: risk assessment / acceptance of residual risks ...... 266
8.6 Thrill / sensation seeking ...... 268
8.7 Misadventure ...... 270
8.8 Death ...... 271
8.9 Danger tourism and its relationship with dark tourism...... 274
8.10 Danger tourism and its relationship to independent and backpacker travel.. 276
8.11 Findings in relation to online communities...... 277
8.12 Creation of conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour...... 279
8.13 Conclusion ...... 283 9 Quality and evaluation of methodology ...... 285
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9.1 Introduction ...... 285
9.2 Demonstrating quality ...... 285
9.2.1 Ethnography...... 286
9.2.2 Case study ...... 293
9.2.3 Online environment...... 293
9.2.4 Content analysis...... 295
9.3 Evaluation of the practical considerations of the research...... 297
9.3.1 Choice of research method...... 297
9.3.2 Working with the forum ...... 299
9.3.3 Data collection...... 301
9.3.4 Data analysis...... 302
9.4 Implications of the methodology on the research...... 305
9.4.1 Use of the forum...... 305
9.4.2 Research framework...... 307
9.4.3 Virtual ethnography...... 308
9.5 Conclusion ...... 310 10 Conclusion...... 311
10.1 Introduction ...... 311
10.2 Reviewing the study aims...... 311
10.2.1 Aims and objectives ...... 311
10.3 Contribution to knowledge ...... 317
10.3.1 Knowledge of danger tourists ...... 317
10.3.2 Virtual methodology, virtual communities and online behaviour...... 320
10.4 Areas for future research...... 325
10.4.1 Danger-tourism community...... 326
10.4.2 Motivation and benefits of travel ...... 327
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10.4.3 Perception of risk ...... 328
10.4.4 Virtual community...... 329
10.4.5 Methods and future research ...... 329
10.5 Conclusion ...... 330
10.6 Final reflection ...... 331 11 Bibliography...... 332
12 Appendix...... 358
12.1 Protocol for participant observation ...... 358
12.2 Content analysis: Cohen / Scott ...... 359
12.3 Wordle data analysis ...... 361
12.4 Respondent validation: comments on the findings from regular forum members...... 363
12.5 Investigating the phenomenon of danger tourism ...... 370
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List of tables
Table 1.1 Themes from backpacking tourist typologies...... 36 Table 1.2 Categories of threats which tourists might encounter (adapted from Roper (1999, p.44- 45)...... 38 Table 2.1 The forums and sub-forums on the BFC ...... 62 Table 2.2 Typology of information exchange in virtual communities (Burnett and Buerkle 2004) ...... 75 Table 2.3 BFC posters’ online behaviour mapped on to Burnett and Buerkle (2004) ...... 76 Table 4.1 Different levels of analysis within the forum...... 105 Table 4.2 Multiple data sets ...... 106 Table 4.3 List of dangerous destinations ...... 109 Table 4.4 Codes used to identify first sample group...... 110 Table 4.5 Coding scheme used for descriptive content analysis...... 120 Table 4.6 Categories from descriptive content analysis which were taken forward for qualitative analysis ...... 122 Table 4.7 Pattern codes used in initial coding of qualitative data...... 122 Table 4.8 List of 56 sub-categories developed during coding ...... 123 Table 4.9 Example of a thread coded and analysed (Getting the most out of a travel experience, Woodsman) ...... 127 Table 4.10 Categories of threads selected for KWIC analysis ...... 129 Table 4.11 Examples of the irrelevant phrases of KWIC data removed from KWIC data ...... 130 Table 4.12 Matrix presenting qualitative data for the code Anti-Lonely Planet...... 133 Table 4.13 Matrix presenting qualitative data for the code Road Status ...... 134 Table 5.1 Breakdown of BFC forum content...... 138 Table 5.2 Hot threads within the BFC based on number of views and replies to thread ordered by the number of views...... 143 Table 5.3 Hot travel-related thread within the BFC based on number of replies and views of thread ...... 144 Table 5.4 Profiles of hot posters ...... 157 Table 5.5 Hot posters who post about travelling to dangerous places ...... 158 Table 5.6 Most influential forum members for all types of threads (super-hot posters) . 159 Table 5.7 Typology of avatars...... 163 Table 5.8 Typology of usernames (regular form members)...... 164
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List of figures
Figure 2.1 The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton 2003): Tourists...... 51 Figure 2.2 The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton 2003): Pakistan...... 53 Figure 2.3 Mr DP...... 56 Figure 2.4 www.comebackalive.com during 2008 ...... 57 Figure 2.5 The Black Flag Café forum during 2007...... 59 Figure 2.6 The Black Flag Café during 2009 ...... 60 Figure 2.7 The Black Flag Café showing the forums and sub-forums listed in Table 2.1.63 Figure 2.8 Conceptual map of the hierarchy of the Black Flag Café ...... 68 Figure 2.9 Examples of online profiles from BFC ...... 79 Figure 3.1 Avatar used on all research-related Internet pages...... 88 Figure 4.1 Refining analysis...... 102 Figure 4.2 Research framework...... 103 Figure 4.3 Screen shot of the Black Flag Cafe showing threads within the forum and their inclusion within the sample ...... 111 Figure 4.4 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café (Main forum) showing part of a page within the forum ...... 113 Figure 4.5 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café (Travel forum) showing hot threads...... 113 Figure 4.6 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café showing threads...... 115 Figure 4.7 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café showing individual posts within a thread ...... 115 Figure 4.8 Black Flag Café: example of units used for coding ...... 116 Figure 4.9 Record sheet used for level 3b coding ...... 118 Figure 4.10 List of stem words used for Key Word in Context analysis ...... 128 Figure 4.11 Example of cleaned KWIC data for the stem DANGER ...... 131 Figure 4.12 Getting the most out of a travel experience...... 135 Figure 4.13 Canadian women still missing in Syria ...... 135 Figure 5.1 Topics within the sample group ...... 139 Figure 5.2 Forum content of the Black Flag Café ...... 140 Figure 5.3 Number of hot posts made by influential posters ...... 151 Figure 5.4 Type of avatar used by BFC posters ...... 161 Figure 5.5 Type of avatar used by regular posters on the BFC...... 161 Figure 6.1 Gender breakdown of regular posters on the Black Flag Café ...... 167 Figure 6.2 Typology of the different types of BFC forum members...... 169 Figure 6.3 DP travel career framework ...... 170 Figure 6.4 Avatar: SSB v1 Figure 6.5 Avatar: SSB v2 ...... 204 Figure 8.1 Conceptual framework of danger tourists’ approach to travelling to dangerous places...... 280
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Figure 9.1 Avatars: Kurt and Bizzaro Kurt ...... 300 Figure 9.2 Avatars: Penta and Jefe ...... 300
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Dedication and acknowledgements
This thesis is dedicated to Stefan (killed in Iraq, 2005), Brian (killed in Iraq, 2004) and Steve, who took me to dangerous places and made sure I came back alive and without whom I would never have started writing.
There are several people who have contributed directly or indirectly to the completion of this thesis. First, I thank my parents for their continued support and my brother Dr Martin Towner for taking time to offer both academic and technical advice throughout the writing process. Secondly, I think of several of my work colleagues who, over the years, have supported my progress and generously shared their own knowledge, advice and skills. Thirdly, the Black Flag Café: Robert Young Pelton, who provided valuable advice, was generous with his knowledge and who patiently and continually supported my investigation into his life, forum and other activities; Erik, whose time, technical knowledge and advice on matters relating to the forum were invaluable; and the forum members themselves who welcomed me into their online and offline lives. In studying one online community, I inadvertently became a member of another group of dedicated people. Over the years I have valued the company and support of the members of the online community PhinisheD, which is moderated and supported by Dr Thomas B. Jankowski. I would also like to acknowledge the sage advice and professionalism of my supervisors Dr Keith Wilkes and Professor Roger Vaughan.
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Glossary of Internet Terms
Term Meaning Avatar The graphical image that is used to represent a real person in cyberspace Blog A website that contains an online personal journal Chat An electronic form in which users can communicate with each other in real time Cyber-cycle When a forum relates to a specific topic with a natural end date (e.g. completing a course), the cyber-cycle is the time of the activity from start to finish Flaming Arguing over the Internet in a hostile and insulting manner Flame war A verbal war between posters, sometimes prolonged Forum An online discussion site similar to a bulletin board FAQs Frequently Asked Questions HTML code Hypertext Markup Language: a coding language that programmes the appearance and function of a website Lurk To log onto and read posts on an Internet forum without participating Lurker Member of the online community who reads posts but makes no posts of their own Moderator A person who monitors an online environment such as an Internet forum Mod Moderator MUDS Multi-user real time virtual worlds Netiquette Acceptable behaviour within an online environment Newbies People who are new to an online community Nicknames Relay chat nicknames are the names used by people in synchronous chats PM’s Private Message function within a forum, similar to e-mail Post (a) Individual comment within a thread Post (to) The action of making a comment on a forum Poster A person who posts on an Internet forum RL Real life Regulars/Regs An accepted member of the online community, who posts there regularly Signature The personalised statement that appears underneath each post
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that a member makes within the forum Spammers People who post unwanted message content Thread An individual topic within the forum Troll (a) A person who deliberately posts inflammatory posts with a view to gaining a response from the other forum members Trolling Deliberately making posts on a forum with the aim of causing a specific (mainly bad) reaction Username Name used to identify each online participant Virtual community A group of people with a shared interest who interact with each other online VLE Virtual Learning Environment
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Glossary of Black Flag Café terms
BFC Term Meaning BFC Black Flag Café Face-to-face meeting between Black Flag Café forum BFC meet members Title automatically given to all forum members who have made BFCus Regularus over 100 posts on the forum CBA Come Back Alive DP Dangerous Place Merchandise sold by Robert Young Pelton featuring the logo DP Gear Mr DP A dangerous place which is not considered by forum members DP lite to be very dangerous The list of the dangerous places people have visited /a travel DP résumé CV of dangerous places Dangerous Places 5: the fifth edition of the book The World’s DP5 Most Dangerous Places Dangerous Places-er. A person who travels to dangerous DPer places Flaggers People who post on the Black Flag Café Mr DP The logo used by Robert Young Pelton PBs Polo’s Bastards RYP Robert Young Pelton The Flag The Black Flag Café The World’s Most Dangerous Places, book by Robert Young WMDP Pelton
Digital writing can provide challenges in interpreting online communication when variations on standard punctuation, some forms of eccentric spelling, abbreviations for common phrases, asterisks and the use of all upper case or all lower case letters are all used to convey feelings. For this reason, the quotations and usernames from the forum are presented exactly as they appear on the forum, without adding capital letters or correcting spelling, etc.
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1 Introduction
1.1 Research aim
This research is an online ethnographic study of a virtual community (the Black Flag Café) which has been set up by the author Robert Young Pelton to enable discussion of travelling to dangerous places: a travel experience which has not been widely studied before. By carrying out a study of this virtual community an insight into the phenomenon of tourists who deliberately choose to travel to dangerous places can be gained. The ethnography will take a descriptive and explanatory approach, seeking to describe the phenomenon of danger tourism as experienced by the members of the online community. The main research aim of the ethnography is: To use the Black Flag Café online forum to identify and evaluate the factors that influence tourists to visit dangerous places and to ascertain the perceived benefits for those tourists of travelling to dangerous places. 1.2 Identifying a research topic: New Year in Kabul
On 26th December 2003 I landed at Kabul Airport. Unexpectedly no one was at the airport to meet me so, while I waited, sitting next to a group of Afghan women, I looked around. The airport was on high alert as the first Afghan elections, known as the Loya Jirga, were underway. The runway was full of craters and surrounded by anti-aircraft missiles and tanks. There were armed policemen, guards and NATO forces inside the airport. I was eventually collected by an armed guard. Twenty minutes after we left the airport a bomb exploded near the airport, killing five people. My flight had landed early. Three days later over breakfast two friends who were working on the security at the Loya Jirga asked if I wanted to go sightseeing around Kabul. I did. After checking the nearest taxi for car bombs we got in: two guys who were ex-Special Forces, an American tourist who said he worked for a bank in the UK, wanted to see Afghanistan and had booked an independent flight to spend Christmas and New Year there, and I. Our first stop on the Kabul sightseeing tour was the tank park containing old Russian tanks in a field high above Kabul. While I looked at the tanks, Stefan, one of my mentors for the day, also kept an eye on the group of children playing nearby, on the ground we were walking on, checking for landmines, and on the taxi driver – and he had time to admire and comment on the view as well. From the tank park on the east of the city we went on to visit the other sites of post-war Kabul: the public square and park where the Taliban carried out executions, the Kabul Sports Stadium where the Taliban had publicly executed people, now used for training for the next Olympics, and the zoo, which contained
18 few animals but instead acted as a pick-up joint for gay men. We ended our tour on TV Hill, where Stefan and Nick told tales of the Hill’s past use by various different forces to launch bombs down onto Kabul. Although we were on the “Kabul sightseeing tour”, it was really just the four of us in a local taxi driving around the sights. We drove with the windows shut to prevent hand grenades being dropped into the car and every time we got back into the taxi either Stefan or Nick checked underneath for bombs. We passed armed convoys of Afghan and NATO forces and saw armed foot patrols walking the streets and a number of guarded international humanitarian aid stations. During the day it became apparent that the American tourist who accompanied us had only a very limited grasp of any of the historical and cultural background to the city. He was taking only a limited interest in the sites we visited and had little awareness of the dangers the city posed. He seemed oblivious to much of the city. We wondered why he was there. Come to that, why was I there? Officially I was visiting a friend but why, as the Afghan at immigration had asked, was I willing to spend Christmas and New Year in one of the most dangerous places in the world? A few months later I was introduced to the topic of dark tourism and its links with war tourism. I found the subject interesting. I felt it avoided the active war part of this type of tourism and focused instead on the historical and popular aspects of visiting war and disaster zones some time after the event. My interest in the topic of tourists who visit dangerous places grew and has since resulted in this piece of work. 1.3 Scoping the literature
1.3.1 War tourism
War does not normally act as an incentive to tourism. It is widely agreed that “war, criminal activities, terrorist attacks and violent attacks aimed specifically against tourists” (Pizam and Mansfeld 1996, p.1) are devastating to tourist destinations and that the tourism industry and receiving tourist destinations require peace for tourism development. War, conflict, civil unrest and terrorist activities have been found to have a negative impact on destination development and tourist arrival figures, with limited or no tourist activity during these times (Hall et al. 2003). The threat of terrorism and political instability discourages tourism (Sonmez 1998) and official travel advice also discourages travel to destinations which are considered unsafe for travel (Sharpley and J 1995; Sharpley et al. 1997), even though these destinations are often viewed as unstable long after the immediate danger to tourists has passed (Mansfeld 1996). Destinations that develop or regenerate following a conflict, or after a period of unrest or terrorist attacks, often attract a range of different visitor types (Smith 1996). These include war tourists and veterans as well as curious visitors and the relatives of those
19 killed during the conflict period (Weaver 2000). The war and its associated memorabilia frequently become tourist attractions and one of the destination’s pull factors (Baldwin and Sharpley 2009). Several post-conflict destinations have specifically developed war-tourism attractions. Tourists visiting Vietnam can take tours of the Cu Chi Tunnels and visit famous war-related locations and their visitor centres (Jansen-Verbeke and Go 1995; Henderson 2000). Cambodia offers tourists the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Museum (Walker 2003) and Rwanda uses its violent past to attract tourists interested in the unstable region (Grosspeitch 2006). Smith (1996) identified “war memorabilia and its allied products” (p.242) as probably the largest single category of tourist attractions in the world. She identified five different types of war-related tourist attractions: heroic phase, remember the fallen, when we were young, lest we forget and reliving the past, and the reasons for their appeal. These attraction typologies focus on tourism development during peacetime and revolve around celebratory or pilgrimage acts of remembrance by the victors. War attractions have been further defined as post-war battlefields, memorials and monuments (Smith 1998), commemorative memorials and political sites (Gough 2000), borders, trans-border demilitarised buffer zones (Timothy et al. 2004) and peace parks (Cooper 2006). Although these authors failed to consider wartime tourism as a distinct category, Weaver (2000) describes the remaining tourist traffic present during wartime as comprising a “small number of extremist adventure tourists” (p.154) who will continue to visit until the end of hostilities, deliberately choosing to visit the destination at the time of conflict. During the time of war, and the post-war stage which immediately follows its end, Weaver notes that a “growing number of adventure tourists and allocentrics” (p.155) infiltrate the war zone and that they are often assisted by local people keen to facilitate visitor access and gain financially from any visitors. Weaver’s exploratory war-distorted destination life-cycle places tourists in a war zone but Weaver did not explore their activities while in the destination in any depth, stating only that these tourists did not visit battlefields during the immediate post- conflict period; they were too dangerous and disorganised to be considered tourism products. The key problem with these definitions of war-tourism attractions is that they do not consider active war zones or live battlefields to be a war-tourism attraction. As a consequence, the term “war tourism” has become intrinsically linked with tourism activities which happen in peacetime, some period after the war has ended. In relating the different types of war tourists to her war-attraction categories, Smith (1996) identified a number of corresponding war-tourist typologies. These include military strategists, school parties on educational trips, veterans on acts of pilgrimage or remembrance, and history buffs or historians with an interest in the era or particular war
20 which the site or attraction represents. Smith (1998) identified three additional categories of war tourist: emotional war tourists, defined as veterans returning to battlefields for nostalgia, reunions or celebrations; war brides travelling to their own countries to maintain family ties; and political war tourists, described as “geopolitical travellers or individuals who have lived and worked overseas because of war” (p.219). Lloyd (1998) concentrated on battlefield and war-cemetery tourism and the related acts of pilgrimage and associated visitors. He identified people visiting the graves of dead relatives and war veterans visiting war cemeteries and battlefields as an act of pilgrimage. He also classified recreational leisure visitors as battlefield tourists, although they were considered to be more touristic in nature and to have different motivations including remembrance, fashion and morbid curiosity. Neither typology classified the real-time tourists to battlefields identified by Weaver (2000) as war tourists, however apt the definition might seem for this type of tourism activity. 1.3.2 Dark tourism / thanatourism
Visiting battlefields and other catastrophe attractions for recreation was described by Berman (1983), who identified catastrophes as attractions and Rojek (1990), who named commercialised celebrity graves and mass death sites black spots. Although Rojek’s description of black spots was opened by tales of sightseers visiting crash sites (Lockerbie and Zeebrugge) in almost real time, the main focus of his black-spot work was on developed tourist attractions which acted as entertainment-led sites. His study might have been more interesting if he had pursued his initial thoughts about visiting real-time disaster and death sites instead of focusing on the mass market and commercialised aspects of this type of tourism. Addressing the development of the graves of celebrities and sites of large numbers of violent deaths, Foley and Lennon (1996) used the term dark tourism to identify “the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” (p.198). In the dark tourism they described, the focus was on the media’s role in promoting and in some cases creating these catastrophe and disaster attractions. Their subsequent studies focused on the need to maintain a balance between achieving suitable chronological distance from the event to avoid accusations of being distasteful and ensuring that there was still sufficient living memory and interest in the population to create a target audience for the attraction. It could be said that a requirement for tasteful chronological distance would preclude the application of the term dark tourism to tourists who visit live war zones. Lennon and Foley later identified a number of synergies between war-tourism and dark-tourism attractions. In their book Dark Tourism (2000) they named a number of war- tourism attractions which were within living memory, including the war sites of the First and
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Second World Wars and Northern Cyprus, as dark-tourism attractions. Tracing this form of tourism back to pilgrimages, martyrism and gladiatorial fights, Seaton (1996) chose to use the term thanatourist rather than dark tourist to describe a similar type of tourist, who would: travel to a location wholly, or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death, particularly, but not exclusively, violent death, which may, to a varying degree be activated by the person-specific features of those whose deaths are its focal points (p.240)
Unlike Lennon and Foley (2000), who focused on the popularistic and media-led aspects of tourism to death and disaster sites, Seaton’s definition and use of the Greek word thana (death) moved the emphasis away from popular culture and towards the macabre. In his view pure thanatourism has a direct and extensive connection with the death being viewed or commemorated. Seaton’s analysis identified four main concepts which he thought had contributed to the development of this genre of tourism: the development of the sublime; the gaining of pleasure from viewing or experiencing pain in self or others, which in turn led to Black Romanticism, a preoccupation with flesh, death and the devil; a fashion for the Gothic, demonstrated by renewed interest in violent deaths and disasters; and “a quest for The Other, modes of experience inverted from those of ‘everyday’ life” (p.238). Unlike Lennon and Foley, who viewed the media as instrumental in the development of attractions, in this article Seaton portrayed the media’s role as one of increasing knowledge of the exact location of death sites, which in turn enabled tourists to visit exact locations, thereby increasing tourist activity. The concept of the sublime was later developed and applied more closely to thanatourism by Seaton and Lennon (2004) under the title of Schadenfreude, with tourists obtaining “secret pleasure in the misfortune of others” (p.68); but as the authors point out there has been little significant research into the subject as a motivational factor. Stone and Sharpley (2008) further explored the links between dark tourism and death, arguing that visits to dark-tourism sites could offer participants an opportunity to confront and accept death by contemplating their own mortality and “thereby reducing the potential sense of dread that death inevitably brings” (p.589). Their conclusion that “dark tourism may have more to do with life and living, rather than the dead and dying” (p.590) moves the focus of dark tourism away from a direct obsession with death. They may also have inadvertently identified a reason why tourists visit real-time death sites. Unlike dark tourism, which focuses on leisure and entertainment, thanatourism focuses more on the more macabre aspects of this type of tourism. It might be said that there may be a greater link between tourists who visit live battlefields and thanatourism than with the popularistic, media-led dark tourism. Miles (2002) took the definition of dark tourism further, differentiating between dark tourism, a visit to a site associated with death, disaster and depravity, and darker tourism,
22 visiting an authentic location where the atrocity took place. Miles then identified the possibility of darkest tourism as tourism which transcended “both the spatial differences that distinguish dark from darker and the time gap that separates both dark and darker from the remembered tragedy” (p.1176). He saw the future of darkest tourism in cybertourism: virtual "real time tours of active detention camps, killing fields, death rows and execution chambers” (p.1177). A natural extension of the darkest tourism identified by Miles would have been for him to consider real-time face-to-face tours as opposed to those undertaken in cyberspace, but he did not expand his work in this direction. Stone (2006) used the work by Miles to create his dark-tourism spectrum, identifying the features of tourism products at dark-tourism attractions. He described such a product at the darkest end of the spectrum as having little tourism infrastructure, an authentic location and a short lead time from event to visit. His typology of dark conflict sites offers both battlefields and genocide camps as examples of these darkest-tourism attractions, but places them both within a historical education context as opposed to in real time, retaining the need for the tasteful period of time between event and visit first identified by Foley and Lennon (1996). His work did not consider the possibility of real-time tours identified by Miles, and these were not placed on the tourism spectrum. Instead, Stone chose to focus on the popularistic areas of dark tourism in commercially developed museums and other visitor attractions. His example of the blackest form of tourism was an organised tour of a crash site (the 9/11 hijacked United Airlines plane in Pennsylvania) and the boundaries of the product- based spectrum are not pushed. It seems, therefore, that the definition provided by Miles, of a darkest-tourism experience which takes place in both real time and at the authentic location, is most applicable to tourists who choose to visit current battlefields, genocide sites or the other locations (killing fields, hot spots, disaster sites). Lennon and Foley (2000) characterised people “visiting the most dangerous places on earth during moments of death, disaster and depravity as in the vanguard of dark tourism” (p.9). Stone (2006) described tourists with a high interest in witnessing the death and suffering of others as people who wanted to “dice with death in dangerous places” (p.148) but provided no evidence to support his observation. The need for chronological distance in order to obtain social acceptance of real-time death sites is a recurrent theme. Lloyd (1998) mentioned that trench tours in France during 1914–18 were cancelled due to French opposition and a changing social attitude which was leading to increased sensitivity towards the war dead. Seaton and Lennon (2004) noted that thanatourism had induced moral panic in Britain following media attention and stories in the press portraying attractions (Dunblane and Soham) as being exploited for distasteful tourism, but they predicted “a growing acceptance of in-your-face realism involving shock and horror” (p.78). The social distaste for visiting real-
23 time death sites is summarised by Ashworth (2004), who described extreme forms of atrocity tourism, which overlapped with other identified special interest tourism, in particular “war tourism, battlefield tourism, disaster tourism and even killing fields or hot spot tourism (i.e. visits to currently or recently well-publicised places of conflict)” (p.95), as producing “much darker and less socially acceptable emotions where gratification is obtained from violence and suffering, becoming in its extreme form a sado-masochistic pornographic tourism” (p.96). He defined atrocity tourism as a heritage product based around the suffering of others and observed that “the extremes in human experience are being utilized for the tourist who gains gratification either as a participant or a spectator, with the line between the two being frequently blurred” (p.95). Even though the war-tourism attractions identified by Smith (1996; 1998), Gough (2000) and Timothy et al. (2004) are similar to dark or thanatourism attractions, the tourist typologies of dark tourism are viewed slightly differently. Seaton (1996) provided five different categories of thanatourist, several of which have links to Smith’s (1996) war-tourist attractions and war-tourist typologies:
a) travel to witness public enactments of death
b) travel to see the sites of mass or individual deaths, after they have occurred
c) travel to internment sites and memorials to the dead
d) travel to view the material evidence or symbolic representations of death
e) travel for re-enactments or simulation of death.
(Seaton 1996, p.240-242) Although the first category is described by Seaton as a “minor tourism form” (p.243), he considered it to be the strongest of the five in modern western societies, owing to its current equivalent of sightseeing at disaster and crash sites. Seaton does mention viewing live guillotinings and torture scenes as forms of thanatourism but did not include tours to war zones as a type of thanatourism in this early work. He does, however, mention battlefield tours in connection with thanatourism in a later work (1999), which focused on the Battle of Waterloo, from which it can be surmised that he might place this type of tourism in to the first category of thanatourism, with the fourth category acting as a sideline activity. Sharpley (2005) identified three different types of dark tourism and placed organised tours to conflict zones in two separate categories. The first was called “dark tourism as integration” (p.233), with tourists seeking to “integrate themselves with death, either though witnessing violent or untimely deaths or, in the extreme perhaps, travelling in the knowledge
24 or expectation of death” (p.224), thus becoming part of the tourism product. The second category that featured dangerous travel involved visiting a dark-tourism product and then using this visit as a method of achieving social status. In this case the visit was motivated more by a need to gain status than by a fascination with death or interest in tourist activity itself. The tourist sought status “through travelling to places or undertaking forms of travel (and, in either case, surviving to tell the tale) that are dangerous to the tourist” (p.224). Sharpley did not fully develop this theme, focusing instead on how the different degrees of darkness affect the supply and demand of tourism products. Tours and trips to dangerous places are not placed on his spectrum and so this genre of tourism is not developed within the supply and demand context. 1.3.3 During the war tourism
This neglect of real-time visitors to war, battlefield and catastrophe sites by many of the authors explored so far overlooks much of the historical evidence. Smith (1996) identified the three phases of war tourism as before, during and after the war. Tourists who visit a destination in times of war or conflict are described as in the “during the war” phase. Dark tourism focuses on the “after the war” phase, although the first type of thanatourism identified by Seaton (1996) could take place both during and immediately after the war. These “during the war” tourists are the least explored by dark-tourism authors, who have concentrated their efforts on the post-war stages of war tourism. As a result the majority of evidence of “during the war” tourism has been culled by academics from newspaper and press reports or is set within a historical context. In his examination of the Yugoslavian war’s impact on tourism in Slovenia, Mihalic (1996) referred to newspaper reports of war horrors being sold as tourist attractions and description of tourists who travelled during the war to “Dubrovnik or Split (Croatia) to see the consequences of war” (p.234). Dann (2004) also used press reports to describe organised tours to “war-torn hot spots” (p.244) including the Balkans and Beirut. These tours, which were accompanied by security guards, offered the opportunity to visit and participate in live battles. Dann describes these tours as related to adventure tourism, which “inevitably exposes participants to varying degrees of personal danger, if not to the actual threat of death” (p.244). He supports his views by using more media reports that described participants as students on a rite-of-passage trip who enjoyed relating to each other their accounts of trips to perilous places. In his history of battlefield tourism, Lloyd (1998) acknowledged that wartime visits to the Crimean battlefields and tours to the Anglo–Boer war in South Africa were undertaken by tourists. Gordon (1998) researched the historical context of Nazi tourism and identified three
25 different types of wartime tourism: watching battles; visiting war-related sites immediately after the battles; and war planning (use of tourism guides in planning attacks). Seaton (1999) provided evidence of tourists who specifically chose to visit the battlefields during or immediately after the Battle of Waterloo and found that three different types of tourists were present. The first category of “on the spot witnesses” was present during the battle and provided first-hand written accounts; owing to the unexpected location of the battle these tourists “happened by chance to be at the centre of the battle” (p.3) and so did not appear to have made a deliberate attempt to visit the area while the war was underway. The second post-war visitor type, that of “official and semi-official functionaries of the British Government” (p.5), were classified as war tourists although they could also have been described as the geopolitical travellers identified by Smith (1996). The third category, that of post-war visitors who were motivated by pilgrimages, the search for friends and relatives, idealism or nationalist pride, visited Waterloo in the knowledge that the battle was over, and so can be placed in the phase of war tourism identified by Smith (1996) as heroic; they might equally have been described as dark tourists or pilgrims. Lee (2006) found historical evidence of organised government-sponsored battlefield tours during the Vietnam war as “South Korean citizens visited the battlefields to meet and encourage their friends and relatives in the military” (p.166). These tourists could be considered to be on a patriotic pilgrimage similar to that described by Lloyd (1998), although their relatives were alive during the visit. Lisle (2000) divided tourism consumer sites into safe zones and war zones, with the latter being “off limits” to tourists due to their high levels of danger or proximity to war zones. She felt that the tourists’ gaze was directed by the press towards the safe zones, thus separating war from tourism in tourists’ minds, but that it was acceptable to visit historic war zones because it allowed tourists to “experience the events of war” (p.94) within a secure, sanitised environment. Although she criticises the divide between danger and war, and peace and tourism, Lisle concentrates on post-event travel; within the context of an active war zone the only tourist activity she considered was that of soldiers, who she described as playing at being tourists and viewing the foreign location through a militarised tourist gaze. In her later work, Lisle (2007) explores the divide between war and tourism. She considers dark tourism within a broader geo-political context, arguing that its study should not be confined to post- war tourism as “the separation of conflict and tourism makes little sense in a context of perpetual global insecurity and increased mobility” (p.341). She describes tourists who visit sites of conflict as a niche market within the tourism industry, as opposed to the “deviant figures operating outside the moral boundaries” (p.336) portrayed by previous authors. Among the factors Lisle found to be influential on tourist travel choices were a search for
26 authenticity, with sites of recent war zones being viewed as “the last remaining ‘real’ in an otherwise commodified world” (p.335) because of their association with “death, atrocity, warfare and violence” (p.335), and a desire to transgress the moral boundaries of safety and danger. Neither work directly addresses tourism to dangerous places. Instead, they focus on the separation within tourism studies of tourism and conflict and challenge the view that tourism only occurs during post-conflict stages. Nevertheless, her observations that “in places like Jerusalem, Belfast and Beirut, the orbits of security and tourism collide in explicit ways” (Lisle 2007, p.340), that in many cases these conflicts have no clear start or end point and that they may be more related to civil unrest than war itself demonstrate how the term war tourism is not always the most appropriate for this type of tourism. 1.3.4 Beyond “during the war”
A natural extension, not explored so far by the authors who write about war, battlefield or dark tourism, would be to expand the concept of “during the war tourism” beyond battlefield and war zones into other dangerous areas. These might include borders of conflicts, green zones, ghettos and countries where there are high crime rates and/or civil unrest. Although Dann (1998) failed to differentiate between war zones and other dangerous places, he found evidence that the activities of tourists who travelled to dangerous places were not restricted to visiting battlefields and war zones; he believed, in fact, that Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice was used to identify potential hot spots. While writing about adventure tourism, the journalist, Blayne (1988), described some of the features of this type of tourism: “to this group no village is too remote, no danger too threatening, and no cultural experience too obscure to reach deep into the pockets to pay for a unique thrill” (p.38). Observing that adventurous holidays are very dependent on an individual’s perception of danger. Sharpley (2005), like Blayne, identified status symbols, competitive nature and personal perception as motivational factors. Another journalist (Miniter 2001) also provides compelling evidence of tourism to dangerous places. Miniter interviewed several of these tourists in Hong Kong and Thailand and ascertained that a desire to be “where the action is” was given several times by the interviewees as a reason for travelling to hot spots and war zones. Like other journalists (Byrne 1997), Miniter describes the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton 2003) as the danger tourist’s bible. In the article she puts forward the idea of a superman complex, saying that danger tourists “like the idea that they are quite Clark Kent’s with a secret, dangerous life” (p.2), and goes on to describe these tourists as “burned out hippies, self described adventurers or executives with a strange idea of fun, or journalists or scholars who never seem to teach or publish” (p.1). Miniter provides no evidence, however, to support her observations or findings, nor does she describe any
27 dangerous activities, and the locations she mentions (Hong Kong and Thailand) could not in 2001 be considered truly dangerous, so the article has a more sensationalist and commercial, rather than factual, bias. While Richter (1999) thought that “adventure tourism does not include being kidnapped, being caught in crossfire, or the prospect of being blown up” (p.41), observing that “all the attractions in the world can not bring tourists to Lebanon, Iran or even Dubrovnik without political peace” (p.44), there is evidence from other dangerous places that tourism exists and in some cases has been developed in the face of such adversity. Nicosia remains the only divided capital in the world and the Cypriot green line and demilitarised zone, military landscape and military installations have become a tourist attraction (Mansfeld and Kliot 1996; Timothy et al. 2004). Wall (1996) suggested that while travellers who persisted in visiting Ireland during the troubles found “bargains, cheap flights, reduced accommodation rates and lack of overcrowding” (p.140), the terrorist activity and political unrest leading to “searches, delays and increased military presence” (p.146) affected the quality of the trip in a negative way. He failed to consider that at one point the Northern Ireland Tourist Board used the tactic of “addressing the troubles head on using the curiosity factor” (Glanzberg 1991, p.58) and actively marketed Northern Ireland to potential tourists by highlighting the opportunity to see the troubles in person. Ospina (2006) observed that Colombia was on “the black list of global tourism” due to its images of “bombs, shootings, combats, massacres, drugs and kidnapping” (p.241) and the numerous reported kidnappings of tourists undertaken by the range of different death squads and paramilitary groups (Sawer 2003). In an article which focuses on eco-tourism and Colombia’s national parks, Ospina unintentionally provided several reasons why Colombia might attract a certain type of tourist: the ever-present danger that in remote regions tourists can stray into areas of armed conflict, the proximity of guerrillas and drug cartels and the fact that “almost all tourists who visit the parks are likely to encounter guerrillas, paramilitary groups and the army” (p.244). Tourists seeking a unique thrill or wanting to be where the action is would, if visiting remote regions, be almost guaranteed an encounter with danger. The term “terror tourists” has been used by journalists in different ways to report on a range of different types of tourist activity. Israeli-run military survival training courses, which have been combined with visits to religious sites, are described as terror tours (Goldberg 1994) as are counter-terrorism courses run by commandos from Israel’s Special Forces. These later courses offered the chance to “fire machine guns, hand to hand combat and to take part in mock attacks by Israeli commandos” and to prepare for “armed patrols on the locked down streets of Hebron” (Tate 2003). The target market for what are described by the authors as “holidays from hell” is specified as people “in search of a little extra excitement,
28 shooting clubs, security offices on holiday or subscribers to Soldier of Fortune, the mercenaries’ magazine” (Goldberg 1994, p.20). A different type of terror tourist has been defined as people who travelled “to witness war, famine and human suffering” (Byrne 1997); in this case terror-tourism experiences are described as being held at gun-point, shootings and visits to areas of mass slaughter. 1.3.5 Danger tourism
As part of his exploration of the media’s role in war tourism, Keenan (1994) compared two newspaper articles, one on war tourism (Ramonet 1993), the other entitled “Holidays in Hell” (Fedarko et al. 1993). Both articles described tourism to war zones while the war was in progress and identified package tours to war zones where destinations were selected in order to allow “customers to travel as near as possible to places shown on the television news” (p.136). When considering tourists who wish to be present at high-risk times, Keenan (1994) observed that “the tourist desire for presence, the desire to coincide with nothing less than history itself, at least spatially if not temporarily, finds here its ultimate test and seal of authenticity” (p.137). He concluded that tourists of this type were motivated by a need to experience history first hand. While the main emphasis in Keenan’s work was media related, he did not explore whether the type of tourist he had identified was motivated or influenced by the media; the relationship between the media and tourists who visit war zones or dangerous places which feature in the news thus remains unexplored. The small number of extreme travellers who choose to visit dangerous places has been identified within the framework of dark tourism by Dann (1998). Following Seaton’s five thanatourist types, he categorised dark-tourism attractions and locations into a five-fold model: perilous places, houses of horror, fields of fatality, tours of torment and themed thanatos. The first type of attraction, that of perilous places, is divided into two sections: towns of terror of historical significance and dangerous destinations. Dangerous destinations attracted tourists who visit dangerous places either during wartime or in times of political or civil unrest. He regarded these tourists as a distinct category and described them as: tourists who are not simply motivated by the personal danger and risk of adventure and sport but who wish the excitement of visiting a current trouble spot (p.5)
These current trouble spots can be whole countries or specific areas of a city that are associated with danger. Dann noted that the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton and Aral 1995) and advisory notices from the Foreign Office or US State Department provided indications of potential destinations and observed that a “growing number of people obtain thrills from such trips” (p.6).
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Adams (2001) identified danger-zone tourists as “travellers who are drawn to areas of political turmoil” (p.266) and suggested that this was a modern form of tourism undertaken by people seeking adrenalin-rush travel. Adams draws together previous work on organised and independent war tourists and links it to backpacker tourism and a backpacker’s approach to risk and travel. She cites various motivations including seeking an authentic experience or an adrenalin rush, seeking social separation from other travellers by “travelling to destinations where few dare” (p.274) and undertaking humanitarian aid and activist work. She feels that danger-zone tourists can have an economic impact on the destinations they visit through the sale of danger-zone products, but does not provide any evidence for these views except her own observation that T-shirts and special interest tours are offered to, and bought by, visitors. Her main focus is on how danger-zone tourists visiting politically turbulent areas can impact on the “rearticulation of ethnic sensibilities” (p.277) in the nearby destinations they visit directly after the danger zone and how their observations, through the web, represent the destination visited. Adams (2006) focused on placing this type of tourist in an urban setting, using the phrase “urban danger tourist” to examine the role of activist tourism in areas of Indonesia and East Timor. She does not follow up her earlier comments on the commercial importance of danger-zone tourism or the tourists’ impact on the nearby host population but instead reworks much of her earlier publication, shifting the focus on to motivational factors, including those of travellers looking for activist and journalistic experiences. Through this focus and her links between motivation, humanitarian aid and journalists, she blurs the boundaries between tourism and aid work. As with the article published in 2001, Adams links danger-zone tourists to a website (Fielding’s Black Flag Café) which ceased to exist in 2000 and uses quotes from this obsolete website and other post-travel or second-hand interviews to support her claims. Her conclusions would have been more persuasive if she had used first-hand data as her supporting evidence but, regardless of the sources and focus on activist and political tourism, her work provides evidence of tourism to dangerous places and indicators of the tourists’ motivations. Piekarz (2007) sought a definition of hot war travellers that covered tourists, journalists, business travellers, volunteer fighters, pilgrims and humanitarian aid workers who travel to “locations which are currently experiencing conflict and violence, or are still recovering from such events” (p.158). This broad definition puts tourists and workers together in one category of travellers to hot war zones and does not take into account the different reasons workers and tourists have for visiting a war zone; the focus is on the location rather than the type of visitor. He created an eight-category typology of hot war travellers, three of which directly relate to tourism and could be widened from war zones to dangerous places. The first is described as the “cocktail traveller”, someone who is “not interested in the war directly”
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(p.164) but enjoys the element of danger and opportunity to see the aftermath of battle; the “thrill seeker traveller” seeks the thrill of war as an exciting adventure experience; and the third type, the “rubbernecker traveller”, visits to see the consequences of war, motivated by mawkish interests or voyeuristic curiosity. 1.3.6 Examples of tourism to dangerous places
Although the evidence is gathered mainly from newspaper stories, two recent conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan, provide up-to-date examples of danger tourism. Evidence from these case studies shows that danger tourism can be divided into two categories, package tours and independent tourists, and that, as Adams (2006) discovered, it can be difficult to differentiate tourists from real and pseudo-journalists and the different types of humanitarian aid workers. To take Afghanistan first, Walsh (2002) described a fortnight looking at the ruins of post-war Kabul as an extreme tourism hardship holiday. He regarded this, so soon after the end of the war, as distasteful, observing that “checking out war zones and inspecting atrocity sites around the globe doesn’t give you insights into anything but the emptiness inside you” (p.7) The tour operator Live ignored Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advice and operated a post-war tour of Afghanistan during 2002 (Luthra 2002), but another tour during 2004 is described as the first package tour to arrive in post-war Afghanistan (Lamb 2004). The latter group consisted of two tourists, one aged 77 and originally from Pakistan and the other aged 39, who were the only ones to go ahead with their bookings following the assassination of the Tourism Minister a week before their tour departure date, after which other group members cancelled their bookings. At this time the FCO advised against all but non-essential travel to Kabul and against all travel to other areas of the country but the tour operators interviewed were “determined to begin bringing tourists here”, disregarding official advice (Dreazen 2004). In Iraq, Pope (2002) reported on pre-war tourism by describing an eight-day tour that included visits to dark tourism attractions including the Amariya bomb shelter (bombed by the US in 1991, killing 391 people) and its accompanying visitor centre. Other pre-war organised tours of Iraq were described as for “adventurous travellers interested in archaeology” (Chesshyre 2002) and took place during the build up to the Second Gulf War. Post-war tours continued despite a plea from Iraq’s Tourism Minister, Ahmad al-Jobori, who observed that “Iraq could be a one-way trip, this is just not a place for tourists” (Dreazen 2004, p.A.1). The first independent tourist to post-conflict Kabul was named as Rory Stewart (Spillius 2002). Stopping in Kabul on a walking trip across Asia, he is described as “strolling around the streets of the capital” and as an adventurer who had two bodyguards during his walk through Afghanistan (Lambie 2002). The kidnapping and shooting of a British tourist on the
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Pakistan–Afghanistan border was reported in 2003 (Bassey 2003) but the first death of a tourist inside Afghanistan during the post-war period appears to be that of Orfeo Bartolini, an Italian tourist reported as shot by Taliban gunmen on 12 April 2003. Bartolini was on an independent motorcycling holiday, travelling on a stretch of road that had been banned for use by United Nations staff due to increased Taliban activity (Gall 2003). Later two Japanese tourists, Fukusho and Hasegawa, both teachers, were killed while camping near Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2005 (BBC 2005). In Iraq, the American tourist, Daniel Smith, is reported to have been abducted and questioned during his stay in 2004 (Chesshyre 2004). Independent tourism to Iraq was widely condemned following the kidnap and beheading of the Japanese tourist Koda on 27 October 2004. He was held by an al-Qaeda-linked group which offered to release him in exchange for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Iraq. When the Japanese Prime Minister refused to bow to terrorism, video of Koda’s execution by beheading was released to various news agencies and on the Internet (ABC News Online 2004; Daily Record 2004; Sims 2004). Koda entered Iraq on a bus from Jordan on a “voyage of discovery” (ABC News Online 2004; Lewis 2004) after ignoring repeated warnings not to visit the country. Before his death he is described as “wandering around Baghdad in tattered clothes, searching for a cheap room” (Lewis 2004). Although Koda’s behaviour was criticised in the press and his decision to travel was described as “naïve”, press reports widely condemned the beheading (Joyce 2004) but supported the Japanese government’s stance on the issue (Jopson 2004). Another tourist identified as arriving in Baghdad was sixteen-year-old Farris Hassan, an American student with Iraqi parents who arrived in Baghdad on a flight from Lebanon. Handed over to the US Embassy, the minor was considered lucky to be alive. During 2002–6 there were ambivalent press reports about the growing number of tourists in both Iraq (Fassihi 2004) and Afghanistan (Economist 2003; UN News Centre 2004; Lamb 2006). These may, however, have been fuelled by the number of journalists who were publishing their own experiences visiting the country under the guise of tourism. Keenan (1994) was unclear as to where the differentiation between journalists and tourists could be made. This blurring of definitions was highlighted by Pitts (1996) in an article on the Chiapas uprising in Mexico 1994, which used the terms war tourist and journalist in an interchangeable way: “There has only been one reported case of a tourist (a magazine journalist) being killed in Chipas since the uprising” (p.226), demonstrating that while the “during the war” phase is underway all visitors are viewed equally by the host population. Use of the title of war correspondent as a socially acceptable excuse to undertake tourism was considered by Nora Ephron, a New York Magazine correspondent, who described proto- journalists or mercenary journalists as “thrill seeking or gun carrying journalists” (Knightley
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1975, p.460). Clearly tourism has been used as the ostensible reason for visits to dangerous destinations (easing difficulties in obtaining visas, accommodation, etc.); it is also possible that the role of journalist provides a socially acceptable justification for touristic activities, possibly as a means to avoid being branded with the social distaste previously identified. While this difficulty in classifying roles has been alluded to within the literature (Knightley 1975; Pitts 1975; Adams 2001; 2006), it has not been fully explored or examined in depth. A wartime guide book which states that “the only tourists in Sarajevo are foreign journalists and politicians” (Prostokevic 1993, p.152) is used by Keenan (1994) to show that there is little differentiation between journalists, soldiers and tourists and that, to residents, both journalists and soldiers are considered tourists. Weaver (2000) briefly considered the role of military personnel during wartime, observing that they engage in tourist activities, playing out the role of pseudo-explorers, but that they cannot be classified as tourists. Even so, Dabrowska (2003), writing for an Iraqi newspaper, reported that “a group of American and British soldiers were the first tourists in post-Saddam Iraq sitting spellbound in Babylon while an Iraqi tour guide enlightened them about the wonders of the ancient world” (Line 2). Both active and off-duty soldiers participate in tourist-like activities through their interactions with local businesses and viewing of local attractions (Weaver 2000). In addition to journalists and soldiers, aid workers are also present in war and conflict zones. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, the journalist Pope (2002) interviewed a tourist who was delivering drugs to a Baghdad hospital. He reported that there were 50,000 foreign visitors to Iraq at this time, a figure that included “dozens of self-appointed emissaries” (p.a1) on individual humanitarian missions. The tourist who was interviewed (Sacks) was on his ninth visit to Iraq and said that he regarded himself as on a “mercy mission”. Kelly (2003), however, found that all the human shields and humanitarian workers left Iraq before the war began, having decided it would be too dangerous to stay. The role of peace activists in dangerous places came under additional scrutiny with the kidnap and rescue of Kember in 2006 (Phillips 2006), with activists being portrayed as irresponsible. These debates were renewed in 2007 when a former Iraqi human shield, photojournalism student and non-violent resistance protester called Hurndall was killed in Palestine (O'Dwyer 2007). 1.3.7 Backpacker travel
Although she did not explicitly explore the links between backpacker tourists and her urban danger tourists’ attitudes towards travel Adams (2006) did draw on a number of backpacker- based theories to consider their approach to travel. In addition, Phipps (1999) highlighted the fact that backpackers and other independent tourists often unwittingly, or on occasion deliberately, place themselves in danger and so, the literature on backpacker and
33 independent travel might provide a starting point for the identification of factors which are important to people who travel to dangerous places. In the original backpacker typology (Cohen 1973) drifters were identifiable through their economical living, the use of local or cheap transportation and facilities and for gathering together in drifter communities. The mass drifter moves away from the original drifter who was “driven by curiosity and a thirst for adventure and experience of the unknown” (Cohen 1973, p.98) into a youth who sticks to pre-established routes and accommodation, and who is more evident in the backpacker enclaves of today. There are many similarities between drifters and wanderers (Vogt 1976). Wanderers were described as youthful non institutionalised travellers on a tight budget who were often college students from a middle class background. For the wanderer a motivational factor was the achievement of social-recognition and prestige from their peers. This was achieved by demonstrating a) a degree of “autonomy, independence and freedom of action; b) exoticism of destination; c) exoticism of travel mode” (Vogt 1976, p.28) and by adhering to a code of the road similar to that developed by hitchhikers. Social qualities which defined their code included meeting strangers whilst travelling, a nomadic lifestyle in which transience was paramount, a “hedonistic desire for immediate gratification” (p.35) with the wanderer living for the moment and immediate experience, and finally the diversity of people met during travel and the breakdown of routine and habit. Vogt (1976) explored the concept that the wanderer was motivated by the “quest for personal growth - learning about and understanding themselves, other people and other cultures” (p.28) as adventurous travel provided the chance for the wanderer to learn “about himself and the world by taking risks” (p.33). Riley (1988) likened tramping, the forerunner of Cohen’s drifter, to offering young people an “opportunity for a kind of rite-of-passage to male adulthood” (p.314) and saw this as an early form of the long-term budget travellers who are escaping from their everyday lives or delaying adult responsibilities. Cohen (2004) observed that, although backpacking may originally have been a type of rite of passage, the modern day experience of this is no longer as authentic due to the support structures and community that surrounds the industry. In addition, backpacking as a contemporary rite of passage, also attracts older backpackers in the middle of a life crisis, the transition from early to late adulthood, or those “who did not have the occasion for a moratorial break earlier in life” (p.53). Shmuel et al. (2006) saw extended travel as an opportunity for young adults to engage in reckless behaviour and to test their “boundaries, limits and roles” (p.231). It may be that the lack of support within the danger tourism experience offers travellers a more authentic rite of passage experience and so attracts people looking for this form of challenge.
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Mukerji (1976) investigated the road lore of hitchhikers recognising “the stories or bullshit that hitchhikers tell one another during the long rides to entertain themselves, forget their boredom with the scenery and transform themselves into heroic characters” (p.241) as “a type of fiction of narrative because they are presented as tales of adventure” (p.241). Named bullshit these stories were evident in hitchhiker travel lore maintaining the glamorous hitchhiking image and allowing hitchhikers to exchange stories with each other and their friends upon their return home. Mukerji (1978) also noted mapping, hitchhikers establishing early in the acquaintance of a stranger within the hitchhiking community, their previous travel and experiences on the road. Mapping included the sharing of knowledge and “bad ride stories of menacing pictures of local police and locals” (p.245) with individuals using both good and bad stories to enhance their own heroism, independence and to promote their own positive self image by displaying the risks they had taken during travel. Bullshitting offered hitchhikers the opportunity to enhance their own image amongst the hitchhiking community by telling stories which may or may not be true. In a similar way road status offers the backpacker an opportunity to establish their own identity and image. Road status or road culture has been explored by a number of authors (Riley 1988; Errington and Gewertz 1989; Pryer 1997) and is defined by Sørensen (2003) as comprising “hardship, experience, competence, cheap travel” evident in “paying local prices, getting the best deal, travelling off the beaten track, long-term travel, diseases, dangerous experiences” (p.856). Bradt (1995) identified five “badges of honour” which are recognised as identifying backpacker ideology (Welk 2004b):
1. To travel on a low budget
2. To meet different people
3. To be (or to feel) free, independent and open minded
4. To organise one’s journey individually and independently
5. To travel for as long as possible.
Although specifically written for the backpacker community several of these five points could equally be applied to other independent travellers: the dissociation from mainstream tourism, the aim of meeting local people and the emphasis on establishing social status within the hidden backpacker hierarchy are identifiable within wanderers, drifters and hitchhikers. The themes from the literature on backpackers and independent travellers can be summarised in the following table:
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Tourist type Authors Characteristics Youth culture Cheap travel Gathering together Drifter Cohen (1973) Curiosity / Novelty Thirst for adventure Experience of unknown Autonomy Independence Freedom of action Wanderer Vogt (1976) Hedonistic desire Immediate gratification Need for peer recognition and prestige Travelling on a budget Independence Riley (1988) Rite of passage Bradt (1995) Learning about self by taking risks Backpacker Sørensen (2003) Peer recognition through the gaining of road status Richards and Wilson Freedom (2004) Adventure seeking Maintaining own self image
Hitchhiker Mukerji (1978) Establish own identity by story telling
Table 1.1 Themes from backpacking tourist typologies
1.3.8 Risk and danger
The danger zone tourists Minter (2001) interviewed described trips including border crossings, natural disasters and areas which are renowned for high crime levels. Adams (2001) identified politically risky regions, areas of on-going political instability and the “imagined potential of violent eruptions” (p.268) as the context for her danger-zone tourism. In contrast Dann (1998) did not define perilous places instead using the criteria of negative FCO advice and an entry in the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton and Aral 1995) as indicators of potential perilous places. The use of negative FCO advice as a method of destination selection was also described in press articles about danger tourists (Byrne 1997; Miniter 2001; Urquhart 2004). Extreme negative travel advice was felt by the investigating journalists to influence travel decisions because it inspired tourists to visit destinations and regions which had embargos or severe warnings. However, while many countries have travel advice warnings by the FCO issued against them the number of travel bans (outright advice not to travel) is normally limited to a small number of destinations. In addition, the advice offered by the FCO may not always be the reliable and impartial source of information that tourists believe it to be (Sharpley and Sharpley 1995) and so it alone can not be used to indicate high levels of danger within a destination.
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1.3.8.1 Danger and tourism
Tourist literature views crime, risk and safety somewhat interchangeably. The relationship between tourists, tourism and crime has been explored by several authors (Pizam 1982; Mawby 2000) who investigated the impacts of crime on tourist demand. They established that crime and security risks are perceived by tourists to be negative aspects of travel to a destination, and that they acted as a barrier to travel. Pinhey and Iversons (1994) identified seven aspects of travel safety concerns that were used by Tsaur et al. (1997) in their study of risk perceptions and group package tours. They established that law and order, transportation and hygiene were important aspects in the tourist’s evaluation of risk but that the possibility of criminal attack, political instability and contracting infectious diseases were found to be the most important criteria used to evaluate the risks of travel. The study’s focus on group travel may make these findings less applicable to independent tourists but they provide a starting point in exploring how tourists perceive the risks of travel. Lepp and Gibson (2003) examined perceptions of risk during international travel and identified seven risk factors: health and wellbeing, war and political instability, terrorism, strange food, political and religious dogma, cross cultural differences and petty crime. They found that the subject’s perception of risk was influenced by their previous travel experience and their preference for novelty. Linking their findings to other tourist typologies (Cohen 1973; Plogg 1974), their results indicated that “independent mass tourists differ from explorers and drifters in their perceptions of risk” (Lepp and Gibson 2003, p.617). Pizam (1999) attempted to create a typology of crime and violence within tourist destinations. He established four main motives for crime (economic, social, political, and personal), five types of crime (crime, civil or political unrest, riots, terrorism and war) and four different categories of severity (loss of property, bodily harm, loss of life, mass destruction of life and property). Richter (1999) explored the reasons why tourism development in three different countries had been affected by political unrest. The risks identified to tourists included kidnapping, sporadic violence, political instability, friction with border nations and a militant Islamic government. Other examples of the perils tourists might encounter during travel include “high levels of violent crime, murders, recorded robberies and violent thefts” (George 2003, p.576) in South Africa and bombs, shootings, combats, massacres, drugs and kidnapping in Colombia (Ospina 2006).
1.3.8.2 Risk perception and assessment
Risk perception and risk management are considered to be subjective with individuals all perceiving risk in different and unique ways (Wilde 1976). Danger as a concept does not appear in the majority of risk literature instead there is a more analytical approach to
37 assessing risks. Both security and health and safety writers use relevant terminology (risk assessment, risk analysis, identified risks, the likelihood of a negative outcome etc.) in an interchangeable way. Roper (1999) defined risk as the “potential for damage or loss of an asset” (p.13) and risk assessment as assessing the hazard (risk) of an event occurring and loss (impact) from damage or loss of property or self. Broder (2006) considered risk to be the “uncertainty of (financial) loss, the variation between expected and actual results or the probability that loss has or will occur” (p.3). On a more practical level the aide-memoire written by the security company Centurion (2002) and given to media, NGO’s and aid agencies stated that: Risk assessment is the evaluation of the hazards that exist within a given situation. First, it involves identifying those hazards and assessing both the scale of potential damage and the likelihood of damage occurring. From these two factors the overall risk can be determined. Secondly, a conclusion is reached on how the situation can be controlled in order to eliminate or reduce risk (p11).
Taking a wider approach than the list produced by Pizam (1999) for tourist destinations Roper (1999) identified eight categories of threats which can be used during risk assessments to identify potential threats and hazards (Table 1.2). The list is useful in summarising the incidents which might happen to a tourist whilst travelling to a dangerous place.
Terrorist Assassination Environmental Fire Bombing Storms Kidnapping Pollution Biological / chemical attack Foreign Military Nuclear Biological Conventional Low-intensity conflict Insider Malicious act by disgruntled Foreign military Nuclear personnel Biological Espionage Conventional Theft of property Lower-intensity conflict Outside Criminal Violent acts against people Political Violence Theft / destruction of Decisions made or not made property Table 1.2 Categories of threats which tourists might encounter (adapted from Roper (1999, p.44- 45)
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1.3.8.3 Perception of danger
Hale (1987) approached discussions of risk from the view point of an individual’s perception of danger. Focusing on danger as the potential for harm to the individual and defining danger as “a situation or system state in which there is a reasonably foreseeable potential for unintended harm to human or physical elements in the system” (Hale and Glendon 1987, p.1- 8) they identified two approaches to danger perception research. The first considers risk and danger perception as subjective whereas the second views risk perception in an objective manner. In the subjective it is the person’s perception of danger which is important as emphasis is placed on situations which the person(s) being studied considers dangerous as opposed to actual danger. In the objective approach a definition of danger is imposed by an expert who decides “how much harm and of what form is to be considered necessary to constitute “danger”” (p.68). Hale and Glendon (1987) felt that in reality an individual’s approach to danger is neither totally subjective nor wholly objective, but instead a subjective normative approach is taken. This approach takes into account the experience and qualifications of the person (expert) defining the danger. Hale and Glendon (1987) identified two sets of questions which an individual asks himself when assessing dangerous situations: 1) The first revolves around his own relationship with the dangerous activity with, in the case of travel, the person asking questions such as: Can I influence it? Do I understand how? Do I trust the people in control? Who is getting the benefit out of the situation? Am I just a cog in the system?
2) It is only if an individual receives unsatisfactory answers to the first set of questions posed, that they will go onto consider the second set which explore the consequences of things going wrong: How bad would it be? Who suffers? How reversible are the consequences?
1.3.8.4 Accepting residual risk
After risks have been identified by undertaking a risk assessment an individual has a choice to accept, mitigate or avoid the risks. Roper (1999) provided a five-step model of the risk management process, the model includes the assessment of assets, threats and vulnerabilities and the implementation of appropriate countermeasures. The risk assessment model provided by Boyle (1997) assumes that the identification of risks will lead to a reaction and avoidance process which will be followed by ongoing iteration and alteration until the risk no longer exists. Both acknowledge that even after hazard control measures and
39 countermeasures are implemented some risks remain and these residual risks will need to be accepted. Residual risk is defined as “risk that remains after protective measures have been taken” (Tolbert 2005, p.29). Previous training and experience may play an important part in the risk perception and the acceptance of residual risk (Glendon and McKenna 1995), other factors influencing acceptance might include perceived control over the situation (Slovic 1987) and the potential reward for risk (Wilde 1976).
1.3.8.5 Definitions of risk and danger for this thesis
This thesis follows the subjective normative approach identified by Hale and Glendon (1987). Within the thesis the term danger is used to refer to actual as opposed to perceived danger with the actual danger identified by experts in the field of risk assessment of hostile environments. Risk assessment is taken to mean any activity which the tourist undertakes prior and during travel to establish the actual danger of the destination they wish to visit and residual risk refers to the risks remaining after risk mitigation and countermeasures have been implemented. 1.3.9 Contributing literature
Phipps (1999) identified many of these themes in his exploration of the value of a tourist’s life within the context of terrorism. He describes the balance between the desire to visit a location both for its authenticity and for experience against the dangers of travel since tourists are “the most obvious target for overcharging, intimidation, pick-pocketing, and, at the more extreme end of the spectrum, attack, murder or hostage taking’” (p.78). The Tourism Safety and Security Conference in Sweden during 2000 (Steene 2000) presented a number of papers relating to tourism and risk which explored issues as varied as health and safety issues, tour operators’ responsibilities, risk perception and a tourist’s understanding of risk and crime (Mawby 2000). Lepp and Gibson (2003) identified seven risk factors associated by their US- born young adult subjects with international tourism (health and wellbeing, war and political instability, terrorism, strange food, political and religious dogma, cross-cultural differences and petty crime). They found that their subjects’ perceptions of risk were influenced by their previous travel experience, and preference for novelty. Linking their findings to tourist typologies developed by Cohen (1973) and Plog (1974), their results sustained their hypothesis that the “risk perceptions of explorers and drifters are similar because they are congruently motivated and organized, and independent mass tourists differ from explorers and drifters in their perceptions of risk” (p.51). Like Adams (2001; 2006) and Piekarz (2007), they suggested their findings show that travel safety and risk perception can also be linked to adventure and backpacker tourism theories, novelty seeking, the salience of previous travel experience and the perceived as opposed to actual risks involved in travel.
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The literature on war tourism, dark tourism and danger tourism pointed up a number of common themes:
Robert Young Pelton was identified by a number of different authors (Dann 2004; Adams 2001, 2006) as an influential factor on tourists who visit dangerous places. His book The World’s Most Dangerous Places is described as the bible of danger tourism (Miniter 2001) and the accompanying website, the Black Flag Café, as a source of potential information about danger tourism. The research on him to date has not focused on his role in promoting tourism to dangerous places but rather has portrayed him as encouraging irresponsible travel to dangerous places. This investigation offers the opportunity to examine his role in more detail and to take into account the type of role model Robert Young Pelton promotes to his followers, who admire him and may display aspects of celebrity or hero worship.
Reports about the independent travellers who have visited Iraq and Afghanistan portrayed them as adventurous and in some cases called them adventurers. As adventurers tend to undertake physical challenges to self (Anderson 1970), tourism to dangerous places could, for many people, be classified as an adventure. So far, however, there has been little discussion in the context of danger tourism about adventurers’ character traits, an aspect this research provides an opportunity to investigate.
The role of the media is a recurrent theme within war- and dark-tourism literature. Keenan (1994) investigated the huge influence the media could have within a war zone and other authors identified its role in the creation and development of dark-tourism sites (Lennon and Foley 2000; Dann 2004). Media reports, films and books about war zones are often linked to glamour and excitement (Knightley 1975) and this creates a sublime of war, both produced and maintained by the media during wartime (Hoskins and O'Loughlin 2007). Seaton (1996) maintained that the romantic sublime was an important factor in the development of thanatourism; tourism to war zones may similarly be linked to the sublime of war. The sublime image of war involves the “audience gaining enjoyment from watching spectacular, violent and shocking images of others in distress” (Debrix 2006, p.767), closely linked to the Schadenfreude thought to be experienced by some dark tourists (Seaton and Lennon 2004). In this research the sublime of war is considered in the context of tourism to dangerous places.
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Adams (2006) used the Black Flag Café forum as one of the focuses of her research exploring how her urban danger-zone tourists used the website to seek information and to describe and relate their travels to others. Since she viewed the website (during 2000) the use of Internet communication has developed and there is now the opportunity to develop this theme by applying recent literature on and research methods about online communities to the Black Flag Café website.
The tourist Koda was described as being on an voyage of discovery in a rite-of- passage type of experience and Phipps (1999) identified self-testing through travel as an example of “voluntarily undergoing a ‘rite of passage’” (p.81). After reviewing the travel-related rite-of-passage literature, much of which sits within the categories of adventuring and backpacking, tourism to dangerous places might also be considered as a rite-of-passage experience.
Sharpley (2005) and Blayne (1988) identified status seeking as a motivational factor and Adams (2006) noted that some backpackers found dangerous places “cool”. Phipps (1999) pointed out that backpackers enjoyed discussing the “competitive recounting of austerities undertaken and survived” (p.81) while travelling, using these tales in attempts to win status within the group. Additionally, several tourists who have recently visited dangerous places have since gone on to sell their stories to the media, gaining some notoriety (Spillius 2002; Chesshyre 2004) within the local, national and, on occasion, international press. Several studies of backpackers have named this status-seeking aspect “road status” (Sørensen 2003). This research determines if this trait is also applicable to danger tourists.
The darkest tourist attractions identified by Miles (2002) and Stone (2006) focus on need to provide an authentic experience, which in the case of Stone’s work is also supported by a basic tourism infrastructure. The search for authentic experiences was also identified by Adams (2006), who linked it to urban danger- zone tourism and described it as similar to the backpackers’ need to escape mainstream tourism and to experience life as a local in a bid to escape from Western life. Phipps (1999) suggested that tourists were often escaping from their normal lives and seeking “real” experiences. These could be moments of self-actualisation occurring after experiencing an authentic moment related either to the location visited (for example a darkest tourism attraction) or through escaping tourism and becoming an authentic part of local life. This evidence
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indicates that the search for authenticity, having experiences and escaping self and Western infrastructure may be important to tourists who visit dangerous places.
Viewing a uniquely interesting site is a motivational factor for visiting catastrophe and atrocity sites (Ashworth 2004; Seaton and Lennon 2004); these studies also highlight curiosity and novelty-seeking behaviour. So far the evidence to support the application of these novelty-seeking behaviours to danger-zone tourists is limited to newspaper reports that state that this type of tourist wishes to be where the action is. These novelty- and sensation-seeking values may be merely an extended form of adventure tourism; indeed the authors Swarbrooke et al. (2003) use The World’s Most Dangerous Places as a case study to highlight some of the extreme characteristics of adventure tourism. This research explores whether this type of tourist displays novelty- or curiosity-seeking values and will also consider whether the behavioural models used to assess sensation and novelty seeking in adventure tourists can be applied in the context of tourism to dangerous places.
The research to date has not fully considered the tourists’ approach to risk. Authors describe this type of tourist as “dicing with death in dangerous places” (Stone 2006, p.148) and taking irresponsible risks which endanger themselves and sometimes others. The method used to assess the risks involved in this type of travel do not appear to have been explored in anything more than a cursory fashion and no research has been found that investigated danger tourists’ acceptance of the residual risks involved. The possibility that danger tourists have a different perception of the risk involved in travel and their willingness to accept these factors will be explored.
A fascination with death (Seaton 1996; Stone and Sharpley 2008) is identified as a motivational factor for dark-tourism attractions as they allow a person to confront and gain a better understanding of death (Stone and Sharpley 2008). The literature reflects distaste for tourism to active war zones and dangerous places and such tourists are often described as having a ghoul-like fascination with, and desire to view death. It could be surmised that tourists to dangerous places find either pleasure in viewing dying people or joy in successfully challenging death. This research aims to discover whether the danger tourists’ approach to death is an important factor in their motivation or travel decisions.
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1.4 Identifying the gap in the literature
During the investigation into the literature the following gaps in the literature were identified:
1 The topic of dark and thanatourism continues to be explored. However, there has been limited investigation so far into tourists who are in the “vanguard of dark tourism” (Lennon and Foley 2000), or those who participate in what has been identified as darkest tourism (Miles 2002) or tourism to perilous places (Dann 1998). Although briefly mentioned as a tourist market, these factual reports are seldom developed; the tourism theories explored in the related literature are rarely fully applied to the context. This neglect by both the academic and commercial sector may be because these activities are of limited economic value to the tourism sector. Additionally, academics wishing to explore this small niche market may face difficulties in undertaking face-to- face research due to the dangerous locations involved.
2 Tourism development models focus on the commercial value of tourism and little attention has been paid to tourism destinations in the “during the war” phase of their development. Previous authors have concluded that during this phase tourism is more or less non-existent. It now appears, however, that while the numbers of official tourists may dwindle they are replaced by a number of pseudo-tourists, journalists, allocentric adventurers and human rights activists. Although the tourism economy is not as active as during the pre- or post-war phases, it is thus still in existence in the “during the war” phase and these visitors maintain part of the existing tourism economy. This is leading to confusion over the types of tourist visiting a destination and therefore reports of tourist activity may, in some cases, be misleading.
3 Research shows that a small number of tourists do choose to visit places that are classified by mainstream tourists as too dangerous for regular tourism. Adams (2006) provided one of the few case studies which attempts to explore this topic in detail but it suffers from her use of secondary and out-of-date data. When the subject is discussed, the media in particular often approaches it from a sensational or good news aspect or portrays participants in an unflattering, ghoulish light. There is currently insufficient academic literature to draw a picture of these tourists’ motivations, approach to travel and other influential factors beyond describing them as macabre sensation-seeking risk takers who are followers of the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places.
The aim of this study is not to fill all of these gaps within the literature but to investigate a group of people who either travel to dangerous places or are interested in doing so. It
44 therefore focuses on the third point, exploring the possible motivational and influencing factors of tourists who chose to travel to dangerous places. This has been addressed through an investigation into an online community (the Black Flag Café) whose focus is on travelling to dangerous places and who are followers of the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places. The study has sought, within this context, to. Objective 1: To identify, analyse and evaluate the different types of forum members within the community and to consider how these might be indicative of the different types of people who visit dangerous places.
Objective 2: To explore the community’s social norms and acceptable and anticipated behaviours in the forum and to reflect how these might inform knowledge of the wider danger-tourism community.
Objective 3: To explore forum members’ experiences of travel to dangerous places, their engagement with tourism infrastructure and their preferred ways of travel to dangerous places.
Objective 4: To identify analyse and evaluate the factors that influence forum members’ decisions to travel to dangerous places and the perceived benefits obtained from travel.
Objective 5: Identify, analyse and evaluate attitudes towards risk and danger and forum members’ acceptance of the residual risks involved in travelling to dangerous places and any associated curiosity, sensation- seeking and novelty drivers. 1.5 Relevance
By investigating the topic of danger tourism the research has opened up a new area of study and adds to existing knowledge by:
Identifying the group’s common characteristics and investigating if there are different types of danger tourist.
Adding to the existing literature about the factors that affect danger-tourist behaviours.
Contributing to the limited existing knowledge about tourists who visit dangerous places by offering a picture of, and providing information about, the social norms, perspectives and practices of a group of people who travel or are interested in travelling to dangerous places.
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Possibly challenging, reformulating or confirming the idea offered by the press and some academic authors that tourists who visit dangerous places are bloodthirsty, ghoulish and indiscriminate risk takers. 1.6 Thesis contents
Chapter 2 introduces the context of the case study: the online forum the Black Flag Café (BFC) and its owner, the author Robert Young Pelton. The literature highlighted the role of the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places and this chapter critically examines the book and its author. The second part of the chapter explores online forums and virtual communities and describes the unusual identifying features of the Black Flag Café in comparison to other online communities. The chapter also introduces the characters and characteristics of the forum and then goes on to highlight some of the issues that need to be considered when undertaking an online virtual ethnographic case study. The next part of the thesis (Chapter 3) explores how the choice of research method was arrived at and how the research was developed as a virtual ethnography. It builds on the points raised in the previous chapter and weighs the various difficulties in undertaking Internet research. This chapter also sets out how access to the site was gained, how research permission was obtained and how the ethical issues involved in online research were resolved. The fourth chapter describes the research framework used for the research. It chronicles the data-collection and analysis tools used to undertake the research, including the coding schemes used for the content analysis. The chapter also provides worked examples of the different elements of data analysis. Data analysis formally starts in Chapter 5. First, the content of the forum is established and the most popular threads and key themes within the forum are discussed. Popular forum members are identified and the methods used within the forum to establish online identity and personas are displayed. The analysis of the forum continues with thick descriptions of the different forum members; discrete types of forum members emerge and a typology of forum members is presented (Chapter 6). The detailed analysis concerning the factors that influence forum members’ decision to travel to dangerous places and the perceived benefits they obtain from travel is presented in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 discusses the data findings in the context of travel to dangerous places. It highlights four areas: travel to dangerous places as a source of seminal moments of self- actualisation; how travel to dangerous places might improve an individual’s self-image; the search for an authentic travel experience and the role that risk and danger play in the decision to travel to dangerous places. The study continues by presenting a framework which
46 displays the factors that motivate a person to visit dangerous places, the possible outcomes of travel and the perceived benefits obtained from travel to a dangerous place. Chapter 9 begins by reflecting on the research. It first assesses the validity and reliability of the research approach and goes on to review the ethnographic research journey and to evaluate the methodology used in the research. The thesis concludes (Chapter 10) by reviewing the original aims and objectives, detailing how this study contributes to knowledge and identifying areas for future study. 1.7 Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the topic of tourism to dangerous places and considered where it is placed within the literature of dark tourism, thanatourism and war tourism. It has shown how tourism to dangerous places can be placed both within the “during the war” phase of war-tourism activity and also at the start of post-war tourism development models. The chapter has also demonstrated that tourist activities that involve travelling to perilous places can be extended beyond actual war zones to encompass tourism to other dangerous places where there is political or civil unrest. The limited amount of literature relating to tourism to dangerous places has been explored and this type of tourist has been identified as possibly having motivational links with adventurers and backpackers; other possible motivational factors which were noticed included status seeking, risk taking and an interest in death. The literature recognised that the author Robert Young Pelton is considered both a positive and negative influence in the field of tourism to dangerous places, although his role has never been fully explored. Three main gaps within the literature were identified; this study focuses on one of these by exploring the motivational and influencing factors of tourists who visit dangerous places. The literature associated with a range of related tourist types (war, dark, thana, backpacker, adventurer, adventure, etc.) that might be relevant to the study was considered and a number of possible influencing factors were identified. The concepts of risk and danger were explored and definitions of risk and danger, for the purpose of this thesis, were established. The chapter concluded by demonstrating the relevance of this topic for further study. Adams (2006) classified an urban danger-zone tourist as a person who undertakes “tourism to tumultuous urban locales” (p.211) which are sites of political instability, while Piekarz (2007) focuses on areas that can be classified as hot due to their proximity (in time and location) to war and armed conflict. The evidence so far indicates that travel is not limited to either war zones or political urban locales; this work therefore expands these definitions by considering a danger tourist to be someone who deliberately travels to a dangerous destination where there is a high level of violence due to civil unrest, conflict or war.
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2 The case study context
2.1 Introduction
While scoping the literature it became increasingly difficult to ignore the role of Robert Young Pelton within the field of travel to dangerous places. Several journalists, including Miniter (2001) and Urquhart (2004), cite the books written by Robert Young Pelton, Come Back Alive and The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton and Aral 1995), as the bibles of danger tourists and others (Adams 2006) have mentioned the accompanying website www.comebackalive.com and online forum the Black Flag Café. The first part of this chapter investigates Robert Young Pelton’s role within danger tourism and analyses the book, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, which is described as the danger tourist’s bible. For reasons explained in Chapter 3, this case study is based on the online community at the Black Flag Café. The second chapter, therefore, also provides information about the case selected for study. To set the wider ethnographic scene, the functioning of online communities and typical online behaviours are summarised and detailed descriptions are given of the setting of the Black Flag Café, the key people within the forum and aspects of the forum that are particularly important to this research. 2.2 Robert Young Pelton
Dann (1998) regarded Robert Young Pelton and his works as one of the most influential factors on tourists who travel to dangerous places. Swarbrooke et al. (2003) accused him of attaching status to travelling to dangerous places and Adams (2006) observed that Robert Young Pelton portrays tourism to dangerous places as entertaining and alluring, inviting yet thrilling. The World’s Most Dangerous Places (1996) is now in its fifth edition (some earlier editions were written with co-authors but he has since gone on to write the book alone). To date the book has sold over 600 million copies (Robert Young Pelton, personal communication, 15 December 2009). In addition he has written Come Back Alive (Pelton 1999). Robert Young Pelton is also the author of: Fielding’s Hot Spots: Travel in Harm’s Way (Pelton and Aral 1998), a book of travel stories designed to accompany The World’s Most Dangerous Places; The Hunter, the Hammer, and Heaven: Journeys to Three Worlds Gone Mad (Pelton 2002), about travelling in Sierra Leone, Chechnya and Bougainville in the South Pacific; Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror (Pelton 2007), a book about security contractors in Iraq; and his autobiography, entitled The Adventurist (Pelton 2000). Using the model of literary backpacker icons (Wilson and Richards 2004), Robert Young Pelton’s initial work (The Hunter, the Hammer, and Heaven and Hot Spots) could be best
48 described as purer travel writing, written by a writer who travels, where he portrays himself as an iconic writer outside mainstream society. His later works, which have a more commercial feel and have led to his cult following, have made him into a travel celebrity and travel writer. In 1993 he bought the travel publisher Fielding Worldwide, which he sold in 2000. In the past he has written a regular column for the National Geographic Adventure Magazine, worked as a journalist for CNN and ABC News and, from 1998 to 2003, fronted his own television programme on the Discovery Travel Channel called Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places. He appears regularly on American and UK television and radio as an expert talking about security, terrorism and issues related to travel safety. He is the president of Praedict, a risk information and management company that runs the website www.iraqslogger.com, described as “the world’s premier Iraq focused website”, and the accompanying AfPax website, which focuses on Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is also an honorary member of the National Geographic Society. In addition to writing the introductions to several books, his recent published work has focused on piracy, the story behind the coup in Equatorial Guinea and US Army tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. In The World’s Most Dangerous Places, Robert Young Pelton describes himself as an iconoclast and an adventurer. His autobiography (2000) is called The Adventurist, and in it he claims to have become the “poster child for the concept of adventure” (p.3). The book contains tales of the places he has visited, of the dangerous places he has escaped from and of the people (in particular women) he has met while travelling. These are interspersed with personal memories about his childhood and career and stories that portray him as a family man. Although married, he promotes himself as a man who is free to travel extensively where and when he wants, without personal ties or monetary concerns. It is apparent from his work that he likes to be the centre of attention and he often flaunts his connections to important people, seeking to come across as authoritative and knowledgeable. Other authors have described him as charismatic, worldly and someone to emulate (Feuer 2005), and as a person with contacts, cheerful, and joking under pressure (Collins 2002). Critics of his books describe his style as a mix of macho bragging and Indiana Jones. He is protective of his own image, complaining to Wikipedia when his entry was illegally changed, but he has done nothing about the fake MySpace and FaceBook pages which have been opened in his name. 2.3 The World’s Most Dangerous Places
Robert Young Pelton states that the aim of his book The World’s Most Dangerous Places is to “show people how to connect, get people thinking about the state of the world, and in the process brush away the fear and the barriers that keep them from travelling, meeting and learning” (p.v). The book uses an entertaining narrative to compare the risks of daily life with
49 the risks of travel to dangerous places. Death is portrayed as a natural event. Statistics are deployed throughout the book to demonstrate that risk is something that people participate in or seek out every day. War zones and dangerous places are portrayed as glamorous, exciting and daring and the people who visit or work in them as adventurous. The fifth edition of the book (Pelton 2003) is divided into three main sections. The first part, entitled “What is dangerous?”, describes and provides advice on dealing with dangerous situations, including war, revolution, drugs, guns, kidnapping and land mines. Robert Young Pelton introduces this section with the question “Do adventurous people who deliberately travel to dangerous places really need to worry about safety?” (p.41). He goes on to justify people travelling to dangerous places by saying that it is a “normal desire to explore their world” (p.42) and observing that “the truly interesting and educational things on this planet occur in areas of high-intensity living, places where people warn you not to go” (p.42). Within this first section he highlights the difference between adventure travel and dangerous travel, stating that adventure travel (rafting, mountaineering) is not dangerous due to the commercial nature of the activities. He observes that dangerous activities do not necessarily take place in dangerous places and advises his readers to visit war zones as “more people die in road accidents than in wars” (p.45). This section contains chapters dedicated to business travellers and tourists, in which latter category he places backpackers as well as mass- market tourists (Figure 2.1). He also provides advice for would-be journalists. There is information on obtaining jobs in dangerous destinations, including war correspondent, mine clearer, member of a range of different Special Forces (Delta, Navy Seals, SAS), peacekeeper and professional adventurer. Short survival lists and contact details for embassies and security companies are inserted in the text.
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Figure 2.1 The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton 2003): Tourists
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The second part of the book is called “Dangerous Places”. This provides specific information about destinations the author judges from his own and other contributors’ personal experience to be dangerous (Figure 2.2). Destinations are divided into two different types: fundamental and mental. “Fundamental” countries are generally, but not always, Islamic fundamentalist countries (Israel and Uganda are also listed as fundamental); “mental” destinations include Syria, Libya and North Korea and are described as “quiet, cheap, clean, crime free” (p.53). Destinations are star rated, with five stars being the most dangerous. As the book was written in 2002 and published in 2003, several of the star ratings are out of date. Two destinations, Colombia and Liberia, are given five stars. Destinations that are not officially recognised (Palestine, Georgia, Chechnya, Kurdistan) are also included and some destinations are grouped together (the Balkans, the Great Lakes – Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo). Each country’s section has a brief historical background, a map, essential travel information and a section called “The Players”, which introduces the important political figures. Some countries have an anecdotal travel story at the end, written by Robert Young Pelton or one of his featured contributing authors. Readers are advised to visit a range of official websites for up-to-date threat assessments and Robert Young Pelton’s own websites (www.comebackalive.com and www.cafe.comebackalive.com) are also recommended.
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Figure 2.2 The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton 2003): Pakistan
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The third part of the book is entitled “Mr DP’s Little Black Book”. It is subdivided into three sections: “Save the World”, which lists the names and addresses of aid and volunteer agencies working around the world; “Save Yourself”, which contains the names and addresses of adventure schools, security agencies and emergency rescue organisations; and “What to Pack”, which provides information on and sources for luggage and equipment to take when travelling to dangerous places. Although the book was most recently published in 2003 and much of the information it contains could be considered out of date, The World’s Most Dangerous Places remains the only published material actively to promote travelling to dangerous places as a tourist. It continues to be used widely and is regarded as seminal. The tone of the book promotes such travel as a thrilling, exciting and anti-establishment activity undertaken by adventurous individuals. At the same time it advocates safe travel with advice on security and safety and helps inform the reader of the political and social scene they might encounter when visiting. Throughout the book, Robert Young Pelton seeks to promote his own ethos of travel, acting as a role model for the reader. Understanding the ethos of the books and his own particular brand of travel experience may provide insights into the ambitions of danger tourists, in particular those who are inspired to travel because of his books. 2.4 A virtual community
The Black Flag Café is an Internet forum that hosts a virtual online community. An online forum (sometimes called a message or bulletin board) is described as “an Internet discussion group for people who share a special interest in something” (Collin 2008). A forum offers a space for people with similar interests to meet and discuss issues in both synchronous (real time) and asynchronous environments. The people who meet on the online forum are described as an online or virtual community. Forums on the Internet cover an enormous range of topics. Some are commercial ventures; others are run by individuals or financed by donations. People may lurk (read only) or actively participate in a particular forum. In order to make a post or comment within the forum, individuals normally have to register as members. This involves choosing a username and password and agreeing to the terms and conditions of the particular forum. Once a username has been activated members can then go on to add details into their own individual profile (often by answering a range of relevant questions which have been set by the forum owners), upload an avatar and add a signature. Online forums are policed by moderators whose role is to edit or delete any messages that do not conform to the group’s rules (Collin 2008). A virtual community can be characterised as a group of people with common interests or goals for whom electronic communication is a primary form of interaction (Rheingold
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1993). Forums offer participants a sense of communitas (Rheingold 1993) through the formation of relationships and ongoing exchanges (Figallo 1998). The virtual community allows people to form personal relationships in cyberspace (Rheingold 1993) and to talk to each other (Hiltz 1997). The characteristics of a virtual community are that members are part of a large social group where ongoing exchanges and lasting relationships are evident (Figallo 1998; Smith 1999). Typically, forum members become attached to their communities and visit them often, either as interactive or non-interactive participants (Burnett, 2000). The real or imagined social groups provide members with a social identity of values, attitudes and behavioural intentions resulting from group membership (Tajfel 1978; Turner 1978, 1985; Hogg and Terry 2000) and each online community has its own accepted values and social norms (Burnett 2000). Wasko and Faraj (2000) found that participants in virtual communities found them fun and enjoyable, with the focus on recreational role and game playing. They also suggested, however, that people join online communities to discuss topics of interest and to participate in “intellectual exchange with a community of practice” (p.171) rather than friendship; consequently, the motivation for joining might differ from one online community to another. Ridings and Gefen (2004) listed the reasons for joining communities as the exchange of information, social support exchanges, friendship and recreation, common interest and technical reasons. Wang et al. (2002) provided a conceptual model to use when defining virtual communities: this identifies the people, purpose, technical system and the rules and policies implemented by the moderators and/or forum owners as influencing the sense of place and symbolic meaning within the community. This model was developed into a typology of virtual communities by Porter (2004), who identified the types of virtual communities and the reasons for joining them as social, professional and/or commercial. The Black Flag Café is a social site community which is not used directly to make money or sell a service but it is used indirectly by Robert Young Pelton to promote his books and public appearances. It can be said that the online communities act as neo-tribes (Maffesoli 1996) with their own culture and value sets. The work undertaken by Maffesoli has since been adapted for the online environment by Adams and Smith (2008), who define an electronic tribe as “an exclusive, narrowly focused, network-supported, aggregate of human beings in cyberspace who are bound together by a common purpose and employ a common protocol and procedures for the consensual exchange of information and opinions” (p.17). A virtual community can allow access “to people who share specific interest, attitudes, beliefs, and values regarding an issue, problem or activity” (Wright 2005, p.3). It is these shared values, attitudes and norms, displayed through the participants’ online interaction, which are used within the data analysis to indicate how danger tourists perceive the world around them.
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2.5 The websites: comebackalive.com and the Black Flag Café
The home page of the website www.comebackalive.com is displayed in Figure 2.4. It publicises and sells Robert Young Pelton’s books, DVDs and other dangerous places memorabilia featuring the Mr DP logo (Figure 2.3), which is used by Robert Young Pelton on all his merchandise: hats, T-shirts, stickers and, more recently, his sponsored products including insurance and knives. The website, shown in Figure 2.4, attracts people who have read his books about travelling to dangerous places or who have seen his media appearances. It also attracts people who are interested in travelling to dangerous places and/or have located the forum through a search engine. The website is linked to a number of other sites (for example Wikipedia) and ranks highly (often number one) on search engines like Google and Yahoo for the words tourism, dangerous places and travel.
Figure 2.3 Mr DP
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Figure 2.4 www.comebackalive.com during 2008
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The Black Flag Café is the online forum linked to the website comebackalive.com. An online forum (sometimes called a message or bulletin board) is described as “an Internet discussion group for people who share a special interest in something” (Collin 2008). The Black Flag Café forum went online in 1996 but in 2004 the site crashed and all records were lost. Since then, the forum has been run using phpBB software and is upgraded and backed up regularly. The forum as it appeared during the data-collection period in 2007 is shown in Figure 2.5. Figure 2.6 shows how the forum currently appears following the upgrade in 2009. On 3 November 2007 the board had a total of 252,087 articles and 1618 registered users; as these users include dead accounts and spammers, however, the number of registered users on the sites is unreliable: Many people register and post just once. I think the number of 850 active accounts based on posting is misleading because of that. My guess is that there are about 500 "active" users and about 200 or less long term active users (Kurt Head Moderator, personal communication, 29 August 2007).
Among these 200 active users, known as regulars, there are journalists, aid workers, contractors and tourists. Some regulars have multiple usernames, using different usernames for their different online personas. For example, marie-angelique has a second username, Acerbic Barbie, and Mikethehack is also Douchebag. There are also several joke personas created to troll or joke with established forum members: James_in_the_word, a take on the original username of JamesInTheWorld, and Bizzaro Kurt, a play on the main moderator Kurt.
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Figure 2.5 The Black Flag Café forum during 2007
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Figure 2.6 The Black Flag Café during 2009
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The Black Flag Café forum is divided into three main sections: the Black Flag Café, the Arm-Chair Café and the Tin-Foil Hat Café. Table 2.1 shows the different forums and associated sub-forums and also displays the description used to describe the contents and intended use of each. Figure 2.7 shows how these appeared on the live website during 2009.
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Forum Sub Forum Description
The Black Flag Café The Black Flag Cafe is the place travelers come to share stories and advice.
The Black Flag Recommends Where to go, what to eat, where to stay, guides, and taxi drivers.
Gear Cameras, Computers, PDA, and Vehicles. Travel and non-travel related. The Black Flag Café Guns & Weapons Questions, comments, film clips and pictures on guns and weapons.
Travel Discussion Discuss travel and all things travel related
Testing & Login Problems No registration needed to post here.
Movies, Entertainment & Sport For those post related to Burt Reynolds and throwing balls.
Technical Questions This forum is for technical questions related to the message board. Now for registered users only.
Rants, Opinions and Humor Expectorate your wit here. The Arm- Chair Café News Forum Got an opinion or an announcement concerning the Government or issues in your area of the world?
Announcements Comebackalive.com related announcements. Discuss meeting info here too.
Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes A forum to place the images of heathen souls that you have captured.
Tin-Foil Hat Tin Foil Hat Café Exploration of Conspiracy Theories from Perspective of Esoteric Traditions Café
Table 2.1 The forums and sub-forums on the BFC
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Figure 2.7 The Black Flag Café showing the forums and sub-forums listed in Table 2.1.
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2.6 Moderation
Online forums are policed by moderators, many of them volunteers, whose role is to keep the peace. Like other forums, the Black Flag Café has a number of moderators who deal with the daily running of the site. All final decisions relating to the Black Flag Café, however, remain with its owner Robert Young Pelton (known online as RYP). The moderators and forum owner are all regular members of the board. Kurt became the head moderator in 2004 and has been a member of the forum since 2001. He invites long-serving forum members to become moderators. He selects them on the basis of his personal knowledge of them, their length of time on the forum and their willingness to take on the role for free. There are currently seven moderators. Yorick, moderator of the Tin-Foil Hat Café, is still listed although it is understood by the forum members that he killed himself in 2009. His name remains as the moderator because reports of this death are unconfirmed, because Yorick believed in the afterlife and also for remembrance. Wise and Thorson (2006) found that people were more likely to participate in a moderated, interactive online forum in which poster response rates were steady but not rushed. The Black Flag Café is not heavily moderated, although regular forum members are aware that moderation takes place. But to outsiders the forum appears unregulated. Many online forums have rules and regulations governing the relationships between forum members and the types of posts which can be made. Examples of standard forum rules include not flaming or trolling other members and keeping to the guidelines on the posting of content and images (particularly in sites with a family audience). Norms of politeness in the use of computers and acceptable and unacceptable online behaviour are called netiquette (Rinalidi 1998). Interpretations of netiquette vary (Shea 2004); Mann and Stewart (2000) state that the “rules of netiquette will inevitability differ depending upon the forum” (p.59). Accordingly, several authors (Rinalidi 1998; Brem 2002; Orgad 2005; Sanders 2005) recommend a period of lurking in a forum to appreciate its particular approach to netiquette before posting; many forums give similar advice in their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or within their registration pages. Unlike other forums, where moderators enforce numerous rules governing online behaviour, moderation on the Black Flag Café consists mostly of removing or banning spammers and banning those posters who Robert Young Pelton does not want on the site but continue to register (Mach, a cyber-stalker, and immigrant, a poster who was banned in 2007). Kurt, the head moderator, bans spammers and overtly sexual usernames and removes comments that endanger the integrity of the board. Gaiser (1997) found that in forums where the facilitator is not online at all times, groups become self-governing in their netiquette; acceptable and unacceptable behaviour is often communicated to new participants in a welcome or introductory message. The Black Flag Café provides no
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guidance to forum members, nor does it have a forum-specific FAQ document about expected online behaviour. It is therefore an example of a self-governing Internet community, with limited or no moderation of forum participants’ behaviour and posts. The only types of posts which are deleted by the moderators are spam and those which are sexually pornographic. Instead of being deleted, genuine forum posts that are considered inappropriate by the online community are ridiculed or flamed by the regular forum participants. It quickly becomes apparent to the posters if their comments are not considered appropriate by the board members. Trolling and flaming between posters is common on the forum and a number of flame wars are ongoing or regularly resurface. As well as flaming, posters will deliberately make inflammatory comments which they know will upset others (a form of trolling) and several members have created additional user accounts specifically to troll another poster. Although the site operates a policy of self-moderation, RYP does get involved in some moderation decisions. During the research period, RYP made two major moderation decisions. The first was to ban an avatar created by the poster Jefe consisting of a picture of a female poster within the cross-hairs of a gun; RYP felt it promoted violence against women and saw it as inappropriate and threatening to the female poster (Penta) involved. The second was to poll the members on whether the poster immigrant should be banned. Immigrant posted inflammatory racist articles, often featuring violence against women. Following the poll, RYP banned immigrant, although he continues to attempt to register on the forum under different usernames. 2.7 Uses of images
Within the forum it is possible to link to images that are already on the Internet. Forum members use images in a variety of ways: instead of, or to back up, their views, or to show a particular image which is of interest to other forum members. In 2008 a new section – Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes – was added to the forum, where posters can link to and upload their own photographs. This allows posters to create and view online galleries of pictures and to create threads that act as a type of travel log or interactive blog in a type of narrative tale. In these threads posters comment on each other’s pictures and ask each other questions or provide travel information relating to the places shown in the pictures. Images are also used in signatures and as avatars. 2.8 Editing posts
Until 2008, posters were able to delete and edit their own posts at any time. A few posters did this excessively and for no valid reason. The posters Royal and michelle in alaska, in particular, removed all their previous comments and posts, replacing the text with either “zzzzzzz” (Royal) or “blather” (michelle in alaska). Despite being asked by Kurt to refrain from this behaviour, forum members continued to delete their own posts. Both
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RYP and Kurt felt that the flow of the board was being disrupted and the board’s archive lost and so Kurt removed from forum members the power to edit their own posts during the board upgrade in 2008. Forum members were still able to go back and edit or delete their own posts during the research period; this was evident in the data collection, leaving some threads only partly coherent. 2.9 Forum members
Many members of the Black Flag Café invest a considerable amount of time in participating in the forum. The two main reasons that members give for joining the forum are that it came up on a search engine when they were looking for information about a particular destination and that they wanted to find out more information about Robert Young Pelton following one of his media appearances or after reading one of his books. Thus the majority of forum members have a particular goal in mind when joining the forum although they may stay on after their initial posts for social interest. Membership statistics show that forum members either stay and become regulars in the online community or leave the forum soon after they joined. There is no way of knowing why they left the forum but based on the comments made in their posts it may be because they have obtained the information they were seeking, they find the aggressive atmosphere of the forum off-putting (particularly possible as the new female forum members seldom post for long on the board) or because they do not find the board useful or interesting. Suler (1999) divided the individuals who make up an online group into founders, leadership and membership. It is easy to identify Robert Young Pelton as the founder of the group and several of the longer-term regular members and moderators as the leaders who set the tone of the forum. Figure 2.8 shows the hierarchy of posters within the forum and their position within the Black Flag Café. While this study has focused on the forum members who do post, it should be noted that there is also a considerable number of lurkers/peripheral members on the forum. Reasons why people may lurk on the BFC rather than make regular posts include taking time to learn the community norms, gaining support and information or an altruistic bias (Preece et al. 2004). Lurkers are not seen as a problem on the Black Flag Café as the forum does not charge for participation or aim to make money from its members. Zhang and Storek (2001) found that in some online communities as many as 90 per cent of their members are peripheral and not actively posting. This might go some way to accounting for Kurt’s statement that the number of registrations does not reflect the active membership, as the total number of registrations combines both peripheral and non-peripheral members. Some regular forum members do go through deliberate and active periods of lurking when they are based overseas and have either limited access to the Internet or security concerns.
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Posters who do not go on to form a relationship with the forum or who do not reach a hundred posts can be described as one-off posters (posters who make only a few posts).
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Owner Robert Young Pelton
Head Moderator Kurt
Moderators: coldharvest, Ultra Swain, marie-angelique, 19 D 20, flipflop, SRR, Sri Lanky, yorick (deceased)
BFC Regulars Regular posters who have more than 100 posts and are accepted members of the community Dual Usernames Usernames created by BFC regulars for flaming, split personalities, etc. Occasional Posters Posters who have not yet made 100 posts or become accepted members of the community
One-off Posters Posters who have made a single contribution to Newbies the forum
Figure 2.8 Conceptual map of the hierarchy of the Black Flag Café
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2.10 The role of RYP within the forum
As Robert Young Pelton owns and participates on the BFC forum, all its members have some kind of contact and relationship with, and view of, him. For some, he is one of the main reasons that they joined the Black Flag Café forum, while to others he is a sideline and was not the main motivation for joining. This section considers his relationship with the forum members. Some posters on the forum are open about the fact that RYP was influential in their joining the forum. Newbie posters often mention the fact that they deliberately searched for the forum after reading his books or hearing him speak. After his media appearances there is a spike in the number of people who visit the forum: visitor numbers go up and new posters join (Kurt, personal communication, 16 May 2009). This demonstrates that he is one of the main reasons that people initially post on the forum.
ryp who was the reason many of us came here in the
first place
illman in “The evolution of RYP is nearly complete”
Often new posters seek to establish themselves on the forum as fans by displaying their knowledge of Robert Young Pelton and his work in their first post on the forum. They are often surprised and pleased that he responds in person and are keen to show that they have read and admire his work:
I am surprised you replied yourself! I have read one
of your books and am waiting for more paychecks to
get the rest
Apoc in “Need Advice”
I just finished License to Kill and it totally blew my
mind…Basically what I was wondering was if RYP is
making any public speaking appearances in the near
future
Lou06 in “First time poster here and I was just wondering a few things”
It is not just the new posters who are fans. Regular forum members also admit to being fans of Robert Young Pelton and try to connect with him by admiring his work:
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I love adventure, I love danger! Shit I think I’m a
fanboy
docjoyce in “______www.comebackalive.com”
BTW RYP your shows were awesome and
motivating
OneLungMcClung in “TV ‘survival king’ stayed in hotels”
Iʹve been waiting for the new edition to be released,
and now it has, I thought i ought to buy a copy to
help bring me up to speed with some of the current
dangers in the near east. One question though:
Whatʹs the Professional Strength Edition of DP 5?
Dogtanian in “I’m going to buy one of RYP’s books”
Both internally in the forum and externally in the wider arena of travelling to dangerous places, Robert Young Pelton seeks to place himself as a central figure for people who travel to dangerous places. He is seen by many of the regular posters as an expert not only on travel to dangerous places but also on world affairs. Posters seek out his views on a range of different issues, quoting him as an authority and asking his opinion about their travel plans. They also ask him to suggest further reading on topics that are of interest to them.
Itʹs not dangerous; like RYP said, getting in a car
crash should be your friendsʹ biggest concern.
redharen in “Need Advice – Israel Travel”
RYP, How did you find him? What can you tell us
about his character?
Bouncer in “Mercenaries: Bob Denard is Dead at 78”
Do you know any of The Rebels MC? Iʹm reading a
book about them (they are primarily located in
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Alberta) but it seems all the MCs in Canada and the
USA kinda hang out together (and fight each other
too come to think of it). Its an interesting life style.
svizzerams in “Chechnya: Profile of Shamil Basayev”
Robert Young Pelton uses the forum and his media appearances as a communication channel through which information about travelling to dangerous places and his own media persona is disseminated, promoted and shared. Nearly 3% of the posts on the forum over the sample period (described in Chapters 4 and 5) were posts made by RYP as some form of self-publicity. These can be divided into information about his media appearances on radio, television or at conferences, and alerts which provide forum members with details of recent articles he has written. Forum members often respond to these posts commenting on the interview or article, providing him with a feedback mechanism.
Go to minute 37:50 at:
http://www.hd.net/drr235.html Talking about
security contractors....
RYP in “Hype: RYP on Dan Rather HDNet online for a week”
I am in Mens Journal this month and will be in the
Nation next Month...go figure. I must be a right wing
bleeding heart liberal yuppie.
RYP in “HYPE: RYP In The American Conservative”
He can be described as an innovator and opinion leader, described by Rogers (1995) as influencing “other individuals’ attitudes or overt behavior information in a desired way” (Rogers 1995, p.27). The different levels of membership, displayed in Figure 2.8 and acceptance within the forum provide a social system in which opinion leaders are evident, with regular posters who travel to or work in dangerous places taking on the role of change agents within the community. On the forum, in his media appearances and books, Robert Young Pelton seeks to portray himself as an authentic free-spirited adventurer who is knowledgeable, experienced and the life and soul of the party. He likes to be the centre of attention and for his opinions to be listened to and acted upon. He promotes himself as a rebellious risk taker, attractive to women but also as a faithfully married family man. Robert Young
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Pelton seeks to be, and appears to be, successful in presenting to his public an appealing and adventurous image which he uses to sell himself and his products. In North America, Robert Young Pelton enjoys public recognition and uses his public persona to endorse physical products (merchandise, insurance, knives) with his publicly perceived expertise being based on his own travel experiences. He manipulates his media image to ensure that he is an effective celebrity endorser viewed by his fans as both an expert on the product but also as trustworthy and credible (McCracken 1989), actively protecting his own image to ensure that his “status, class, gender and age as well as personality and lifestyle” (McCracken 1989, p.312) represent the product and ensuring that he remains a celebrity expert, defined as the “perceived ability of the source to make valid assertion” (p.311). Posters often seek to associate themselves with Robert Young Pelton by saying that they agree with his views about world affairs, relationships and other social issues.
I find myself of the same opinion as ryp on many
things
soulohio, in “The evolution of RYP is nearly complete”
I looked around and didnʹt find anyone [apart from
Robert Young Pelton] who posted steps to
accomplish goals similar to mine.
Apoc in “Need Advice”
Wasko and Faraj (2000) found that people who read forums view the information posted to be owned by the poster. Robert Young Pelton’s propensity to relate unprompted experiences and tales about his innovation, daring and adventurous lifestyle to others has the aim of provoking discussion and encouraging participation. He is an active member of the community and he offers forum members reciprocity for their participation by regularly posting news articles and stories that he thinks might be of interest to the forum members. These include news stories about travel or tourism, famous adventurers or mercenaries, deaths of famous people and news items about people who have died or been injured in unusual ways. This way he keeps the forum content new and encourages the community to interact and participate, as an increased frequency of postings has been shown to encourage interaction in an asynchronous forum (Wise and Thorson 2006). Regular forum members expect him to contribute towards discussions and to take an active part in the forum; when he does not post for some time, members notice and query his whereabouts. He takes the time to respond
72 and comment on other posters’ threads and enters into discussions about a wide range of topics, some of which relate to travelling, some not. Through his posts and interactions on the board, posters feel a personal connection with RYP and things that affect his life are also important to them. After RYP made a post about a friend of his who had been killed in Iraq he received a number of offers of help and assistance and posters also expressed their condolences, showing solidarity and affinity with RYP in his personal life as well as his work.
sorry about your friend ryp
jimboCA in “The Story of My Security Guy in Baghdad’s Murder”
Not all forum members are supporters of RYP. There are a number of posts within the forum that are openly critical of Robert Young Pelton, accusing him of selling out to mainstream media; this is evidence that he has become, to some extent, one of those opinion leaders who are “perceived by their peers as too much like professional change agents and therefore lose their credibility with their former followers” (Rogers 1995, p.27).
Most of the time RYP talks shit on stilts because
that’s the way he earns his money. That’s why any
real threat to his credibility will always be ruthlessly
expunged.
nowonmai in “Reviews for Come Back Alive”
It is difficult to distinguish whether some of his fans think of him as a hero or as a celebrity. Many of his fans display the traits identified in hero worship (North et al. 2005), including forming an emotional attachment to him (personal feelings of friendship), a drive of affiliation (same goals and characteristics and actively seeking information about him) and identifying his ordinariness (emphasis on family values, normality of life). Conversely, fans also display the disdain expected in celebrity worship, including disagreement over published opinions and the identification of character flaws (North et al. 2005). To summarise: Robert Young Pelton has carved out a niche as the innovator for travelling to dangerous places. He is an influential character within his own forum the Black Flag Café. He is one of the main reasons that participants give for joining the forum and also one of the reasons for some regular forum members remaining part of it. For the forum members he acts as a role model whose adventurous behaviour and lifestyle they seek to emulate. Although a few forum members appear to have a love/hate relationship with him, they return to the forum and keep posting there and this is typical of both innovativeness and celebrity endorsement. There is also evidence that he may be
73
influential figure in the wider danger-tourism community, acting as an unofficial spokesperson in the media and popular press. 2.11 Behaviour
Burnett (2000) developed categories of online behaviours (displayed in Table 2.2). Behaviour is described as either non-interactive or interactive; with lurkers or silent posters seen as displaying non-interactive behaviour and community members who post actively identified as displaying interactive behaviour. Interactive behaviour is further categorised as hostile, collaborative or information oriented. In 2004 Burnett and Buerkle developed these categories to add classifications covering announcements and spam. All these online behaviours can be found within the Black Flag Café forum. They have been mapped on to Burnett and Buerkle’s typology in Table 2.3.
74
Non- Interactive Behaviours Interactive Hostile Interactive Collaborative Interactive Behaviours Behaviours Behaviours Flaming Behaviours not oriented toward Information Lurking, etc. Ad-hominem argumentation Cannot be directly Trolling Neutral Behaviours observed within Deliberate baiting of others Pleasantries and Gossip the context of the Spamming Humorous Behaviours Virtual Community Unsolicited (and off-topic) Language Games and other types of play junk-mail
Cyber-Rape Empathic Behaviours Violently (and often sexually) Emotional Support assaultive language directed at a specific individual
Information-Oriented Behaviours Announcements Solicited or unsolicited presentation of on-topic information Queries Made By Others Information requests made by individuals that reflect others’ unasked questions. May not be directly observed Queries Taken Out of the Community Information requests made by community members, but not within the community itself. Cannot be directly observed within the context of the virtual community. Queries Presented to the Community Information requests made by community members directly to the rest of the community. Directed Group Projects Posts related to collaborative development of community information resources. Table 2.2 Typology of information exchange in virtual communities (Burnett and Buerkle 2004)
75
Non-Interactive Behaviours Interactive Behaviours
(Lurking, invisible behaviour) Hostile Interactive Behaviours Collaborative Interactive Behaviours
(Flaming/Trolling, Spamming, Cyber-Rape) (Behaviours not oriented toward Information, including Neutral Behaviours, Humorous and Empathetic Behaviours)
While it is easier to identify the trolls who are new to the board, regular Board members keep up with each other’s lives, swapping news forum members also actively participate in both trolling and flaming each about their daily activities, jobs and partners. They also provide Lurkers are not visible to the forum other and new forum members. Forum posters are not encouraged to ignore emotional support to each other both in the synchronous forum and members unless they log into the forum flamers but actively encouraged instead to flame in response. Excessive the asynchronous chatroom. Political views are exchanged and choose to make themselves visible as flaming (e.g. death threats) is controlled by the moderators. (although this sometimes drifts into a flame war) and forum online to other forum members. members discuss books, films and places they have visited. There Spam is deleted by the moderators, although occasionally, if forum are several long-running humorous (joke) threads and a few in- members have responded to it, their responses and the original content jokes which are understood only by the long-term forum members. remain on the board but the spammer’s username and account are Private messages are a method of making deactivated. information requests or having Information-Oriented Behaviours discussions with the individual forum (Announcements, Queries Made By Others, Queries Taken Out of members which are not visible to other the Community, Queries Presented to the Community, Directed forum members. Similar to e-mails, these Group Projects) private messages take the conversation out of the virtual community.
Information orientated behaviour includes announcements about face-to-face meetings and news programmes which might be of interest to the forum, in particular appearances by Robert Young Pelton. There are requests for information about locations, gear to
take travelling, finding jobs and working in dangerous places. Information and links to on- and off-line information which may be of interest to the forum members are often posted in response to requests for information.
Table 2.3 BFC posters’ online behaviour mapped on to Burnett and Buerkle (2004)
76
2.12 Online identity
Online participants are able to portray themselves in a variety of ways; they can change their online age, personality, appearance and gender (Suler 2002). The information presented online (personal details, username, avatar, signatures, etc.) is all part of online identity management (Suler 2002). The presentation of self is not necessarily hampered by cyberspace (Lee 2005) but different mechanisms (avatars, signatures and usernames) are used to present a person online. Participants in online environments use small clues to build a picture of a poster by activating stereotypical responses to signs of social status (Mann and Stewart 2000) and the participant observer must navigate these stereotypes in her own presentation of online self. Within an asynchronous forum based on phpBB software, text is the main medium to create and portray an individual’s identity online. It is used for the username and signature and on a descriptive message. Digital writing can provide challenges in interpreting online communication when variations on standard punctuation, some forms of eccentric spelling, abbreviations for common phrases, asterisks and the use of all upper case or all lower case letters are all used to convey feelings (Danet 2001). For this reason, the quotations and usernames from the forum are presented exactly as they appear on the forum, without adding capital letters or correcting spelling, etc. As the BFC is a text-based forum, the use of images is limited to a small avatar and a picture within a forum member’s signature. Signatures under posts can be used to provide real-life information about the poster or to show famous sayings and slogans (Lee 2005). The choice of a particular avatar is influenced by self-perception and the perception of others, as it provides a means whereby regulars identify, recognise and evaluate others (Nowak and Rauh 2005). Strategically chosen usernames, signatures and avatars can mark participants as in-group members and can be used to create a subculture (Williams 2006). At the Black Flag Café, new members choose their username when they register; they can then go on to add their own avatar and signature. 2.13 Avatars
Avatars are the pictorial representations used by posters within the forum to represent themselves. These can be varied and diverse: from “simple line drawings, cartoon characters to very complicated animated characters” (Nowak 2004, p.2). Some users regularly change their avatar depending on their mood, location or goal while others use one consistently recognisable image (Taylor 2002). Avatars are seen by other forum members as the source of the message and can be tailored to elicit a reaction or response (Nowak 2004). Similarly to
77 other forums, in the Black Flag Café posters can link their username and profile to a particular graphical image but, unlike the animated avatar figures used in MUDS (multi-user real time virtual worlds), the images on the BFC forum are still images or animated cartoons. Avatars on the BFC must conform to technical limitations and may not be overtly pornographic in nature (although some naked pictures are permissible). 2.14 Usernames
Online usernames are chosen because they “invite certain associations and connotations in others” (Bechar-Israeli 2001, p.4), including belonging to a certain social group, an ethnic or cultural connotation, or the establishment of a particular identity. Online, the username becomes a form of identity and augments a person’s self-image. Choosing a username is an opportunity to reveal information about self. Thus usernames are felt to contain “purposeful clues as to the personality or identify the sender” (Heisler and Crabill 2006, p.5) and can offer insights into the user’s personality and gender and/or information about their lifestyle. Forum members who are regularly online have been found to identify greatly with their username, which becomes a component of self (Stommel 2007). 2.15 Signatures
The term signature is used within a forum to describe the statement and/or image which is attached at the end of each post by a user. The signature might be a slogan, a quote from favourite lyrics or a statement which reflects the user’s views (Bechar-Israeli 2001). The signature also presents a mechanism for image management (Rains 2006) as it provides a greater area for text than the username or avatar. Three examples of forum members’ avatars, profiles and signatures (and my own) are shown in Figure 2.9. The statement under the username defaults to BFCus Regularus after a hundred posts; changes can only be made by Kurt, who sometimes changes the statement without being asked.
78 Username el3so take this note over to that seven-year-old not a 10th level vice-president boy who is playing shirtless in his front yard. No, don't read it!
BFC Title
Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 3890 Location: not here Chimborazo Some people are like Slinkys. Not really BFCus Regularus good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs. Avatar
Joined: 15 Feb 2006 Posts: 1296 Location: Richmond, VA Signature (either ReptilianKittenEater picture or BFCus Regularus statement)
Joined: 25 Mar 2004 Posts: 1308 Location: St. Catharines, ON, Canada Vlindsay Academikus Seductresus Poster information (date of joining, number of posts and location)
Joined: 18 Aug 2005 Posts: 1189 Location: UK Figure 2.9 Examples of online profiles from BFC
79 2.16 Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the work of Robert Young Pelton and has examined the content of his most popular book (The World’s Most Dangerous Places), describing the book’s content and its entertaining narrative approach. It has considered how he uses his books, website and forum to promote the image that travelling to dangerous places is a positive, adventurous activity and not as risky as portrayed by other, more official sources of travel information. The chapter has shown why Robert Young Pelton has become the leader and unofficial spokesperson for this community and it has explored his relationship with the forum members. This chapter has provided background information on the context of the study. It has located the case studied, the Black Flag Café, within a place (online) and has described the context in which the participant observation and data collection took place. This chapter takes the opportunity to use the data gained from the participant-observation phase of the research (described in Chapter 3) to identify some of the features of the forum and to compare online behaviour within the Black Flag Café with that on other online forums. The more unusual aspects of the online life in the Back Flag Café are highlighted and the specific features which make the Black Flag Café different from other forums, for example the acceptance of trolling and flaming are identified. A typology of online behaviour was used to explore the behaviour of participants in the Black Flag Café and the importance of an individual’s personal online persona within a forum was established. The chapter has concluded by showing how forum members’ identities appear on the board and outlining how individual forum members manage their own online persona through the use of board features such as signatures, avatars and usernames.
80 3 Identifying a research method
3.1 Introduction
The associated literature identified an increasing surface-level interest in tourists who visit dangerous destinations. Developments in the field of dark and thanatourism placed these tourists at the darkest end of the tourism spectrum; or in some cases viewed them as more interested in the death and ghoulish aspects of this type of travel than the related tourist activity. These assumptions are based on only a small amount of second-hand evidence gathered mainly from journalists working in war zones. So far no one had fully investigated the phenomenon of danger tourism first hand, possibly because of the security risks associated with interviewing this type of tourist or because they are of no commercial value to the wider tourism industry. My original research proposal did not fully consider the potential issues involved in researching this hard-to-reach population; accordingly, the first part of this chapter charts how an appropriate research method was found and the issues that emerged during the process. The chapter also explores how access to and acceptance by the community was achieved. The ethical implications of the research are then considered. One section describes how research permission was obtained. The role of the gatekeeper (Robert Young Pelton) and key informants is discussed and how a range of ethical issues was considered, negotiated and implemented. 3.2 Finding a method
My original research proposal focused on tourists who visited Iraq and Afghanistan. I envisaged returning to Afghanistan to meet more of these tourists and interview them. The proposal therefore indicated fieldwork (Davies 1973) with tourists recruited locally in dangerous locations. This method would have ensured a small but valid sample of tourists (Johns and Lee-Ross 1998) who definitely travelled to dangerous places; it would have provided an opportunity to carry out qualitative interviews (Miles and Huberman 1994). While I was able to register for the PhD, some queries arose immediately over the exact nature of the research and its methodology. First, did this type of tourist really exist in sufficient numbers to create a phenomenon that could be studied? Secondly, I would need to find another way of carrying out the research as the university was unwilling to let me visit either Baghdad or Kabul, the dangerous places at that time, to look for people to interview. As a result, I first needed to prove that danger tourists existed in sufficient numbers to justify a study. Having identified the Internet as a way of locating subjects, I carried out a search using a number of key words including tourism, Iraq, Afghanistan. Through this search
81 I found a number of travel-related forums, including Polo’s Bastards, InfoHub, the Black Flag Café and the Lonely Planet forum Thorn Tree. I joined all of these and made an introductory post on each with an outline of my original research plans of meeting and interviewing tourists (vlindsay 2005). As I had never participated in an online forum before and was planning only to use the forums to confirm that this type of tourist existed and to find subjects to interview, I used my real name as my username and listed the university I was studying at. A number of people wrote to me about my research. The quality and usefulness of the respondents varied. Forums such as InfoHub produced no useful responses. Individual posters on the Thorn Tree Lonely Planet forum were the most responsive with several people contacting me by e-mail. Not all of them were tourists, however: some were Afghan travel agents; another was the owner of an Afghanistan travel forum called Kabul Caravan; others offered travel advice about moving to and living in Kabul or Baghdad. The response at Polo’s Bastards was helpful, with posters offering their e-mail addresses and contact details, although one poster noted that I had posted the same query on different travel sites and accused me of trolling Internet forums. The Black Flag Café responded rapidly and in a similar way to Polo’s Bastards. This was unsurprising as, at the time, many of the posters used both forums. I began to lurk on and read the two forums in greater detail. At a later stage I participated on the peripheries of both online communities on an ad hoc basis by making occasional tourism-related posts. The responses to these initial posts prompted concerns over estimating the population (currently unknown) and a reliable sample group of respondents (Crimp and Wright 1981). While a judgmental sampling process might have been used to identify participants in danger tourism, a quantitative Masters dissertation which had explored “new war tourism” (Grundon 2005) provided evidence that this might not be a reliable way forward; Grundon received only six replies to his adverts for participants, none of whom could truly be considered tourists and therefore relevant to his research. From the forum responses to my posts it became clear that these tourists were also spread across the world; if face-to-face interviews were conducted only in the UK, this would have contributed to an unrepresentative sample group. At this point online research methods that might identify a more relevant sample were considered. Initially I explored online focus groups (Stewart and Williams 2005) and online interviews (Kivits 2005) as possible ways to take the research forward. Meanwhile, I intensified my participant-observation activities at the Black Flag Café and developed a deeper relationship with members of the online community. During this time, as I was becoming more involved with the two online forums, the Black Flag Café and Polo’s Bastards, big differences between them were becoming apparent. The latter was a dying
82 forum with few posts and little activity, while the community at the Black Flag Café was stable and even growing. As I became more involved with the Black Flag Café forum, I realised that I could use my involvement to undertake an investigation into the danger-tourism online community by analysing the forum and its participants. Since the use of the Black Flag Café emerged from investigations into the topic, my choice of this forum as the research site could be described as convenient. I selected it, from what appears to be a very small universe, because of its popularity which, I hoped, would allow access to a participating community of representative members that would accurately demonstrate the common behaviour of the greater community (Brewer 2000). By participating in the forum I was becoming part of the phenomenon being studied, locating myself in the observable setting (Koro-Ljungberg and Greckhamer 2005), so I looked towards the interpretive social sciences paradigm to guide my research. Under this paradigm, “reality is not simply observed but rather interpreted” (Corbetta 2003, p.21) and additional knowledge is gained through the comprehension (Verstehen) of the research subjects’ behaviour. As there is no separation between the researcher and the object of study, the relationship developed between the researcher and the researched can be an advantage. By putting myself in their place and developing my knowledge of their world, their individual and group behaviour, I would be able to seek meaning through understanding the subjects and their view of the world. Qualitative research methods involving participant observation focus on developing an interdependent relationship between the researcher and the object of study (Corbetta 2003), giving an emic character to the epistemological basis of the research within this paradigm, and thereby allowing data to be collected within the real-world setting (Jennings 2001). The original context and setting are taken into consideration during analysis and interpretation (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995). 3.3 Undertaking Internet research
The Internet is a rich domain containing virtual communities that cover a wide range of interests and issues. It can be used to research and understand “secretive, illicit social activities and to access groups who are hard to locate and engage” (Sanders 2005, p.67). My use of an online forum also ensured a wider geographical spread than would have been practicable with face-to-face interviews. The comment made by Kramarae (1995) that “in cyber space nothing has been done before” (p.15) still holds true at many different levels as the Internet is constantly changing shape; research methods must adapt accordingly (Garcia et al. 2009). Mann and Stewart (2000) observed that “because online research practice is still in its infancy, the critical researcher will be confronted by quandaries at almost every point in the research process”
83 (p.47) since precedents regarding methodology and ethical frameworks are only now being set (Markham 2005). Currently, Internet researchers are applying traditional and recognisable research methods innovatively to the online environment (Hine 2008) in the main, rather than focusing on the development of entirely new methods. While Internet research is tied to the methodology of existing research, there is “considerable anxiety about just how far existing tried and tested research methods are appropriate for technology mediated interactions” (Hine 2005b, p.1); difficulties with existing methodological and ethical frameworks to online research and lessons on how to apply them must be resolved by drawing from specific cases, previous examples and anthropological thinking (Hine 2008). Although the methods of data collection, sampling and analysis vary from study to study, researchers have been able to perform both quantitative and qualitative analysis of their data using interpretative methods (Krippendorff 2004). This small number of specialist studies is used, adapted and drawn on for methodological advice and guidance. 3.4 Ethnography
Through my participation in the online forum I was becoming an accepted member of the community and involved on a regular basis in the subjects’ lives. Dewalt and Dewalt (2002) describe participant observation as “a method in which a researcher takes part in the daily activities, rituals, interactions and events of a group of people” (2002, p.1). It is widely employed in ethnographic research and can be used, together with other qualitative methods, to help understand the nature of a phenomenon. Key elements of participant observation include learning and using the local language, participating in routine daily conversation and extraordinary events, informal observation and the use of tacit and explicit information during analysis and writing (Dewalt and Dewalt 2002). Hine (2005a) observed that qualitative research is “dependent on the achievement of trusting relationships with informants” (p.17) to inform an ethnography. Ethnography allows the investigation of “the physical, socio-political, personal, cultural and historical aspects” (Sarantakos 1993, p.195) of people’s lives, including in-depth study of a small group. Historically used to focus on a native population or tribe, it was developed through the Chicago School to enable the study of subcultures within the public domain (Silverman 1993). Descriptive ethnographic research aims to “describe research trends in the area of study” (Sarantakos 1993, p.195) by applying a range of different research methods including observation, participant observation and the study of written texts and records (Silverman 1993). Through ethnographic participant observation, the researcher is able to gain first-hand information via direct contact with the research subjects and research environment. As ethnographic research can be employed to explore social phenomena,
84 using unstructured data within a case-study environment (Atkinson and Hammersley 1994), I sought to apply the traditional methods of ethnography to an online environment by undertaking a virtual or Internet ethnography. 3.5 Virtual ethnography
Known under a variety of different terms, the application of ethnographic methods to online environments began in the mid-1990s (Hine 2008). “Cyber-ethnography” described studies into virtual communities which applied traditional methods of social science research to online environments (Ward 1999; Catterall and Maclaran 2001). Online communities and specific areas of cyberculture have been explored under the rubric of anthropology (Escobar 1994; Wilson and Peterson 2002) and the term “netnography” has been used to describe market research carried out with online communities (Kozinets 2000). Kozinets (2010) has since developed his term “netnography” to encompass the study of all online communities. This work might therefore also be classified as a “netnography”, defined as ”participant- observational research based in online fieldwork” (p.60), which, like traditional ethnography, extends organically to include other research methods. This broader use of Kozinets’ term “netnography” has, however, not become generally accepted as “virtual ethnography” is more widely used for studies of non-commercial Internet communities. Since this research was developed under the designation of virtual ethnography and the work has little to do with the marketing-led focus which “netnography” is understood to represent, “virtual ethnography” is used. There are, however, no discernible differences between virtual ethnography as used by the majority of authors and Kozinets’ newer term, which has yet to gain currency within the field. The method of virtual ethnography was identified by Ruhleder (2000) as an ethnographer working within a virtual space by adapting traditional field methods to the setting. Hine (2000) used the term to describe a research method which had adapted ethnography to suit the online environment and it has since been applied to the methodology used in a number of studies exploring online communities (McLelland 2002; Yu-Wei 2006). The related methodological terms have been adapted to describe the online researcher’s use of a range of ethnographic methods including “virtual participant, virtual interviews, virtual respondents and virtual ethnographers” (O'Reilly 2009, p.214). A virtual ethnography indicates the study of an online environment or community (Rheingold 1993). It involves learning “through immersion, supported by more systematic forms of enquiry” (Hine 2008, p.259) such as the application of traditional ethnographic approaches to the online site. In a virtual ethnography the online site is the fieldwork location, the posts a form of documentation and the posters’ online behaviour the observed interactive
85 behaviour. Online ethnography is similar in many ways to off-line ethnography (Sveningsson 2004; Sveningsson Elm 2009). During its development, however, Thomsen et al. (1998) identified a number of areas in which online ethnography required a different approach in order to ensure depth of analysis. These differences include a prolonged period of participant observation, allowing the online ethnographer to recognise group references and codes and to gain an understanding of social norms, and the difficulties in developing the community bonds which are required to access and gain the trust of a closely guarded online community. Since their original research, a small number of niche online communities and online environments have been explored (Kendall 2002; Uca 2004; Monaghan 2005), but the methodology continues to develop, with each author identifying the issues and best way forward for their own particular online environment (Hine 2008). While it is easy to “hang around” in the online world by lurking (Mann and Stewart 2000), researchers often have to move from lurker to active membership of the group in order to gain acceptance and not be seen as an outsider. Achieving insider status requires not only superficial posts and interaction with other newbies but participation in chatrooms and mastering the unwritten rules (Hodkinson 2002) of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Mann and Stewart (2000) state that the “rules of netiquette will inevitability differ depending upon the forum” (p.59) and so a number of authors (Rinalidi 1998; Brem 2002; Orgad 2005; Sanders 2005) recommend a period of lurking in forums before posting, or before beginning any research, and that a qualitative researcher who works online must become “skilled at making and sustaining relationships online” (p.17). Participant observation is particularly important within special interest groups since legitimacy needs to be established if the group is to accept the new forum member (Galegher et al. 1998). 3.6 Gaining access
Although the Black Flag Café forum is open to the public, the nature of the board is one of suspicion, and the community is closed towards outsiders. Unlike some other forums, for example the Pro-Anorexia forum, which posts warnings to researchers and members of the press that they are not welcome on the site (Buchanan 2004), the Black Flag Café does not actively discourage researchers or journalists from accessing the forum. Nevertheless, long- standing regular forum members are suspicious of researchers and journalists after data from the forum was used by a journalist, without permission, to portray them in what they perceived as an unflattering way: as sensation-seeking ghouls. Forum members expect researchers and journalists to establish their credentials and gain the trust of the group by entering into their inner circle before taking their research forward. None, however, has done this so far. In fact Adams (2006), who used an unauthorised quote from what is obviously a
86 first-time poster on the board, provides a good example of why the board members feel their views are misrepresented by academics and the press. An example of how journalists and researchers are treated by the forum members can be seen in one moderator’s response to a journalist’s request for interviewees:
trust in the fact that most of the people you seek on this
board will go out of their way to fly to London and
throw you out of a window if you fuck them about
coldharvest in “TV Documentary” 24 October 2007
Guimarães Jr (2005) suggests that a cyber-cycle equivalent of over one year is the minimum time required to understand an online environment. The Black Flag Café does not really have a cyber-cycle as such as there is no end point to their activities. I undertook overt participant observation of the forum for over two years before beginning any official data collection. This allowed me to establish my credentials (Etzioni and Etzioni 1999; Kendall 1999; Orgad 2005) and become integrated and accepted into the community. I joined the BFC in 2005 and have been participating in forum discussions and online chats in an overt, transparent way since then. As mentioned by Brewer (2000), participant observation requires an enormous time commitment to the field and I spent a significant amount of time establishing and maintaining my presence within the forum. During my time online I have interacted with the forum members by making asynchronous forum posts and by sending and responding to private messages; I have assisted forum members with research (either into destinations or by obtaining academic articles for them) and participated in synchronous chat at various times of the day and night to ensure that I covered a range of different forum members from around the world. I have also attended a number of face-to-face meetings in the UK (including four Christmas parties and two meetings with individual forum members visiting the UK) and met a forum member in France. I have travelled to two meetings in the USA (one for Thanksgiving and the other a Gun Show) and have also participated in the BFC spin-off Facebook group. When I was on the forum carrying out research, the other forum members could tell I was online because the “Who’s online now” function on the website lists the board members who are logged on. My posts could be clearly identified by my username and avatar (Rutter and Smith 2005). In case of confusion I used the same username and/or avatar for all online activities that might relate to the Black Flag Café, including Polo’s Bastards, Thorn Tree, MySpace and Facebook. It later transpired that the use of my own name for a username was
87 helpful in gaining the trust of forum members who knew that I was researching tourism to dangerous places. The fact that I was willing to provide details of my research, and that I had taken an extended time to become a member of the community, meant that my work was treated with more respect than those people who posted once on the forum advertising for people to be interviewed for television programmes or newspaper articles. This meant that obtaining access to the forum data and participants was not as difficult as it might have been. 3.7 Participating online
After joining the Black Flag Café as a forum member, I attempted to follow the different forums on the board. The Black Flag Café is a swift-moving forum with many regular posters, some of whom have been members since the forum was first created in 1996. For visitor numbers it is ranked within the top 175,000 sites throughout the Internet (121,000 in the USA). There are over 97,649 individual visitors to the forum each month, 31% of whom are return visitors (Alexa the Web Information Company 2008; Google Analytics 2008). At first I would wait for the perfect moment to post, often at the end of a thread, and I would only post factual information on the forums. Over time I disclosed more information about myself and my life. As posters already knew my name and occupation from my first post I happily discussed my life in work-related topics like “returning to school in 20 days” and contributed to other threads that related directly to travelling. Following the example set by other posters, and to become part of the site, I uploaded an avatar (Figure 3.1), which I felt both represented me and my research, and fitted well with the forum. The use of an avatar within the forum is similar to that described by Goffman (1989) as changing costume in order to mix at the research site.
Figure 3.1 Avatar used on all research-related Internet pages
88 3.8 Being online
Insider status is gained by penetrating the community and understanding the values and social norms of the subculture. When considering researchers’ online identities, Mann and Stewart (2000) recognised that “even when researchers are attempting to be as authentic as possible in their presentation of self, they still face ethical decisions regarding the amount of information about themselves that they should make known to participants” (p.58). Research suggests that online participants are more likely to give research permission, and divulge information, if they feel comfortable with the researcher (Hine 2000; Kivits 2005; Orgad 2005). In order to gain access to online communities Mann and Stewart (2000) advise the researcher to create an online persona with whom the participants will feel comfortable by reflecting the participants’ desires but not necessarily the truth about the researcher. This method is considered by some to be unethical, however (Kivits 2005; Orgad 2005), and may result in misleading data or participants who feel duped or violated (Van Gelder 1991). Another method of integration into the forum is to offer photographs and personal details to the online community so that they are able to visualise and empathise with the researcher. It is thought that this mutual disclosure will then establish trust and encourage reciprocity from the participants (Cutler 1995; Parks and Floyd 1996). I needed to provide sufficient personal information and details to establish trust and links within the community but had to be aware that the disclosure of personal information over the Internet can result in a number of different risk issues (Spender 1995), particularly because female researchers may face negative repercussions in largely male-dominated, aggressive and anonymous online communities. To prevent cyber-stalking, “harassment or unwelcome contact” (Kerbs 2005, p.542), Kerbs recommends limiting “the release of personal information when communicating in online forums” (p.544). This directly contradicts other advice (Hine 2000; Kivits 2005; Orgad 2005) recommending the disclosure of information such as location, age and marital status. I chose to limit my disclosure of personal information and did not post or allow pictures of me (from BFC meetings) to be posted on the forum for the duration of the research. I relied instead on written text, private messages, synchronous chat and face-to-face meetings to establish rapport within the community. I know that after several face-to-face meets I was discussed by forum members in chat and private messages. During the research I did not attract any cyber-stalkers. After a hundred posts on the Black Flag Café, I earned the title of BFCus Regularus. This title is attributed to all posters who can be considered regulars on BFC. Although the upgrade to “BFCus Regularus” happens automatically, other title changes (for example Ultra Swain: Snappyus Answerus; Mikethehack: Pimpmasterus Generalismus) can only be made
89 by the head moderator. Some title changes are requested by the posters, others he changes himself without request. After meeting me at one of the BFC get-togethers in the USA, about half way into my research, he changed my title to “Academikus Seductresus”. During 2007 I was asked to become a moderator (I would have been the first female moderator on the forum). I declined this offer as it would have allowed me access to the personal information of the forum participants and might have been deemed unethical by the participants. These events provided signs that I had become an accepted member of the community, able to joke with fellow participants, follow their conversations and respond emphatically to their world (Goffman 1989). In addition to learning the terminology such as BFC, CBA, DP, RYP, Flagger, WMDP and Mr DP, another major aspect of integrating into the forum involved learning how to deal with the aggressive nature of the posters and the mature nature of the forum content. Posts on the forum can include pictures of violence, dead and dying people, and explicit sexual stories including rape. The majority of posters are male, and swearing, flame wars and trolling are natural parts of the forum. For the uninitiated, these flame wars can be offensive as the language used is violent and aggressive in nature. Although moderators request posters not to promote violence to women on the forum, female posters are flamed and trolled in exactly the same way as male posters, particularly when they are new or if the poster’s gender is not always clear to the other forum members. Understanding the forum took time and there was an element of culture shock over the forum content and participants’ behaviour (Dewalt and Dewalt 2002). The nature of an online forum allows one to quickly exit the field setting when feeling uncomfortable, although this is a strategy that worked only during synchronous communication (for example chat conversations where conversation moved to focus on porn sites) and did not obviate the need to read the forum message content during data analysis. Penetrating, establishing rapport and gaining status within the community can present difficulties (Dewalt and Dewalt 2002), particularly in a closed special interest group where a new forum member needs legitimacy to be accepted (Galegher et al. 1998). New posters at the Black Flag Café are often tested to establish their credentials. A researcher must therefore achieve status and kudos within the community in order to gain participants’ trust. The prolonged period of participant observation (over four years including during data collection and analysis) provided a number of opportunities for me to establish myself. One such key moment was a post by Robert Young Pelton (screen username RYP) in response to a discussion on guide books to Afghanistan:
90 vlindsay: I also have a pre Taliban tourist guide book
published by the Afghan Tourism Ministry, it has been
amended by someone during Taliban times with
renamings and crossings out.
RYP: So many books...and no trip to Afghanistan?? The
best single book was the Dupree book written with that
anal retentiveness that only bored academic spouses can
muster.
vlindsay: Who said I hadnʹt been to Afghanistan? ‐ I
was there in 2003 during the Loya Jirga ‐ without a
guide book
RYP: My apologies... I was there then as well. It was
the first time I was there and no one was killing each
other.
Afghanistan: The Dupree Book Online! Thread
3.9 Difficulties
Although Jarvie (1969) argues that it is unlikely that the participant-observation researcher could ever become a “full member of the society he studies” (p.506), it is apparent from my interactions with BFC forum members that not all of them are fully aware that my main reason for being on the board was to conduct research. As a result of this, and the amount of time spent integrating myself into the community, I find that I am treated like other forum members: being flamed and spoken to in the same way as other posters. Kerr and Hiltz (1982) note two main dangers in computer-mediated participant observation: going native and role conflict. The fact that I had visited Afghanistan assisted in establishing credibility but it also increased the risk of going native, which is defined generally as when a researcher “identif[ies] so closely with one’s subjects [that one] inadvertently skews his description and analysis of the world being portrayed” (Monti 1992, p.326). Within computer-mediated
91 communication, going native is described as “involving oneself in the group to the extent that objectivity is lost” (Paccagnella 1997, p.6) to the point of negatively influencing behaviour both in the field and in data analysis (Monti 1992). Within an online forum it is difficult to distinguish between participating and becoming the phenomenon studied (Jorgensen 1989), as the researcher’s actions cannot be removed from the field without removing meaning from the data (Tedlock 1991). Although a period of active participation (Adler and Adler 1987) was required to gain full membership of the group, this did not correspond with an equivalent emotional or physical involvement, so objectivity was maintained. Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) suggested that the researcher should attempt to become a marginal native. The nature of the research (periods of participant observation followed by data collection and analysis) meant that my participation in the forum could be scaled down during certain phases of the research, allowing me to step back from the forum and its participants to take a more dispassionate view. Role conflict is described as the conflict between the goals of the group and those of the research or researcher (Kerr and Hiltz 1982) and the potential for ethical conflicts between the group’s possibly illegal activities and the views of the researcher (Lee 1993). The subject of distressing and illegal activities is explored in Section 3.12.4. The development of a research protocol (Appendix 12.1), which ensured a professional as opposed to deeply personal involvement within the forum, also assisted me in maintaining my distance from the forum members. 3.10 Obtaining permission
Undertaking participant observation on the forum enabled me to become an accepted member of the forum and to understand the Black Flag Café’s dynamics. In the process, I became keenly aware that forum members had been annoyed when they felt they had been portrayed unfairly by researchers and journalists who had used the forum for quotations and to carry out research without either alerting the forum members to their intentions or taking the time to understand fully the forum and its dynamics. I was conscious that, as well as the normal ethical issues involved in social science research, I would have to consider a range of additional factors relating specifically to working online. Although the forum is in the public domain, the posters regard the forum, and its content, as being owned by Robert Young Pelton. Due to the closed nature of the forum, research needed to be progressed carefully so as not to harm, impinge on and/or upset the forum participants. Since I was already an established member of the BFC when I began to negotiate research access to the forum, it was a simple matter to contact the forum’s owner.
92 My active membership over several years created some trust in the authenticity of my approach and made the subsequent negotiations easier. I contacted him directly by private message on 2 April 2007. My initial query centred on gaining research permission to analyse the forum posts. He agreed to allow full access to the BFC data and to facilitate the research (Robert Young Pelton, personal communication, 18 June 2007). 3.11 Using informants
Following my first contact with him, Robert Young Pelton has become a key informant. Our relationship has developed into one in which a wide range of topics are discussed. Informants can take on a number of different roles: as gatekeepers and facilitators for the researcher to gain access to the site, people who provide additional insights into the topic through formal or informal interviews, and as respondents (Johnson 1990). Robert Young Pelton can be described as a “gatekeeper and powerful figure in the field” (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995, p.133) and at one time or another during the research he took on all of the possible informant roles described by Johnson. Our correspondence, which moved from private messaging to e-mails, is a two-way discussion resembling a long e-mail interview. He has recommended books which cover related (and on occasion non-related) topics. We have discussed the terms danger and war tourism, which countries might be considered dangerous places, thrill seeking, his books and media appearances and his approach to his work. We have sent each other material relating to travelling to dangerous places and met face to face on three occasions when he was visiting the UK. I have spent considerable time corresponding with RYP, following up his suggestions for areas of further research or books (some useful and some ultimately irrelevant), justifying my views and approach to the research topic and following up on topics and interests he mentioned to ensure that he felt comfortable with my use of the forum data and his posts and making the case for my approach when we did not agree. The second informant, Kurt, the head moderator of the Black Flag Café, was nominated by Robert Young Pelton on account of his technical knowledge and daily interaction with the forum. He became an adviser for the technical aspects of the research and also acted as a respondent through his posts on the forum. As a method of respondent validation, six additional informants were used to verify the research findings. These people were selected for their spread of locations, knowledge of the forum, time spent on the forum and the fact that they definitely travelled to dangerous places.
93 3.12 Ethical negotiations
After giving research permission in 2007, Robert Young Pelton delegated all practical issues relating to the research to his head moderator, Kurt. As a member of the Black Flag Café since 2001 and its head moderator since 2004, Kurt has extensive knowledge of both the forum members, many of whom he has met face to face, and the technical aspects of the forum. He became the second key informant in the research, establishing a research protocol and negotiating the ethical approach and aspects of the research. He concentrated on the technical aspects of the forum, the negotiation of ethical agreements, research permissions and the terms of use of research findings. As a volunteer moderator this work added a substantial burden to his role. He admitted that his previous experiences of researchers and journalists accessing the forum without authorisation, and the disquiet and anger that this had caused among forum members, meant that he was not favourably disposed towards the research. After extensive time spent exploring with Kurt the research boundaries and building trust (including e-mail conversations, Skype calls and eventually a face-to-face meeting), agreement was reached over the ethical boundaries of the research. We discussed a number of issues relating to the use of the forum data. Although discussions were initially very formal, because Kurt was sceptical about both the researcher and research topic, he became increasingly involved and eventually provided technical expertise relating to possible data- collection methods and also assistance with trying out different methods including mirroring and data mining. The Internet is still considered a new source for the collection of data so the ethical requirements have not yet been fixed (Markham and Baym 2008). Precedents and previous research are therefore used to provide guidance. One of the first investigations of Internet research (Jones 1994) examined the difficulties of applying both the Nuremberg code and the US guidelines, the Belmont Principles, to human research in cyberspace: he considered these codes a poor fit when applied to electronic communications. He observed that simply applying existing ethical frameworks to online communication would “alter the social behaviour we wish to observe, record and understand” (p.34). He regards the distinction between public and private communications, and therefore an individual’s right to privacy and the need for informed consent, as crucial in the ethics of Internet research. Legislation provides guidelines for private spaces, such as e-mails and chatrooms, but the end users are often unclear as to where the distinction between public and private is drawn and as to who has access to their private information. Jones (1994) considers informed consent within online groups and concludes that, in cases where minimum risk to the subject is involved,
94 informed consent is not required since the identity of online subjects already provides anonymity and privacy if the participants wish. Since these guidelines were issued, the ethical aspects of Internet research continue to be debated but as yet no firmer guidelines have yet been produced. Currently, discussions are focused on concerns grouped around the different types of Internet research being undertaken. Ethical discussions relating to virtual ethnography mirror those identified by Jones and include participant risk, confidentiality, informed consent, legal requirements and maintaining sensitivity to the online context (Eynon et al. 2008). In addition to standard ethical problems, the global scope of the Internet can raise a number of different cross-cultural ethical issues in global online forums. Ess (2002), writing on behalf of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), lists a number of issues to be explored when undertaking Internet research; these include the online venue and environment, the legal considerations and the assumptions of the subjects being studied. 3.12.1 Regulations / legislation
In order to ensure the correct ethical approach for the participants involved in this research, I have normally, and wherever appropriate, adhered to the ethical regulations. These formal guidelines are, however, often difficult to apply in an online environment. Guidelines considered during this research include the Bournemouth University policy (2004), which provides guidance on the general research ethics to be followed and states that “every effort must be made to assure the protection of research participants against physical, mental, emotional or social injury” (p.8). Many of the ethical guidelines and precedents for Internet research are drawn from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), who describe their guidelines as suggestions that will help to resolve ethical issues associated with Internet research and not as recipes to be followed exactly. The main ethical requirements are related to the expectations of online participants and how they perceive their privacy while on the Internet (Ess 2002). 3.12.2 Informed consent / perceived privacy
Brem (2002) examined the ethical perspectives of analysing asynchronous online discussions and surveyed a number of different areas specific to this research, including public access to forum data, copyright and the ownership of data, and informed consent. She offers the view that communications in the public domain are considered exempt under US Federal guidelines, although, in order to adhere to the US copyright laws, permission must be obtained for extended quotes. In cases where it is not possible to obtain informed consent from all participants, specialist advice should be obtained. “Individual consent may be unnecessary for some research activities, which may be considered unobtrusive, for example
95 studies involving observation of public behaviour” (Bournemouth University 2004, p.12), and this can be interpreted as meaning that individual informed consent is not required, since the Internet is classified as in the public domain. The policy then goes on, however, to state that that an individual’s and group’s privacy must be considered and the right of privacy respected. Service providers can be held responsible for the content of the forums (Mann and Stewart 2000; Heidrich and Morris 2007). There are several different levels of privacy on the Internet. The different methods of communication methods available for use by online participants provide at least four different levels of privacy: public, semi-public, semi-private and private (Sveningsson Elm 2009). Ess (2002) considers a participant’s level of perceived privacy to be key in determining the levels of consent required. Wilkins (1991) approaches the collection of online data with the view that “anything posted to a publicly readable topic becomes public domain and can be used (ported, quoted, argued, flamed or ignored) by others so long as some form of authorship is cited, either by reference to note, number or name” (p.58). Rafaeli et al. (1997) use the same approach when deciding that permission need not be sought for the recording and analysis of publicly posted messages. In lieu of formal guidelines, most authors (King 1996; Ess 2002; Pollach 2005) suggest that Internet researchers should do nothing that “they would not want done to themselves” (p.125). He states that perceived privacy can vary from a high level, in which posters feel their posts are private and limited to other board members, to a low level, in which they are aware that messages are available to all members of the general public. He observes that some researchers feel that “all cyberspace postings are in the public domain” (p.124) but adds the caveat that in this case the feelings of the cyberspace group need to be taken into account and forum members’ perceived level of privacy is important. In addition, he considers the long-term impact that research can have on a community, both in regard to the final publications and to posters’ feelings while the research is undertaken. The AoIR states that “the greater the acknowledged publicity of the venue, the less obligation there may be to protect individual privacy, confidentiality, right to informed consent etc” (Ess 2002, p.5). As the archives of the Black Flag Café are publicly accessible, there is, according to AoIR, “less obligation to protect individual privacy” (p.7). It also recommends, however, that the specific expectations of the venue must be investigated. Within the Black Flag Café site the moderators often remind the participants that the site is in the public domain and therefore not private (Kurt, personal communication, 29 August 2007) and that private messages should be used for private correspondence and discussions which include sensitive information. Kurt provided several examples of forum members deleting previous posts or changing their usernames when they no longer wished information to be in the public domain (personal communication, 31 September 2007); he thinks the board members
96 are aware of the public nature of the forum. Even so, previous experience shows that they actively dislike the use of the forum’s content without their knowledge. Like other online communities, the Black Flag Café has a high turnover rate of forum members. Ess (2002) suggests that in such a case, rather than gaining informed consent from all participants, the permission of the forum owner or moderator may be sufficient. Reid (1996) states that informed consent is not required when non-reactively studying online communities and recommends deciding on informed consent after a period of participant observation. Other authors (Rinalidi 1998; Sanders 2005) agree with this statement or advise obtaining only the permission of the forum owner or moderator. Sveningsson (2004) notes the difficulty in obtaining informed consent from people who have left their tracks through online posts but not their contact details, or who are no longer part of the Internet community, and suggests that in these cases it “can therefore be considered appropriate to use the material gathered in those contexts without consent” (p.50). From these precedents the conclusion can be drawn that publicly accessible Internet communication sources such as bulletin boards and message forums do not require informed consent from each subject; instead, consent from the forum owners and moderator is sufficient. In the case of the Black Flag Café, permission and informed consent was obtained from the forum owner, which acted as informed consent on behalf of, and for, all forum participants. Age of consent proved difficult to establish. Within the USA, permission from a parent or guardian is required only if the online participant is under thirteen years of age. This is the point at which the Black Flag Café forum defaults to parental permission. It is not possible to know how many users under the age of thirteen have registered on the forum using false information or how many users are aged between thirteen and seventeen. The registration age limit does not stop posters lurking. During the research period no users under the age of thirteen were actively registered on the forum (Kurt, personal communication, 21 January 2008). 3.12.3 Use of pseudonyms
Another area in which ethical decisions must be made when writing up the research findings is the use of online usernames. Mann and Stewart (2000) state that the Data Protection Act provides a “common minimum standard of data privacy protection in Europe” (p.41) but the Black Flag Café is run by a Canadian company and web hosted in the USA. Kirsch et al. (1996) observe that there is no governing body to enforce privacy laws in the US as the Electronic Privacy Communications Act protects private electronic messages which would include e-mail and private messages but not data held on other areas of the Internet. Members of an Internet forum are anonymous by choice. If they wish other members of the
97 forum to be aware of their real names they have the option to populate their online profile with their personal information, location and links to their own websites, blogs and e-mail accounts. The Bournemouth University code does not provide guidelines on what to do if the participants are already anonymous within an online setting. Brem (2002) suggests that “usernames must be replaced with identifiers that provide no link to the actual participant” (p.2) but Sveningsson (2004) counters this by proposing that “if we are interested in understanding the culture of a specific Internet environment, we will perhaps have to keep usernames the way they are” (p.53). She adds that this is especially applicable if research interests are in issues of presentation of self, how people act and how they wish to be perceived by others. Ackeroyd (1991) considered the use of double pseudonyms for writing up online research and suggested that its “disguises, distortions, omissions and fabrications may affect features critical to the analysis and may create other problems of validity, reliability and replicability” (p.98). Sveningsson (2004) confirms this, describing “instances when changing names might affect data” (p.53), declares that “such a procedure would seriously affect the authenticity of data and thereby the quality of research” (p.53) and instead suggests measuring the benefits and risks in each individual case. The use of double pseudonyms was considered and discussed with the forum’s owner. It was decided that double pseudonyms would not be used because the nature of the online forum means that readers are able to search the forum either using an Internet-wide search engine or directly with the forum’s own search functions. Since the data can be directly tracked back to individual posters via a simple search, double pseudonyms are ineffective in protecting online posters (Allen 1996). Accordingly, it was felt that there was little value in attempting anonymity; to promise this to the forum members would be misleading. The only person whose real name appears in the research is the forum owner: Robert Young Pelton. 3.12.4 Distressing information
Online forums regularly use disclaimers. When registering, participants at the Black Flag Café must accept the following:
acknowledge that all posts made to these forums
express the views and opinions of the author and not
the administrators, moderators or webmaster (except for
posts by these people) and hence will not be held liable.
Registration statement (2007)
98 Within the forum, posters discuss topics which could be considered taboo or sensitive (Lee 1993) including violence, death, drugs, sex and sexual abuse. Among the posters there are people serving in the military, ex-offenders, posters with drug and alcohol problems, people working overseas as contractors (both security and administration) in areas where there is a high kidnap and hostage risk and a would-be (failed) presidential assassin. Although there has been no evidence of illegal activities (apart from drug taking) some posts could be considered offensive or disturbing. Stern (2003) examined the legal and ethical responsibilities of an online researcher when faced with distressing information such as “announcements of suicide intentions, descriptions of self-destructive behaviours such as self-mutilation or threats to kill, rape or maim another person(s)” (p.250). Addressing the conflict between freedom of speech and beneficence, Stern recommends that researchers who are studying deviant or high-risk populations should be aware that they are likely to encounter distressing information and that a plan should be developed to handle these distressing disclosures. Topics which might have been considered illegal or distressing encountered during the research include: pictures of dead bodies, posts in which forum members admit to rape, a thread title “Have you (or would you) ever purposely killed someone?” (Dogtanian 2006). There were discussions about weapons and drugs, two suicide notes, one suicide, two Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) confessions and a death threat. During discussions, it was decided that posts which were considered to contain distressing information would be pointed out to the moderators for further investigation and possible action (Kurt, personal communication, 29 August 2007). This process was inverted when the researcher was asked to comment on the seriousness of one thread in which a poster threatened to commit suicide by posting an online suicide letter. 3.12.5 Exit strategy
Non-virtual ethnography involves an exit strategy which requires the withdrawal from the field (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995). Virtual ethnography differs, however, in that the “research does not end with a neat and distinct ‘exit’ from the field” (Kendall 2004, p.132) as there is no natural end point to the participation in an online community. Instead, the end of the research provides little closure unless the researcher withdraws suddenly from the field. This is likely to prevent future access into the community, however, and possibly other similar virtual communities, since it would result in the loss of goodwill from the participants. I do not currently intend to leave the Black Flag Café forum as I plan to follow up other areas of research within the community.
99 3.12.6 Ethical agreement
In our discussions about researching the Black Flag Café, Kurt had two main concerns, focused on ensuring the smooth functioning and continuity of the forum while the research and, in particular, data collection was taking place, and avoiding any potential long-term negative impacts on the online community. King (1996), Reid (1996) Kendall (1999) and Walther (1999) all provided case studies in which research had caused conflict within online communities and we discussed their findings (Kurt, personal communication, 29 August 2007). Although he has had no formal ethics training, Kurt implemented a utilitarian approach to the research and its ethical issues similar to, but not identical with, those used in computer studies (Johnson and Nissenbaum 1994). He assessed the ethical issues as if he “would become one of the affected parties” (Johnson and Nissenbaum 1994, p.45). This was particularly relevant as Kurt has been a Black Flag Café forum member since 2001 and has also travelled to dangerous places and so his posts would be among those analysed. In particular Kurt wished to avoid repercussions within the site about personal involvement in the research (Walther 1999) and saw limiting the option of individual consent as a way of controlling this. Another major concern linked to this decision was identified by Robert Young Pelton (personal communication, 18 June 2007) as well as Kurt; they both wanted to avoid any possibility of forum members spoiling the continuity of the board by deleting or editing their original posts following a research announcement. After considering the information provided it was decided that:
As the forum was in the public domain, and the forum owner had authorised the research, forum members were not to be given the option of opting out of the research or to be asked for their individual informed consent.
The original permission from Robert Young Pelton stipulated that no real names apart from his own must be used. The use of double pseudonyms was discussed but it was felt that the usernames and avatars of the community were an important part of the research and that the use of double pseudonyms would be counter-productive to the research aims.
Distressing and illegal activities discussed on the board would be reported to Kurt.
Any cyber-stalking would be reported directly to Robert Young Pelton.
In order to provide reciprocity, a summary of the research findings would be published on the forum for participants to download and any journal articles would also be made available to the long-term forum members (Kurt, personal
100 communication, 29 August 2007). Following a conference in 2008 (Lindsay et al.), three forum members wrote to request a copy of the presentation. 3.13 Conclusion
The first part of this chapter explained why the Black Flag Café was chosen as the focus for this investigation into danger tourism. There was a need to find a way both to research travel to dangerous places without undertaking fieldwork in a dangerous location and to ensure a representative sample population. It has also described why using an online forum was seen as a way forward. The chapter has identified the issues involved in undertaking a virtual ethnography to research a particular online population, including gaining access to the population and becoming an accepted member of the community. It has also highlighted the need to balance a participant-observation role with establishing an online persona while trying not to attract unwanted attention in the form of cyber-stalking. The second section of this chapter described how research permission was obtained, outlined the ethical discussions with the forum owner and head moderator and detailed the ethical agreement that was implemented during the research.
101 4 Research framework
4.1 Introduction
Once the Black Flag Café had been identified as the data source and the ethical issues for undertaking online work considered, a method for extracting the relevant and appropriate data needed to be found. Online forums can be used for research in a number of different ways: at a surface level they can be used as a mechanism to recruit participants but other methods involve looking deeper into the content of a particular forum. In-depth analysis of a forum can provide a detailed picture of the values and views held by regular forum members and enable the researcher to ascertain their activities. This chapter describes the methods used by this study, out of a number of possibilities for detailed research on online forums, and the reasons these methods were selected. 4.2 Framework
The research proceeded through several different layers of data collection and analysis, from broad-based participant observation to ever more narrow and detailed qualitative research focusing on particular posters and threads of specific interest. Figure 4.1 shows how the different levels of research relate to each other and how they led into the written ethnography. Although participant observation is shown in the figure as the first stage it continued throughout the data-collection and analysis phases.
Ethnographic Analysis
Thread-level Analysis
Thread-level Content Analysis
Poster-level Descriptive Content Analysis
Forum-level Descriptive Content Analysis Participant Analysis Figure 4.1 Refining analysis
Figure 4.2 further breaks down this framework by showing how and when data collection and analysis was undertaken during the different stages of the research and how the results from each stage fed into the next.
102 Carry out qualitative analysis on threads relating to danger tourism
Data collection from Black Flag Café for six-month period Analysis of all threads; Identify hot threads and identify sample for posters within forums content analysis
Carry out descriptive content analysis, coding all sample threads for topic and poster information Identify posts relating to tourism
Cross-reference tourism threads with hot threads to identify hot tourism posters Carry out qualitative analysis on threads Key Word In Context relating to danger Analysis of posters’ socio-demographic analysis of tourism tourism information, usernames and choice of avatars threads and hot threads
Draw together multiple data sets
Check findings through respondent validity
Figure 4.2 Research framework
103 4.3 Content analysis
Participant observation is often used together with interviews or focus groups to analyse the online environment, but a number of other methods are available. For example, to “assess the characteristics or experiences of persons, groups or historical periods” (Neuendorf 2002, p.192), content analysis can be useful. In this research, a descriptive content analysis of the Black Flag Café forum was carried out alongside the participant observation to investigate the online community. Descriptive content analysis has previously been used for the analysis of Internet forums and is effectively applied to a “particular message pool” (Neuendorf 2002, p.53), where message characteristics can be examined. Krippendorff describes it as “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use’” (Krippendorff 2004, p.18). It is particularly useful in this study as it can “provide new insights and increase a researcher’s understanding of particular phenomena” (p.18). By applying content analysis to textual matter and any accompanying symbols, the researcher can single out message characteristics, themes and areas which are of concern or importance to the writers and readers of the analysed material, in this case the online forum. Content data analysis breaks down the research process into stages, “creating computable data from raw or unedited texts” (Krippendorff 2004, p.83). Once the data has been unitised, sampled, recorded, coded and reduced to manageable representations, it can be analysed, at which time “inferences appear in the analyst’s interpretations of the statistical findings’” (Krippendorff 2004, p.36). The content analysis of an online forum may be both quantitative and qualitative, with qualitative reading of text forming part of an ethnographic content-analysis approach. Despite the potential challenges of applying traditional content-analysis methods to the Internet, Weare and Lin (2000) observed that content analysis will continue to be the methodology used for such research. Recent studies of Internet communities (Ravert et al. 2004; Brewer et al. 2006; Chau and Xu 2007; Hinduja and Patchin 2007; Hughey 2008; Wang et al. 2008) have all used content analysis to explore online forums and their participants. While the methods of data collection and sampling vary from study to study, researchers were able to perform both quantitative and qualitative analysis of their data. According to Wang et al. (2008), content statistical analysis of the web forums can be undertaken at three different levels: forum, thread and member.
1. At forum level a broad overview of emerging themes is evident.
2. Thread-level analysis allows for forum topics to be coded for their dominant theme and then rated by frequency (Ravert et al. 2004; Brewer et al. 2006). Thread-level
104 analysis also identifies hot/influential threads based on the number of views and/or replies from the forum community. This data can then be used to produce a list of hot posters and threads.
3. Member- or poster-level analysis evaluates members by their posting rates and their participation in the forum, identifying members as initiators, active members or followers, and categorising newbies, lurkers and regular forum members.
In addition to the textual material which can be analysed for content, the other symbols and multimedia on the forum, including usernames and avatars, can be categorised and then analysed. Content analysis of the Black Flag Café was undertaken at these three different levels, as shown in Table 4.1
Identify hot threads
1 Forum level
Identify hot posters
2 Thread level Identify forum content
Social and demographic information about posters
3 Member level
Posters’ profiles
Table 4.1 Different levels of analysis within the forum 4.4 Types of data
The three separate approaches to data collection (participant observation, descriptive content analysis and qualitative data coding) entailed different methods of analysis at different stages of the study. A clear time-ordered approach to data collection and analysis was needed to ensure that each set of findings could inform the next stage of data collection. The participant observation informed the content analysis, which, in turn, ensured that the sampling process for the qualitative work was reliable. During analysis this approach, used together with the knowledge gained during participant observation, allowed the different concepts and theories to develop within the narratives and for the findings to reflect different realities (Brannen 1992). The use of different data-collection methods meant that multiple data sets were created. The links between the evidence collected, its source, the use made of it and the data set it created are shown in Table 4.2. During analysis these were interwoven to create an ethnographic text which was informed by the different data sets (Travers 2001).
105 Type of evidence Source Use Data set
Participant observation Black Flag Café online forum Guiding and informing literature review, data collection and analysis Ethnographic study of research setting Interpretation of data
Archival records BFC forum threads and posts Descriptive content analysis at different levels Identification of hot posters and posts
Sociocultural and demographic data on forum members
Data on topics of conversation within the forum
Exemplary and indicative quotations through pattern coding and analysis
Key Word in Context analysis to provide additional data set and supporting evidence from forum content Informants Robert Young Pelton Key informant – providing research permission and views on danger tourism Kurt (Head Moderator of Black Key informant – providing steer on ethical and Flag Café) technical issues
Forum members Commenting on findings to provide respondent validity
Table 4.2 Multiple data sets
106 4.5 Data collection
Since online data can be collected twenty-four hours a day from across the globe, the organisation of data collection presents fewer difficulties, in some respects, than arranging face-to-face interviews or focus groups. The collection of online multimedia data does, however, provide other data-collection challenges; a number of different methods for collecting the data from the Black Flag Café were attempted and discarded as inappropriate or unworkable before data was successfully collected. Initially the aim was to mirror the Black Flag Café site onto a hard drive. This would have provided a directly accessible copy of the forum, constantly available for research purposes. After the site had been mirrored I discovered that the mirrored site content was too large to access from a normal computer server; I had to abandon this method. Previous online studies (Chau and Xu 2007; Wang et al. 2008) had used web crawlers to harvest online information, in particular the Apache module mod_oai; after trials, however, I found that the selective data collection required by this method did not suit the parameters of the research as the words used by the web crawlers, e.g. danger and tourism, harvested too wide a range of data. Following these failed attempts, I tried out a method developed by Ravert et al. (2004). They had copied, pasted and then printed their online data manually by hand, moving it from the Internet into a text document for storage and further analysis. I found that this was the simplest and most effective method of data collection as the data could be collected easily and accurately within the technical constraints identified (large server, broad range of data) over a short time frame (forty-eight hours). A full copy of each relevant thread and all of the forum’s title and front pages, including the multimedia, were lifted from the site, pasted into a text file and printed. This provided a snapshot of forum activity over a six-month period from 10 May 2007 to 10 November 2007. Data collection was undertaken over a forty-eight-hour period, beginning with the most recent threads to minimise updates by forum members. During data collection and analysis forum posts were treated as online multimedia and copied into the text document in their entirety, together with the associated multimedia, including pictures, links to other websites and avatars. Paper copies of each post were then created. In order to maintain the original context an electronic copy of each web page containing links and images was kept. In addition, the live online Black Flag Café forum website is available on the Internet and the original threads can be seen and are also available for cross-referencing and making additional checks, although since data collection in 2007 forum members may have updated their personal details or changed their avatar.
107 A protocol document, including an overview of the online field procedures and data- collection methods, was developed for the collection and storage of online data, to enhance reliability. A case study database detailing the physical and electronic location of the data, its collection point and date, together with other relevant information, was also created (Yin 2003). This provides a chain of evidence from research questions to data collection and analysis and allows for individual data to be traced back through the research process to its origin. 4.6 Identifying dangerous places
In order to carry out the descriptive content analysis, I needed to identify all the forum threads relating to travelling to dangerous places. This required, in turn, a list of dangerous countries before coding could begin. I set out to compile a definitive list of destinations which were considered dangerous during the data collection’s six-month time frame (May–November 2007). The private security company, Control Risks Group, provided an initial list of extreme (2007a) and high-risk (2007b) destinations, assessed on their political, security, terrorism and travel situation. I then compared this group of destinations with the most recent edition of The World’s Most Dangerous Places (Pelton 2003) and found that as the book was written in 2002 and published in 2003 the danger star ratings for some countries were out of date. Following e-mail correspondence, Robert Young Pelton offered to update his danger ratings from the published list and also to provide up-to-date danger star ratings for the research time frame. The Robert Young Pelton and Control Risks Group lists were then compared with the FCO’s advisory list for the research period and all three sent to another private security company (Pilgrims Group 2007) for comment. The definitive list of dangerous destinations, specific to this research and drawn from a combination of these lists, can be found in Table 4.3. Some destinations which might appear to a lay person to be dangerous, for example Iran, have been omitted as the risk factors involved in a visit during that period were not high. Similarly, destinations (notably Jamaica and South Africa) where there were travel risks, but which are served by mainstream package holiday tour operators, have also been omitted as they are not perceived by the wider public to be truly dangerous.
108
Afghanistan Equatorial Guinea Pakistan
Algeria Eritrea Palestinian Territories
Angola Ethiopia Panama
Azerbaijan Georgia Papua New Guinea
Bangladesh Guatemala Philippines
Burma Haiti Saudi Arabia
Burundi Honduras Somalia
Cameroon Iraq Sudan
Central African Republic Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan
Chad Laos Uganda
Chechnya Lebanon/Israel Uzbekistan
Colombia Liberia Yemen
Congo (DRC) Nepal Zimbabwe
Cote d’Ivoire Niger
East Timor Nigeria
Ecuador North Korea
Table 4.3 List of dangerous destinations 4.7 Sampling
Given the size of the forum, it was important to identify the posts and posters which were relevant to the research. Relevance sampling is critical when there is a large amount of irrelevant data as is the case within electronic databases and the Internet (Krippendorff 2004). Krippendorff (2004) defines a sampling unit as one which is “distinguished for selective inclusion in an analysis” (p.98). He recommends that the researcher consider a sampling plan to limit the study to a manageable size because “content analysts are rarely interested in accurate representations of the textual universe; rather, their concern is that the texts of interest are relevant to the research question and help to answer it fairly” (Krippendorff 2004, p.113). This approach allows the relevant qualitative data to be selected in order to answer the research questions. I therefore developed a sampling plan, which provided a relevant sample of the texts. Within the online environment, a number of different methods have been used by previous researchers to select a representative sample of web forum content. Ravert et al. (2004) browsed the content line of each thread and then applied a set of research-specific rules to the message content in order to decide if the thread and its replies should be included in their
109 sample. Brewer et al. (2006) analysed all messages on relevant forums which were posted over a specific time frame. Owing to the high number of posts on the Black Flag Café forum and their variable relevance to the research topics, I chose the method developed by Ravert et al. (2004) to identify the sample group in combination with the time-frame approach used by Brewer et al. (2006). I estimated that a six-month period would provide a full cycle of forum activity. The entire forum for the six-month time frame was analysed to identify the relevance sample: each thread that had been posted on the Black Flag Café during the period was examined for relevance. If the thread fitted into one of the four broad descriptive code categories (Miles and Huberman 1994) I had developed during participant observation (Table 4.4), then I included the thread in the sample I would use for descriptive content analysis. From the initial 3701 threads started on the forum during the sample period I identified 746 for further analysis. This sampling method produced a selection of texts (forum threads) that could be considered the “population of relevant texts, excluding the textual units that do not possess relevant information’”(Krippendorff 2004, p.119).
Request, report or discussion about travel
Discussion relating to having an adventure
Discussion about Robert Young Pelton / the BFC community
Thread relating to misadventure or death
Table 4.4 Codes used to identify first sample group
A worked example of the Black Flag Café is shown in Figure 4.3. Those threads that relate to one of the five pattern codes listed above have been identified for inclusion in the sample and the other threads discarded as not relevant to the study.
110
Thread about working in dangerous places (Bear Thread about RYP Thread about travelling = Grylls is a TV adventurer) = publication translated into included in sample Thread about someone included in sample French = included in dying = included in sample sample
Thread containing a news Thread asking for article about Chinese aid information about aid Thread about BFC board in Congo = not included in work for a student essay upgrade = not included in sample = not included in sample sample
Figure 4.3 Screen shot of the Black Flag Cafe showing threads within the forum and their inclusion within the sample 4.8 Hot threads and posters
Alongside the relevance sampling, forum-level analysis to identify hot threads and posters was carried out. Identifying the hot posters was a way to pinpoint those who wielded influence on the board. Similarly, the hot threads showed which topics had a particular appeal to board members and provided an insight into their interests. Wang et al. (2008) used forum-level analysis to identify key members of the online community. Posting rates of individual members and the numbers of replies to their posts and views of their threads can be used to identify forum members’ roles within the community. This data does need,
111 however, to be interpreted within the context of the forum since some posts may attract attention because they provide entertainment, ask the community irrelevant questions or discuss or troll other board members. As Wang et al. (2008) did not specify a process for identifying hot threads or posters, I developed criteria for undertaking this work on the Black Flag Café. I examined all of the 3701 threads made within the six-month period and selected as potential hot threads those with over fifty replies or five hundred views. The information from these threads (title, number of replies, number of views and number of individual posters within each thread, with posters’ details) were entered into a spreadsheet which allowed the data to be manipulated, thereby establishing which threads – overall and within each of the Black Flag Café’s sub-forums – produced the highest number of views or replies and in turn discovering which posters, the hot posters, started these threads.
112 Total number of replies
Total number of views
Date of last post made on the thread and name of the most recent person to post on the thread
Figure 4.4 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café (Main forum) showing part of a page within the forum
Example potential hot thread based on number of views (NB: all threads displayed on this page are potential hot threads based on number of views – over 500)
Potential hot threads based on number of replies (over 50)
Figure 4.5 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café (Travel forum) showing hot threads
113 4.9 Identifying units for content analysis
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the forum content and also to find out, where possible, the social and demographic information on the forum, a descriptive content analysis was carried out. I coded the 746 threads collected during the relevance sampling for their content (topic) and poster information (demographic information, username and avatar). In content analysis, data is broken down into analysable units (sampling units, recording/coding units and context units). “Generally units are wholes that analysts distinguish and treat as independent elements” (Krippendorff 2004, p.97). They must be distinct, physically, conceptually or logically, and have specific boundaries, which do not overlap. Online data differ from traditional data because of the embedded multimedia and multiple web pages within the data set (Newhagen and Rafaeli 1996). When analysing an online website the sampling web pages, threads and individual units can be easily confused (Weare and Lin 2000) and subdivision needs to be carefully considered. A coding unit is defined as one which is distinguishable “for separate description, transcription, recording or coding” (Krippendorff 2004, p.99) and contained within the sampling unit. These are the units to which categories are allocated before analysis. In this research coding units were applied to usernames, avatars, locations and gender. Figure 4.6 shows how the different units were applied within the Black Flag Café forum. There are clear separations between threads and the individual posts (made after the thread has been started) that make up the thread. A thread is the online equivalent of a topic and the posts made within the thread the equivalent of individual comments about that topic. Figure 4.6 shows how the threads (topics) appear on the Black Flag Café and Figure 4.7 shows how when the thread is opened the individual posts (comments about the topic) can be seen. This divides units physically by thread (sampling unit) and individual posts (coding unit) and ensures that the original context of the text is maintained by applying natural units of separation.
114 Individual threads
Figure 4.6 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café showing threads
Posts made by separate posters on the thread: World’s Most Dangerous Airports
Figure 4.7 Screen shot of the Black Flag Café showing individual posts within a thread
115 Once the individual threads and posts within them had been identified, it was possible to code both the topic of the thread and the first poster’s information. Figure 4.8 shows how a thread was divided for coding and also identifies where the poster’s information was obtained. Sample Unit:(The thread that was posted):
The most dangerous place you’ve been to in the past year
Topic: RQTID (request travel information dangerous)
Date: 1 November 2007
Coding Units of poster’s information
Poster who started the thread: Sri Lanky
Avatar: None
Figure 4.8 Black Flag Café: example of units used for coding Location Real Place General
Gender: Male 4.10 Coding scheme
Krippendorff (2004) recommends that a structure is imposed “on the data making process so that the results are readily analyzable” (p.41). The ideal coding scheme to ensure the correct coding of data would be both exhaustive, representing all categories of the recording units, and mutually exclusive, providing clear distinctions to avoid overlap and coding indecisions (Neuendorf 2002). Weare and Lin (2000) observed that, when planning the coding of the sample units (threads) on the Internet, it is difficult to get accurate descriptive categories to code emerging themes as the individual posts within the forum threads may cover a very wide range of topics. Kerbel and Bloom (2005), who coded blogs, suggest that, in cases where threads have more than one theme and cover multiple topics, the dominant theme must be selected for coding and clear rules for this established beforehand. Berelson and Lazarsfeld (1948) suggested that category schemes be applied to each unit without exception through the use of a code book (Mayring 2000). From the codes, a code book of mutually exclusive codes was created. Themed content analysis lends itself to a coding decision scheme in which the data is examined step by step, reducing the number of alternatives in a systematic fashion (Krippendorff 2004). This provided a number of benefits, including minimising confusion over coding and clarifying
116 category meanings. A coding scheme was developed and the coded categories for this work were developed inductively from the literature review and from the knowledge gained during participant-observation stages (Mayring 2000). Krippendorff points out that “records are the most basic and explicit representations of the phenomena being analysed” (Krippendorff 2004, p.143). They should contain administrative information, information on the organisation and source of the records, and information on the phenomena of interest. For this research I created a record sheet shown in Figure 4.9. Record sheets were completed manually by hand and compiled using Excel. The coding scheme I developed (using a code book and record sheet) allowed me to code the sample threads and record topic, poster’s details, including their username, location, gender (when known to either the researcher or forum moderator), and type of avatar used. The coding scheme developed for the content analysis is shown in Table 4.5. I ran a trial of the initial coding categories on fifty threads, and then made some amendments to the codes to better reflect the data. These changes included the addition of two topic categories: TRAV HEA (travel health) and DISS BFC (a general discussion about the online community) and, in the avatar coding, the merging of two categories (human self and famous humans into human) and the addition of a category called animal. After making the amendments to the code book, I analysed the remaining posts. An assessment of the reliability of the coding method can be found in Chapter 5.
117
Record Number Thread Date
Recording Unit Location Poster Name
Thread title
REQ TRAV INFO GEN RQTIG Username
REP TRAV INFO GEN RPTIG TRAVEL RELATED TRAV
REQ TRAV INFO DANG RQTID JOB RELATED JOB
REP TRAV INFO DANG RPTID REAL NAME NAME
DISS WORK DP DWDP FANTASY FANT
HAVE ADV DP HADP ANIMAL ANIMAL
QUEST RYP VIEW QRYPV COOL SOUNDING COOL
SELF PROM RYP SPRYP RANDOM RANDOM
QUEST DP GEAR QDPG Avatar
CHAT CHAT HUMAN SELF/OTHER HUM SELF
QUERY VAL RYP/BFC QV HUMAN FAMOUS HUM FAM
BFC MEET BFCM CARTOON CAR
DEATH DEA PICTURE OF PLACE/LOCATION RLOC
KID/HOST KIHO WRITTEN STATEMENT WRIT
QUEST KIT DP QKDP ANIMAL ANI
HEALTH HEA OTHER OTH
OTHER OTH Gender Location MALE M RPG REAL PLACE GENERAL FEMALE F
REAL DP RDP UNKNOWN U
FICTIONAL FIC
UNKNOWN U
OTHER OTH
Figure 4.9 Record sheet used for level 3b coding
118
Code Description
Request Travel Information General Requesting travel information about travel to a non-dangerous destination; includes asking about accommodation, sights, visits, travel, concerts, RQTIG attractions, itineraries. Reports of travel to a non-dangerous destination including descriptions, photos, Report Travel Information General itineraries; includes information about flights, airports, hotels, accommodation, visa, guides, excursions, attractions, travel updates and details of tour operators RPTIG and travel agents. Request Travel Information Dangerous Requesting travel information about travel to a dangerous destination; includes asking about accommodation, sights, visits, travel, concerts, attractions, RQTID itineraries. Reports of travel to a dangerous destination including descriptions, photos, Report Travel Information Dangerous itineraries; includes information about flights, airports, hotels, accommodation, visa, guides, excursions, attractions, travel updates and details of tour operators RPTID and travel agents Discuss Work in a Dangerous Place Includes posts about getting an adventurous job or a job in a dangerous location; includes war and photojournalists, aid workers, security contractors. DWDP
Have Adventure in a Dangerous Place Posts seeking information about rites of passage, more adventurous life, best places to travel for an adventure, becoming an adventurer. HADP
Question the View of RYP Questions about his views on locations, jobs, politics and on his activities and life. QRYPV
Self-Promotion RYP Posts made by RYP about his publications, speaking engagements and media appearances. SPRYP
Question about DP Gear Question about DP (RYP trademark) gear, which includes clothing, stickers and books. QDPG
Chat Calls to participate in the chatroom for online synchronous discussions. CHAT
Query Validity of RYP/BFC Questions about the validity of RYP, for example asking if he has sold out, or whether people on the forum really travel. QV
BFC Meet Posts about face–to-face forum meetings. BFCM
Death Posts about people who have died either naturally or violently. Not separated by dangerous places, tourists or natural deaths, obituaries. DEA
Kidnapping/Hostage Posts about kidnapping and hostage situations around the world. KIHO
Question Kit DP Questions about physical kit to take to dangerous places; includes the best rucksack, shoes, waterproofs and guns. QKDP
119 Health Posts relating to vaccinations, illnesses and general health. HEA
Other
OTH
Human self/other Picture of real human being – possibly either a photo of the poster, a historical HUM figure or a famous person. Cartoon A cartoon, either animated or still. CAR Picture of place/location Picture of a real place, view. RLOC Written statement A written statement created graphically as an avatar WRIT Animal A picture of an animal – either photographic or cartoon. ANI None No avatar used. NONE Other An avatar which does not fit into any category. OTH
Male
M Female
F Unknown
U
TRAV Username relating to travelling. Travel related JOB Username based around the poster’s own job. Job related NAME Either poster’s own name or the name the poster has adopted to use online. Real name FANT Names which are made up. Fantasy ANIMAL Names involving animals. Animal COOL Names designed to reflect either forum content or own image. Cool sounding RANDOM Random letters/numbers. Random
Table 4.5 Coding scheme used for descriptive content analysis
120 4.11 Identifying hot travel posters and threads
The descriptive content analysis identified both the main subjects of importance to the forum and threads relating to travelling to dangerous places. I cross-referenced these threads with the hot threads and posters discovered during the forum-level analysis. This created a list of hot influential posters and threads related to travelling to dangerous places: the subject that is the main purpose of the forum. 4.12 Coding of avatars / usernames
As part of the descriptive content analysis, the usernames and avatars used by posters on the forum were coded and analysed. This provided an insight into the culture of the forum and its members. I adapted the work from two authors. First, Bechar-Israeli (2001) categorised the nicknames used on chat forums under seven types of relay chat nicknames (people using their real names, self-related names, names relating to technology, names of flora or fauna objects, play on words or sounds, names relating to figures in literature, films, fairytales and famous people, and names related to sex and provocation). Stommel (2007) explored the use of themed names on an eating disorder forum and found that the nicknames were used to represent or construct identity relevant to the phenomena being discussed. A similar method originally developed by Suler (2004) was used to categorise avatars. I used the codes for avatars and usernames developed from the participant observation (Heisler and Crabill 2006; Stommel 2007) and refined during the trial of the descriptive content- analysis coding. After initial coding, I redefined the categories as I proceeded to further analysis. The broader categories used during the content analysis were further analysed to identify common themes within the avatars used on the forum. 4.13 Qualitative textual analysis
Having catalogued forum content through content analysis, a qualitative analysis of the forum was undertaken to gain a deeper insight into the forum members, their influences and activities. The descriptive content analysis identified the threads that related directly to travelling to dangerous places (displayed in Table 4.6), a second, narrower sample group of 368 threads. This table also shows the additional categories (Anti–Lonely Planet and Discuss adventurers) created from the OTHER code used during the descriptive analysis. The data from these 368 threads was qualitatively analysed by hand to discern emerging themes. The large amounts of data from the threads could thereby be reduced to smaller analytic units and common surfacing themes be identified (Miles and Huberman 1994). Manual coding ensured that the data retained its original meaning and that quotations were not taken out of
121 context. I first coded paragraphs and phrases (Riley 1990) using the six inductive pattern codes shown in Table 4.7. These highlighted the emergent themes. In order to gain a more detailed picture I then broke down the six pattern categories into fifty-six sub-categories, shown in Table 4.8. All data was allocated a reference and logged in the case study database. Figure 4.12 displays parts of the thread “Getting the most out of a travel experience” and shows how this qualitative coding was carried out.
Code Number of threads Report on travel to a dangerous place 81 Request for travel advice on dangerous destination 72 Discuss work in dangerous place 42 Have an adventure 23 Discuss adventurers 22 Discuss BFC community 33 Query RYP view 21 Anti-Lonely Planet 10 Query validity of the forum 19 Death 21 Kidnap/Hostage situations 24 Total number of threads 368
Table 4.6 Categories from descriptive content analysis which were taken forward for qualitative analysis
RYP and Black Flag Café Community Security, Risk and Danger Self-Actualization Rationalization Masculinity News/Journalists
Table 4.7 Pattern codes used in initial coding of qualitative data
122
Activities when travelling Learning Addiction Living vicariously through RYP/BFC Adventurers Masculine activities Adventurous jobs McDonaldisation/rationalisation Altruistic Motivation Anti-authority News as an information source Anti-BFC Novelty Anti-Lonely Planet Perception of death Anti-Polo’s Bastards Perception of risk Anti-RYP Portrayal of BFC women Asking about risk Portrayal of women Assessing risks Pro-RYP BFC culture Providing information on risks Bragging about travel Providing travel information Community culture Proving self Cool factor as motivation to travel Relationships Death as an adventure/good or bad death Road status Escape from backpacker culture Search for authentic experiences Escape tourists/tours Seeing selves as special Escapism Thrill seeking/flow Experience Travelling through study First-time travellers Travelling through work Flaming Value of information sources Flaming journalists Voluntary risk taking Heroes Voluntary simplicity Info search on DP War/Military Info search on non-DP War journalism Interest in death Women travelling Table 4.8 List of 56 sub-categories developed during coding
123
Poster’s name and Poster Post Coding Initial Analysis avatar information Woodsman Male poster Is it about the experience?...the money?...a mix? Experience A form of self actualization ‘The Motivation Experience’ is mentioned but activities BFCus Regularus Works as a How do you approach what you're going to see or or substance which might lead to it are forester do? Logically or irrationally (as in making your Asking about risk not clarified decisions by flipping a quarter, etc.?) Travels within US The danger involved in travelling is How do you assess danger, or do you it all? Is it highlighted and its importance in the really about the danger? travel event considered How do you decide where you want to go?
Posts: 4329 Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:59 pm Location: NW lower MI US NIJ Male poster Woodsman wrote: just out of curiosity, how do Experience An example of an experience is provided although it is not clear how BFCus Regularus Works as a land you (as in each one of you) get the most out of a this added to the travel experience mine clearer travel experience? It just kind of happens. Experience Novelty Is it about the experience? Sometimes. For instance, in India I once hitched a ride in the back of a gravel truck at 2am to get Travelling through work Work is seen as a way to travel and down the coast for no reason whatsoever. Search for authentic also a way to gain money in order to ...the money? experience travel
Sometimes. I specifically chose a job that keeps me Posts: 1135 Emphasis is on meeting local people travelling so I have spent months in places like Joined: Fri Mar 26, as an essential part of travel Barbados simply for the cash. Yeah, there were 2004 5:10 pm obviously other benefits. Voluntary risk taking Location: Thrill seeking/flow ...the people? Land(of)mines Road status Usually. Excluding nature trips, it's always the Learning from experience Search when travelling for novelty The combination of danger and novelty people that make any place worth visiting. Assessing risks make the trip a positive experience
124 ...a mix?
Well, yeah. Perception of risk How do you approach what you're going to see or Motivation Person learnt from the locals and do? Logically or irrationally (as in making your gained additional knowledge about Cool factor as motivation travelling in dangerous places decisions by flipping a quarter, etc.?) to travel I just go with whatever happens. I was arguing Travelling through work with a guy once in Bogata about how boring a Interesting places and danger are linked in the author’s mind certain area of town was and finally he said 'shut up and follow me.' I did and ended up having one of the best days of my life in the place I thought was boring. I learned a few lessons from that one. How do you assess danger By how much I'm bleeding.
Is it really about the danger? No, but the most interesting places are usually dangerous.
How do you decide where you want to go? Wherever there's work and I haven't been. I spend equal time exploring that place as I do working and from there I travel to other places that catch my eye for whatever reason. Svizzerams Female poster When I was younger it was about seeing "stuff" - Women travelling Shows some engagement with Travelling Bragging about travel traditional tourism infrastructure in Rx Rangerette pharmacist and I still like seeing stuff, but the people are Learning order to travel but still an emphasis on Travels alone to what make a trip for me. I hosted several Activities while travelling travelling independently away from dangerous places exchange students and discovered that traveling package holidays
where they live gives you an entirely different Novelty experience than when I travel to a destination Escape tourists/tours "blind". I like a mix of traveling with people, but I Interest in meeting local people and having a way into meeting them in their prefer a fair amount of "solo" time for certain own environment. types of activities (i.e. photography, museums, Dislike of package holidays and shopping). Perception of risk organised tours
125 Posts: 4554 I tend to "wander" when I'm someplace - with
Joined: Fri Mar 26, only a vague idea of an endpoint - then I may 2004 6:00 am very often veer off somewhere completely Assessing risk Understanding of danger when Location: Drug different. I'm not keen on large groups - takes to travelling and undertaking of sensible risk avoidance and precautions Goddess of much organizing to keep the whole thing going - Chelanistan and there isn't much flexibility or wandering Motivation potential. Activities when travelling Difference to the poster between real Learning danger and unreal danger is unclear I try to use common sense - which generally prevails - I'm not a nightowl so I'm not usually running about dark dodgy neighborhoods in the Information search on DP Learning as a reason for travelling and wee hours of the morning. also as an activity while travelling As far as "real" danger I try to avoid it but I figure Road status
if people live someplace and are surviving that I'm likely to do ok as well (i.e. my argument for living in Bogota - when everyone here was sure Use of travel guides to provide information before departure as part of I'd be kidnapped the moment I stepped off the the information-seeking activities plane). I go where my interests lead me - for instance I
love history, archaeology and architecture. I'm not so keen on "dining" per se - so destinations with Emphasis on value for money. culinary pursuits won't pull me in. Not that I However, as this is a single female traveller the willingness to pay for don't like good food - I just am not going to travel decent accommodation shows that in pursuit of that in particular. As an example, I they may balance money and security. like Viking history so I've got my eye on more travels in Scandanavia and Iceland. So I'll read what I can on the subject, study the geography, history, peruse maps, watch films made in the locations or about the location. Part of what I like about 'travel' is the planning that goes into it. As for money - I like to get value for the money I spend, but I like quiet clean places to stay and I'm willing to pay for that if I'm in a habitated area. Otherwise I'm just as happy camping in the
126 middle of nowhere with or without amenities. Just give me a snore free zone. I don't care about "luxury" per se - 5 star resort type thing - But if I don't sleep I don't have a good time
Table 4.9 Example of a thread coded and analysed (Getting the most out of a travel experience, Woodsman)
)
127 4.14 Key Word in Context Analysis
An alternative method of textual data collection, Key Word in Context (KWIC) analysis, was also carried out on the Black Flag Café forum to add another data set. Under Key Word in Context analysis, word-frequency lists and concordance data relating to key words are created, providing a rich database for detailed studies of word usage (Weber 1990). It aims to establish “the variation and consistency in word meanings” (Weber 1990, p.44) using a range of key words. In order to carry out KWIC analysis on the Black Flag Café, a list of key words, shown in Figure 4.10, was developed from the qualitative category codes. The words were converted into stems so that data with all grammatical endings could be collected (Krippendorff 2004). The words used were of particular interest to the research or used regularly within the forum. Words such as ‘info’ were left open to facilitate the capture of all derivatives.
Adventu RE MENT Threat ENING ROUS ENED Find out RER Tour IST RED Flag GER ISM Advice Info RMATION Travel ER Danger OUS RM LER Learn ING ING Death T LING Discov ER ED Visit ING ERY Man LY OR ED ED Media Educat E ION Meet ING ING News ED Escap E Pelton ING Risk Y ED ING Excit E Robert ING ED RYP MENT Safe TY Experi ENCE R ENCING Secu RITY ENCED RE Figure 4.10 List of stem words used for Key Word in Context analysis
128 After some experimentation the computer analysis program TextSTAT (Hüning 2002) was chosen as it could sit on top of the live website. TextSTAT was programmed with the URLs for all the threads considered of potential interest. These were all threads that had been coded under one of the categories listed in Table 4.10. Additionally, the URLs for all the hot posts identified during the forum-level analysis were submitted.
Adventure travel Discuss adventurers Have an adventure Discussion kidnap/hostage situations Query validity of forum Report on travel to a dangerous place Request information about travel to a DP Table 4.10 Categories of threads selected for KWIC analysis
As the TextSTAT programme pulled up all concordances containing the words submitted, the data had to be cleaned of irrelevant phrases (disclaimers, welcome messages, HTML code, publicity, website addresses, posters’ names, etc.), which were manually removed from the KWIC data. Examples of removed data, including duplicate phrases, key words that appear in usernames and warning or advisory notices, are shown in Table 4.11. All KWIC data was logged in the case study database. The original aim was to use the KWIC data to interpret how specific words were used by posters. The data was so varied, however, that this turned out to be impossible. The KWIC data was instead interpreted qualitatively, providing a source of data similar to the qualitative data analysis and data set. In addition to concordances, word-frequency lists were also run using the TextSTAT programme. These proved so random that they were unusable as a data source.
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Reason for KWIC removal any endorsement for the topics discussed, opinions expressed or INFOrmation provided in this forum. Any advice Legal disclaimer or information taken from this forum is entirely at your (legal disclaimer) come to share stories and advice. Moderated by Robert Young Pelton the author of The World's Most DANGERous Forum description Places. Moderators: coldharvest, Ultra Swain Post a reply 30 posts • Page 1 of 2 •
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Black Flag Cafe is the place travelers come to share stories and advice. Moderated by Robert Young PELTON the Forum description author of The World's Most Dangerous Places. Moderators: coldharvest, Ultra Swain Post a reply information provided in this forum. Any advice or information taken from this forum is entirely at your own RISK. Legal disclaimer Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location a, Japan Website Top ------by ADVENTUReDoc on Fri Aug 24, Poster’s name 2007 6:40 pm spicymos wrote: When I was in Yemen, everyone told me not to go the but a little looking found that Royal Jordanian flies out a couple times a day from Baghdad to AmMAN, Jordan. Incorrect stem finding From there you can take a number of different airlines to Kuwait including Kuwaitair. Royal more appealing than a touch screen key board. Feral Jundi http://www.feraljundi.com A blog about the SECURity Link to poster’s website contracting industry. Jumper BFCus Regularus Posts: 5262 Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 5:07 am Location
Cafe Black Flag Cafe Change font size FAQ Register Login Georgia The Black Flag Cafe is the place TRAVELers Forum description come to share stories and advice. Moderated by Robert Young Pelton Table 4.11 Examples of the irrelevant phrases of KWIC data removed from KWIC data
130 isnʹt it kind of DANGERous in beirut lately? crazy is as crazy does
stay in Tel Aviv and you remove the biggest DANGER which is having a car accident.
Iʹm guessing youʹre not too familiar with what traveling in Israel is like. Itʹs not DANGERous; like RYP said, getting in a car
crash should be your friendsʹ biggest concern.
My days in DANGERous places were long ago Iʹm afraid.
There is no DANGER to Americans in Iran, unless of course you engage in questionable acts or political intrigue.
DANGER is for pussies....never confuse danger with fear
How do you assess DANGER By how much Iʹm bleeding.
the most interesting places are usually DANGERous.
How do you assess DANGER? Listen to the locals. Keep your eyes open. Donʹt go looking for trouble.
As far as ʺrealʺ DANGER I try to avoid it but I figure if people live someplace and are surviving that Iʹm likely to do ok
Its not about the DANGER, I think. How do you decide where you want to go? I want to go almost everywhere eventually
How do you assess DANGER, or do you it all? Theres different types of danger, depending on whether itʹs voluntary
Voodoo death rituals and spitting blood on demand also keeps DANGER at bay. Is it really about the DANGER? Nah, but
travelling to intrinsically safe destinations gets boring very quick.
Figure 4.11 Example of cleaned KWIC data for the stem DANGER
131 4.15 Data displays
A number of memos, matrices and cognitive maps (Riley 1990; Miles and Huberman 1994) were created to display the data. These present the data in visual formats which allow the data to be summarised and conclusions to be drawn (Miles and Huberman 1994). Matrices (examples provided in Table 4.12 and Table 4.13) proved useful for displaying the qualitative data and mapping forum posts. Concept cluster matrices, diagrams and groupings were also used to show the emerging themes from usernames, avatars and destination types (Miles and Huberman 1994). Cognitive maps (shown in Chapter 7) offered the ability to collect, organise, store and symbolise information about the spatial environment and how a world is perceived (Downs and Stea 1977). Cognitive maps were mainly used to show information gained about the forum during the participant-observation phase and so have been used to guide the ethnographic writing. The content of the forum threads also lent itself to the creation of word clouds (Feinberg 2008), which display the key words within a thread. These proved useful in highlighting the key concepts within individual threads. Figure 4.12 and Figure 4.13 are examples of word clouds.
132 Ref Quote QD60 Also note that he's gone missing while not on an "assignment" …off the beaten track so to speak….hardly a situation that most LP writers would find themselves in
QD155 I have read Lonely Planet and they are good but don't give you much on the dangerous places and that's why we are here to go to those places
QD353 Thanks for the replies folks, I am happy to find such a site. I figured I'd get ran off the lonely plant - as I have before - if I posted this there
QD397 I realise that Thorntree is pretty much the lowest common denominator as far as accuracy goes but it’s the only place I could think f to ask about the going rate for this journey
QD426 One would think you would be grateful to LP RYP. After all, they re encouraging all their hippie-wannabe readers to venture forth to Afghanistan - Allah knows the Taliban are gonna be happy to greet all those western dreadlocked human shield/Internet propaganda opportunities
QD430 Take your advice and shove it up your ass tourists – Fuck you, go back to trolling the thorn tree dip-shit QD561 Don't get your knickers in a twist Lonely planeteer its all part of the process QD579 Are you planning on mocking these people à la Pre-2006 Tony Wheeler or planning on putting them on a pedestal à la Tony Wheeler tour circa 2007?
QD659 Word on the street (that is Thorntree) is that the museum was actually closed in September QD698 I know people here at the BFC hate the TT but folks stop being delusional - there is just not enough travel info (or travel knowledge) on the BFC for a truly global coverage
QD699 I suppose the idea of copying DP has a certain freshness to the LP crowd. I suppose now he will have to delete all those holier than thou Thorn Tree posts
Table 4.12 Matrix presenting qualitative data for the code Anti-Lonely Planet
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Ref Quote
It was hard work [drilling] and I don't have training for off shore rigs but it helped a hell of a lot. I used the money to pay for QD86 college and my car (used of course). Also along with the strange jobs: drug running, paid protection, even a bar doorman in mount pleasant,tx. All to pay for college (tuition, rent, etc)
QD270 A hotel room in Johor after a gang of crims starting trying to pound-down the door of my hotel room… presumably to mug and kill me (I pushed all the furniture against it and they gave up after a few minutes)
QD272 In a booby trapped building in Bosnia after I got drunk and went on a wander. God knows how I never set any of them off or even got into the place. Getting out was a nightmare not made any better by the killer shakes from the hangover from hell.
QD344 I'll be here in three weeks. Finally you will be rid of me for a while anyway
QD388 Yeah!? What war zones have you been in? Tell us about it. You first, no really WE INSIST QD389 Coldharvest has already posted his DP resume. We are all waiting of you to tell us ass flapping sphincter monkey. Where have you been?
QD407 Pakistan is great! In the last 4 days I got altitude sick, hypothermia, dysentary and heat exhaustion. If I ever get another serving of that greasy assed fried bread and grease soaked scrambled eggs for breakfast again I am gonna vomit
QD458 A chick I know from a different site has taken off for parts unknown by train. She is hopping freight trains on the west coast. It is free to do and there is a done of danger. I think she's a bit nuts but that is her deal
QD684 Waking up in Grozny and finding entire houses missing on our street and I slept like a baby
QD762 Having a gun pulled on me in a car in Albuquerque and getting driven around for a couple of hours then locked in a hotel room. I squeezed out of the bathroom window and ended up jumping about 15 feet to escape
QD838 He was blubbering like a baby that some man was following him
Table 4.13 Matrix presenting qualitative data for the code Road Status
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Figure 4.12 Getting the most out of a travel experience
Figure 4.13 Canadian women still missing in Syria
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4.16 Conclusion
This chapter has described the different types of content analysis used to analyse the Black Flag Café: content analysis, textual analysis and Key Word in Context. The relevance- sampling approach used to determine the most useful and relevant data in preparation for analysis has been explained. The difficulties that arose during data collection and their solutions were described and evidence was provided about the data-collection methods finally used in the research. The different levels of analysis (forum, thread, poster) undertaken on the forum have been described and the methods used to establish the hot threads and hot posters explained. The links between the data collected, its analysis and the areas of interest to the research were set out and worked examples were produced to show how the different levels of analysis were carried out.
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5 Life within the Black Flag Café
5.1 Introduction
This research focuses on the online forum, the Black Flag Café. As the forum is intricately linked to travel to dangerous places through its owner, Robert Young Pelton, an understanding of the forum’s content and the social norms and behaviour within it is likely to provide a greater understanding of the forum members who travel to, or who are interested in travelling to dangerous places. Analysis of the data on the forum tells us how the forum members approach travel to dangerous places and also identifies key issues which are of interest to forum members. This chapter presents the analyses of the data obtained through the content analysis of the forum. 5.2 Analysis of forum content
During the sample period, 3701 threads were started on the Black Flag Café forum. These threads were spread over the ten sub-forums but were predominantly in the main forum. Table 5.1 shows the origin of the sample threads within the forum: over 74% of these posts were found in the main forum (the Black Flag Café) and an additional 15% were within the travel forum. Unsurprisingly, there were few travel-related posts within the movies and news sections. While the majority of threads for the sample came from the main forum, further analysis showed that there was a higher emphasis on travelling to dangerous places in the travel forum.
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Number of posts % of posts within Total relating to travel each forum relating to Forum number of to dangerous travel to dangerous posts places places
The Black Flag Café The Black Flag Café 2988 554 19 The Black Flag Café Recommends 136 48 35 Gear 20 11 55 Guns and Weapons 83 7 8 Travel Discussion 115 109 95 The Arm Chair Café Movies, Entertainment & Sport 127 4 3 Rants, Opinions and Humor 105 6 6 News Forum 85 0 0 Announcements 9 5 56 Tin Foil Hat Café Tin Foil Hat Café 33 2 6
Total 3701 746 20 Table 5.1 Breakdown of BFC forum content
As part of the sampling plan, all 3701 threads posted onto the Black Flag Café for a six- month period from 10 May 2007 to 10 November 2007 were examined. Four broad pattern codes were used to select the 746 sample threads for analysis. An initial breakdown of the content of these 746 threads is shown in Figure 5.1. Because of both the focus of the research and the nature of the forum, 55% of the sample was threads that related in some way to travel. The other data was more equally split between the other three topics.
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Topics within the BFC initial sample The BFC community 17%
Misadventure / Death 15% Travel 55%
Adventure 13%
Figure 5.1 Topics within the sample group
Themed content analysis was then used to break down the four large pattern codes into smaller categories to obtain a more detailed picture of the forum content. Figure 5.2 displays the forum content. Similar to the original sample, 55% of the threads related to travel, 20% of which related directly to travel to dangerous places. The travel threads could be easily broken down into those where forum members were reporting, providing photos, descriptions and stories of their trip to a destination and those where forum members were asking for information about a destination. Thirteen per cent of the threads related to adventure; within these, 42 threads (which is the equivalent of 55% of the total sample) discussed working in dangerous places either as a volunteer, as a paid contractor or in the military. How to have an adventure and what type of activity might be categorised as an adventure also featured strongly as well as discussions about people who are classified (by forum members or the media) as adventurers. Misadventure and its possible outcomes (illness and death) was also a focus within the forum, with over 15% of the threads relating to these subjects. Out of these, death and dying was the most popular and news reports on hostage and kidnap situations that occurred during the sample period also featured. The fourth major category, the Black Flag Café community, included threads which related to the virtual community, including face-to-face meetings and discussions about other forum members, their avatars, signatures and online behaviour. As anticipated, because he owns the forum, over 7% of the sample were threads that related directly to Robert Young Pelton, although he posted 2% of these himself, publicising and promoting his own work. The category of anti-Lonely Planet contains all the threads that deride either the Lonely Planet
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books or forum (the Thorn Tree) and, while not a significant category, it is an important topic within the forum.
Figure 5.2 Forum content of the Black Flag Café 5.3 Analysis of hot threads
As discussed earlier, picking out hot threads in the forum provides a picture of the topics which are considered important by forum members (Wang et al. 2008). Hot threads set the scene of the board (Ravert et al. 2004) and identify the forum’s most significant themes. By analysing all 3701 of the threads on the BFC it was possible to find out which threads were the most popular with the forum members, by either the number of views or the number of replies they received. The viewing figures of a thread show the total number of times it has been viewed, including multiple views by the same poster. The number of replies scores the number of separate posts made on the thread, the same poster posting four times counting as four posts. For this reason threads have been further broken down during analysis to show the number of individual participants. Table 5.2 displays the top thirty hot threads. Threads can be categorised and provide an insight into the forum’s norms of social acceptability. Several themes emerge from the analysis, in four main subject groupings:
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threads which are sexual in nature, travel-related threads, threads which discuss politics and/or war and threads which revolve around the Black Flag Café community. These themes are explored throughout this chapter. Two threads were created by non-regular posters (Mel and G-Ritt) and two posts made by posters who were subsequently banned (Mach and 2012). It should be noted that some of the hot threads received a lot of attention from forum members because of the absurdity of the question asked. In particular the thread “Hi I’m New Here” by Emily Brink turned into a good-natured flame war. She was a new poster who asked the forum for information about mercenaries for a romantic novel she was intending to write. Forum members ridiculed both the author and the concept. “Bringing Your Lady To a War Zone: Is it Doable?” was another example of this type; a new poster asked about the possibilities of taking his girlfriend (a Russian former air hostess/prostitute) with him on a posting to Afghanistan. Cross-analysis of the hot threads has also produced a list of hot threads which relate to travelling to dangerous places. These are displayed in Table 5.3. Within the hot travel- related posts there are five regular forum members.
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Number of Number Total Rank Thread title Poster Forum replies of views participants 1 Hot Asian Stewardess Pictures Mega Thread!!!!!!!!!! 361 JamesInTheWorld 58174 REC 58 2 How Many Countries? 146 G-Ritt 46869 TRAV 92 3 BEST LOOKING STEWARDESSES? 137 JamesInTheWorld 26144 BFC 41 4 Best place to lay-low 61 Soami 23536 REC 56 5 An angry photographer in Chechnya 15 Kapa 20874 BFC 8 6 Around the world in 176 days 100 Flipflop 18497 TRAV 24 7 Ban Immigrant 201 RYP 17273 BFC 68 8 Per personal reasons 97 Mach 16774 BFC 39 9 Why America Is a Great Country 207 JamesInTheWorld 15634 BFC 37 10 New Brit war crimes allegations 246 Penta 15420 BFC 33 11 Your next destination 88 Mel 14119 TRAV 50 12 Los Angeles BFC Pissup Sat June 2nd - 7pm @Firehouse Café 118 Ultra Swain 13901 BFC 39 13 Your body is a weapon 56 Sri Lanky 13614 GUNS 32 14 Favourite Foreign film 84 2012 13210 BFC 58 15 Weird Booze 56 JamesInTheWorld 13022 REC 25
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16 My day in pictures….new bike day!!! 120 Dogtanian 12239 BFC 36 17 Worst Places You Have Woke Up 90 Jefe 11957 BFC 52 18 Attack on Iran? 114 Penta 11481 BFC 31 19 What's your opinion on Krav Maga? 69 Margelatu 11402 REC 23 TINHA 20 IF I AM FOUND DEAD: Clandestine Capital Punishment revisited 30 Wsduncanb 11197 12 T 21 So, I saw Sicko tonight 139 Sparrow 10885 BFC 36 22 Zzzzzzzzzzzzz 108 Royal 9584 BFC 30 23 Did they snuff the rooster? 172 Bobby Sands 7436 BFC 33 24 BFC Calgary 180 2_Charile 6286 BFC 228 25 Avatars 112 Jefe 6138 BFC 30 26 wrong question , young man 116 Erwin 5541 BFC 34 27 AP: Iraqi Deaths Fall by 50 Percent 134 Jumper 4760 BFC 24 28 How should US prepare for end of empire? 107 Penta 4615 BFC 40 29 Hi I'm New Here 106 EmilyBrink 4026 BFC 31 30 Time for another BFC meeting in NYC? 130 Shivers 1572 ANNO 24 31 I just had SEX!!!!!!! 172 JamesInTheWorld 1316 BFC 53
BFC – Black Flag Café, TRAV – Travel Discussion, GUNS – Guns and Weapons, REC – The Black Flag Café Recommends, TINHAT – Tin-Foil Hat Café, ANNO – Announcements Table 5.2 Hot threads within the BFC based on number of views and replies to thread ordered by the number of views
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Rank Thread title Number of replies Poster Number of views Forum Total participants 1 How Many Countries? 146 G-Ritt 46869 TRAV 92
2 Bringing Your Lady To a War 101 therenaissanceman 6346 BFC 33 Zone: Is it Doable? (AKA lerenaissanceman) 3 Around the world in 176 days 100 Flipflop 18497 TRAV 24
4 Glascow airport incident 95 Yank 6890 BFC 38 (AKA Yeahsure/Wayne) 5 The most dangerous situation 91 Therenaissanceman 5784 BFC 58 that you've been in… 6 Worst Places You Have Woke 90 Jefe 11957 BFC 52 Up 7 Your next destination 88 Mel 14119 TRAV 50
8 Need Advice 72 Apoc 2168 BFC 32
9 What should I do on a 23 hour 57 Farmdog 4162 BFC 31 flight? 10 The most dangerous place 55 Sri Lanky 1391 BFC 57 you've been to in the past year
BFC – Black Flag Café, TRAV – Travel Discussion, GUNS – Guns and Weapons, REC – The Black Flag Café Recommends, TINHAT – Tin Hoil Hat Café, ANNO – Announcements
Table 5.3 Hot travel-related thread within the BFC based on number of replies and views of thread
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5.3.1 Sexual threads
Many of the threads on the board have an overt sexual nature. This is not only because of the high number of male posters but also because of the nature of the board. The “Hot Asian Stewardess Pictures Mega Thread!!!!!!!!!!” was first posted on 22 October 2006 but shows within the top threads for the research period during 2007 because it was still active both for viewing and posting. It is one of the longest-running and most popular threads on the board. The “Hot Asian Stewardess Pictures Mega Thread!!!!!!!!!!” is similar to the “BEST LOOKING STEWARDESSES?” thread, which also appears within the hot thread list, and the thread “I just had SEX!!!!!!!”. All three were started by the poster JamesInTheWorld and they contribute to his rating as a very hot poster. Between them, the three threads have been viewed 84,634 times and produced 670 replies. The high number of individual posters on the threads indicates that a large proportion of the board’s active posters (possibly around 25%) participated at some point in the threads. The three threads initially seek to discuss slightly different issues. The Asian Stewardess thread starts as a picture gallery of female air hostesses while the Best Looking thread begins as a discussion about which airline has the best-looking cabin crew. The Best Looking thread is developed and used by Flaggers to compare airlines and tell stories of the different airlines and flights they have been on (class of travel, airline safety records and unusual types of airline); it therefore has a more travel-related theme and involves both male and female board members in light conversation. The Asian Stewardess thread focuses more on sex and prostitution and the forum members are more aggressive towards each other. Male Flaggers boast about the number of women they have had sex with and compare stories about sex, drugs, sexually transmitted diseases and the use and the cost of hookers. This is not an unusual conversation for the board. Forum members often compare the hotness of different nationalities of women and destinations are judged by the attractiveness of the women. While the posters do not appear to travel deliberately to have sex with local women or other travellers, it is seen as an added bonus to any travel experience and information about local red-light districts and girlie bars is passed freely around the board.
Women report nada – not even one decent bite. The
broads are the worst i’ve seen for a long time
soulohio in “Tybee Island – Georgia”
Booze and babes abound in Beirut
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SRR in “What should I do in Lebanon for 9 days?”
Topics often move onto the subject of alpha males, with both male and female board members agreeing that alpha males attract more women:
Sri Lanky: I know Iʹm going to get some slag for this but
women have a thing for alphas....
JamesInTheWorld: True, most women (especially the
really beautiful) ones will go for the guy that can
physically or financially protect them, or is extremely
confident.
Women like to fool themselves by saying things like
“nice guys do finish first” but we all know that they will
always sleep with the Jerk and cry to there “nice guy
friend” when the Jerk leaves them.
JamesInTheWorld in “I just had SEX!!!!!!!”
5.3.2 Political / war-related threads
Within the hot threads there are several (32%) which relate to politics and war. Many of these threads are on war in general, military action and the war on terror but others discuss political scandals (the US Senator John Kerry and the tasering of a student), elections and related topics like education and capital punishment. These threads often include, or start with, copy and pasted articles from newspapers. Terrorism, the war on terror and the war in Iraq are all popular recurring topics. These threads can become the most heated within the board, although the majority of forum members are pro both war in general and the war on terror in particular. During 2007, both the UK and USA, together with the UN, were active in Iraq and Afghanistan. Posters discussed some of the related political issues including torture and death statistics within these threads. Many of the posters have a good, and in some cases very good, understanding of politics and they use the political threads on the board to display their knowledge. Posters who have military experience in, or who have visited the countries under discussion (Iran, Iraq and Israel, etc.), use the threads to display their first-hand knowledge and try to use this as a way of authenticating their political views.
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A pro-military stance is adopted by the majority of the forum and serving in the armed forces in any capacity is respected on the board. Because of the patriotic nature of the forum and its pro-military stance, the views of those who criticise the military actions are attacked by posters for being unsupportive of other forum members who are on, or have been on, active duty. People who have served in war zones are seen as experienced and wise and it is often suggested to new posters who want to travel to dangerous places that they join the armed forces to gain first-hand knowledge, skills and experience within a war zone. In this way the sublime of war (Hoskins and O'Loughlin 2007) is promoted within the forum and posters are encouraged to think of war zones as exciting and glamorous. 5.3.3 Travel related
The threads “Weird Booze”, “How Many Countries?”, “best place to lay-low” and “Your next destination” could all be said to relate to travelling. Three of these threads were started by posters who made only a brief appearance on the Flag (Soami, G-Ritt and Mel). The poster G-Ritt originally joined the board in 2005 making posts about Aukai Collins, a former friend of RYP’s who was in gaol in Mexico at the time. His thread “How Many Countries?” became one of the most popular on the Flag but he only posted once, in his opening post. The thread is used by the Flaggers to demonstrate the extent of their travels through completing an online interactive map and then posting the results. Posters take the opportunity to ask questions about some of the destinations visited by other posters and to state their future travel plans. They also discuss what counts as “real” travelling, with airport stop-overs and short visits to destinations not being considered worthy of inclusion in posters’ lists:
Kilroy: personally, I think quality is better than
quantity. I’d rather get to know a few countries really
well than win a pissing contest about how many places
iʹve been for only a week.
SRR: Some people can spend a day in a place and learn
more about it than some ignorant hippy who needs a
decade to find a hotel room and still canʹt figure things
out without a Guardian newspaper by their side
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Medevac: Wow, finally got around to filling this thing
in. Iʹm up to 128, however many of these have been
purely work related, so Iʹve seen SFA of them.
In “How Many Countries?”
“Your next destination” is a similar thread, started by Mel, a poster who made a number of rapid consecutive posts on the board before leaving after a dispute with the moderators. Mel made fourteen posts within this thread and says that other people’s travels provide her with inspiration when planning her future trips. Other posters use the thread to discuss visa and travel information and to post about their proposed travel plans to both dangerous and non- dangerous places. They mention locations as varied as Haiti, North Korea, Germany, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Angola, Uganda, Israel/Palestine and Pakistan. The thread “best place to lay–low” was started by another short-term poster on the BFC: Soami, who made just fourteen posts within a twelve-month period, with his most active posting on a thread he started called “danger zone jobs.com?” He opened the thread “best place to lay-low” but did not return to it. The post asks the BFC where the best place to lie low as a hideaway (to make oneself disappear) would be. He suggests the Negev desert and the Simcoe Mountains on the Yakima Indian Reservation (North America). Other posters offer suggestions based on places they have visited and there are some joke suggestions of gentlemen’s clubs like the Spearmint Rhino. This thread attracts a number of new posters or posters with only a small number of posts to the board. They attempt to join in the conversation by posting their own views and experiences. One named PEAT only ever made this one post to the forum and states that:
So Im an ex‐british soldier turned clown, who gets a
kick out of working dangerous places (Took a circus to
baghdad for 3 months in 2004)
In “best place to lay–low”
before suggesting that posters contact his friends in the Russian mafia if they wish to be protected. Other new posters make lesser statements but suggest destinations and locations which could be used for hideaways.
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5.3.4 BFC posts
The threads “BFC Calgary”, “Time for another BFC meeting in NYC” and “Los Angeles BFC Pissup” are all about Black Flag Café forum face-to-face meetings. The first part of each of these threads announces the meeting and asks who wishes to attend. The middle section deals with the organisation. The announcement ends with a written account of the meeting for the Flaggers who were unable to be present. The face-to-face meetings vary in size from two or three people (e.g. BFC meet in Calgary) to five or eight members attending (e.g. Los Angeles). In addition to the meets which show on the hot threads there are regular Christmas meetings, meetings in New York based around Thanksgiving and special event meetings like the Philadelphia gun fest, sky diving and a meeting in San Francisco based around the Brides of March parade. The threads “Avatars”, “Ban Immigrant” and “Per personal reasons” are all about the forum itself. The “Ban Immigrant” post started off a number of copycat ones in which posters ran polls suggesting that RYP ban either themselves or other posters from the board; these included the thread “Taliban Intelligent women from the BFC”. The post “Avatars” was made by Jefe on 22 August 2007. Jefe is an American who works in the security business. He joined the forum in 2004 and started the thread Avatars following the banning by RYP of his avatar which placed the poster Penta in the cross-hairs of a gun. The post was popular, as shown by the number of replies, because it offered forum members the opportunity to discuss each other’s avatars. The thread “Worst Places You Have Woke Up” offered Flaggers a chance to tell stories about their adventures and to engage in a form of one-upmanship about who is the most daring and has the best tales to tell. They post about war zones, weather-related disasters like earthquakes or flash floods and travel-related tales about airlines, hotels and bus trips. They also describe sexual encounters, mentioning waking up next to fat or ugly girls as a bad experience. Tales included:
RYP: waking up in Grozny and finding entire houses
missing on our street
dogtanian: A hotel room in Johor after a gang of crims
starting trying to pound‐down the door of my hotel
room… presumably to mug and kill me.
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Mikethehack: In a booby trapped building in Bosnia
after I got drunk and went on the wander.
In “Worst Places You Have Woke Up”
5.4 Analysis of hot posters within the BFC
As mentioned earlier, forum-level analysis can identify key members of the community (Wang et al. 2008). Through the content analysis of the forum it was possible to identify the hot posters, those whose threads stimulated a large response (either in views or replies), from other forum members.
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Hot posters within the BFC Slam Yank lightstalker SRR Jefe friendlyskies lonelymoon Professor Devlin Mikethehack Number of hevalzana Posts Jumper svizzerams El Pelon Stiv Phoenix Kurt dogtanian JamesInTheWorld Ultra Swain Penta 0 50 100 150 200 RYP
Figure 5.3 Number of hot posts made by influential posters
Further information about these posters, including their avatar, gender, signature and title, is shown in Table 5.4. and also in Chapter 6. There are three women (Penta, svizzerams, friendlyskies) showing within the hot posters. This confirms that although there are fewer women participating in the forum, they are influential with regards to the forum content. It is unsurprising that RYP features as the most influential poster on the forum. The posters hevalzana, Phoenix and lonelymoon have since been banned from the forum.
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Number Username Description Avatar Signature Gender of hot threads
RYP Author Male 174 (Website owner) California, USA
Ownerus Websiteus Authorus
Copy editor "Anti-Americanism is a pure Penta Female 65 UK/Spain totalitarian concept." Chomsky
Ruby Tuesday
Graphic Ultra Swain Designer/NGO "I don't know but try not to be a Male 41 (Moderator) bitch." LA, USA
Snappyus Answerus
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International Civilian Contractor Computer Jobs contractor/Website High Paying International Jobs JamesInTheWorld entrepreneur Male 32 Iraq - Afghanistan - Asia - Europe Middle and Far East www.CivilianContractorJobs.com
EXPAT ROCK STAR
Financier dogtanian "Truth is cool; but unattainable..." Male 32 New Delhi, India
BFCus Regularus
Kurt Computer expert http://www.voiceuniverse.com Male 31 (Head Moderator) New York, USA
Rex Tremendae Majestatis
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Phoenix Male 28 (banned poster)
Stiv Graphic designer Her eyes like sparks, my heart like Male 25 Philadelphia, USA gasoline
BFCus Regularus
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because Dentist/NGO what the world needs is people who El Pelon Male 25 USA/Honduras have come alive." -- John Eldredge
http://www.lacimamissions.org BFCus Regularus
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Pharmacist svizzerams Female 24 Near Seattle, USA
Rx Rangerette
Feral Jundi Smoke jumper/security http://www.feraljundi.com Jumper contractor Male 24 A blog about the security contracting Boise, Idaho, USA industry. BFCus Regularus
Hevalzana BFCus Regularus Male 23 (banned poster)
“I'm not really a proper reporter, due to the chronic lack of discipline, Journalist negligible attention span, and a Mikethehack Male 22 Dubai certain juvenile difficulty taking serious things seriously.” Pimpmasterus Andrew Mueller Generalismus
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“I don’t care if people hate my guts; I Policeman assume most of them do. The Professor Devlin important question is whether they Male 22 USA are in a position to do anything about it.”-William S. Burroughs BFCus Regularus lonelymoon (poster since banned once more the sound of crying is by coldharvest for Male 22 number one across the earth allegedly stalking his family) Pantalonus Fetishus Erectus
Writer/Tour guide "4 cylinder Camaro=communism" - friendlyskies Female 21 Costa Rica El Presidente
Vata Loca
"I'm a slack atheist, not the SRR Airline worker/student proselytising type, "just fuck off and Male 17 (Moderator) Canada/Paris leave me alone" is my motto" -F.F.
Hippie Dangerous
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Photojournalist Grief Tourist lightstalker Male 15 UK
Yank (also uses the Postman usernames Wayne Anyone but BO! Male 14 and Yeahsure) USA
BFCus Regularus "There are very few men - and they are the few exceptions - who are able Medic to think and feel beyond the present Slam moment." - Carl Von Clausewitz Male 14 Scotland "Don't worry about life, you will BFCus Regularus never get out of it alive." – 2 Charlie
Table 5.4 Profiles of hot posters
.
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The hot posters and their online profiles are analysed in this and the next chapter. It is interesting to note, however, that the hot posters include only three women (friendlyskies, Penta and svizzerams). Two of the usernames which feature (Phoenix and Hevalzana) were banned posters. Of the regular hot posters, 94% use an avatar, which shows that they are committed to the forum and their online identity. Several of these posters have used the same avatar for a number of years (Slam, Penta, Kurt, El Pelon) and it is seldom changed. Eighty-three per cent of the hot posters use a signature; these are used to make statements or to link to blogs, businesses or charities which the poster supports or writes. The exception within the regular posters is lightstalker. who uses neither avatar nor signature, although he has requested that his username be accompanied by the statement Grief Tourist instead of BFCus Regularus and so he has, at some point, considered how he is portrayed online. The widespread use of signatures and avatars shows that the hot posters within the forum do manage their own online personas using the multimedia available to them and that they have considered how to project what they consider to be the appropriate persona for the forum and the rest of the community 5.5 Analysis of hot travel posters
The data about the hot posters was further analysed to identify the hot posters who posted about travelling to dangerous places. They are shown in Table 5.5.
Hot posters who post about travelling to dangerous places
4 thewalrus 4 JamesInTheWorld 4 Redharen 5 5 Ultra Swain 6 south_sea_bubble 6 dogtanian 9 43 NIJ El Pelon 0 1020304050RYP
Table 5.5 Hot posters who post about travelling to dangerous places
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All of the hot posters who post about travelling to dangerous places are male and long-term forum members. The only poster who is no longer an active member of the board is NIJ, and it is thought that he died during 2008. By cross-analysing the two hot posters lists and identifying those posters who appear on both, a more exclusive group of super-hot posters (Table 5.6) was pinpointed. These five posters, who are all male, can be considered the most influential people on the BFC as their threads, regardless of content, are viewed by many forum members. Additionally their threads also reflect the true aim of the forum, namely to discuss travelling to dangerous places.
RYP Ultra Swain JamesInTheWorld Dogtanian El Pelon Table 5.6 Most influential forum members for all types of threads (super-hot posters)
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5.6 Analysis of avatars
As described previously, avatars are seen as the source of the message and can be tailored to elicit a reaction or response (Nowak 2004). The avatars used by the posters in the 746 travel-related posts were categorised during the themed content analysis; Figure 5.4 displays the findings. It is evident that the use of an avatar across the forum is not a high priority for all forum members (since 49% choose not to use an avatar) but when only regular posters are considered the use of an avatar is seen to be more common (shown in Figure 5.1). Significantly more of the regular posters (80%) use an avatar, showing greater engagement with the community and active management of their own online persona (Olaniran 2008). The categories of avatar used on the forum were broken down into smaller sub-categories developed from the themes identified during the content-analysis coding. These are displayed in the two conceptual maps. Compared with the use of avatars in MUDs or virtual worlds, there is less emphasis on human-looking avatars and it also appears to be less important to use the avatar to convey gender (Suler 2004; Nowak and Rauh 2005). The typology of avatars developed by Suler (2004) has been used to classify the avatars used in the Black Flag Café forum; this is displayed in. Table 5.7.
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Type of avatar used by forum members
Written Animal 5% Cartoon Skull / Skeleton10% 11% 3%
Human 22%
None 49%
Figure 5.4 Type of avatar used by BFC posters
Type of avatar used by regular posters on the BFC
Animal Written Statement 9% 14%
Skull Cartoon 6% 18%
None 20%
Human 33%
Figure 5.5 Type of avatar used by regular posters on the BFC
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Type of avatar Example Cartoons
Animated or still Cartoon animals shooting guns Cartoons representing username e.g. Qwazy Rabbit
Written statements
Political Anti-religion
Misc
Military symbols Flags Medical symbols
Animals (predatory)
Shark Owl Snake
Skulls/full skeletons
Amusing humorous skulls, e.g. skull drinking
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People
Assassins Dictators Traditional film baddies, e.g. Traditional film goodies, e.g. 007 Iconic males, e.g. helicopter pilot Pictures of self: drinking, travelling, posed
Masculine
Semi-naked men and women Women in showers Masculine pursuits, e.g. bull fighting Debonair men Historical military figures, e.g. subrariner
Violent
Posing/holding guns Shooting Suicide bomber
Table 5.7 Typology of avatars 5.7 Analysis of usernames
The usernames on the forum were also examined and the emerging themes categorised. These are displayed in Table 5.8.
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Type Posters
Travel related seektravelinfo, friendlyskies, vagabond, flipflop
Mikethehack (journalist), Medevac (evacuation medic), rickshaw92 (rickshaw driver), Job Related Jumper (smoke jumper), Woodsman (a forester), media (public relations)
Fantasy dogtanian, Qwazy Wabbit
Real Names Vincent, denise, Alessandro, jimboCA, michelle in alaska, ROB, jwander
Animals Farmdog, thewalrus, crotalus01, sparrow, muskrat
Cool Sounding JamesInTheWorld, Foulplay, Ultra Swain, coldharvest, shivers
Random NIJ, Q, MJK
Table 5.8 Typology of usernames (regular form members) 5.8 Analysis of signatures
The term signature is used within a forum to describe the statement and/or image which is attached at the end of each user’s posts. Not all BFC forum members use a signature. The signatures of all members were not analysed but those of the hot posters are shown in Table 5.4. They provide examples of the different types of signature that are used by forum members. They are a mixture of political statements (written by self or others), quotations from other forum members that they consider important and links to their own websites, blogs and forums. 5.9 Conclusion
The findings from the first part of this chapter have shown that over 50% of the forum content relates to tourism and that 20% relates directly to travelling to dangerous places. The descriptive content analysis that was undertaken on the sample showed which topics were of particular interest to forum members. The analysis of the hot threads highlighted four main themes: the use of the forum by a poster to share their own travel stories; that the forum held an active virtual community that can be described as an e-tribe; that the forum had an overtly aggressive masculine feel to it; and that this, together with the positive promotion of the military and alpha males, leads to dangerous places being viewed by the forum members as exciting and glamorous. The second part of this chapter gave an account of how the forum
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members manage their online personas. presenting detailed descriptions and analysis of their usernames, avatars and signatures.
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6 Typology of posters
6.1 Introduction
This chapter continues the analysis of the Black Flag Café and focuses on the forum members themselves. A typology of the forum members which identifies different types of danger tourist is presented and discussed using profiles of individual forum members. The typology led to the development of a framework showing an individual’s dangerous places travel career and this is described within the context of the forum members. The chapter concludes by presenting five profiles of forum members using their own words to describe their attitude towards travelling to dangerous places. 6.2 Forum membership
According to Kurt, there are around 200 regulars (personal communication, 29 August 2007). While there are a few regular posters about which very little is known, the majority of regular posters discuss their offline lives on the board, making it possible to categorise the different types of people who post on the Black Flag Café and their relationship with both danger tourism and the forum’s owner Robert Young Pelton. The forum attracts a wide variety of people and there is no differentiation to the uninitiated observer between those to travel for pleasure and those who choose to work in dangerous places. The long period of participant observation allowed me to distinguish these different personalities and enabled thick and detailed descriptions and analysis of the different types of forum members. Figure 6.2 shows a typology of the different types of people on the Black Flag Café. It drew on the categories identified by Piekarz (2007) but expands these, fully dividing workers from tourists and shifting the focus from a destination base to one which revolves around the motivations for, and type of, travel. Figure 6.3 displays the dangerous places travel career of the forum members. It shows how they move from category to category within the typology, from being interested in travel to dangerous places to making their first trip to either a dangerous place or DP lite destination, how the tourist may then choose to end their travel to dangerous places career at this point or might move on to increasingly dangerous destinations, regular travel to dangerous places or working in dangerous places. In this section I draw on my own participant-observation work, the analysis of the hot posters, forum data and the profiles posters display on the forum to describe individual forum members, their reasons for participating in the forum and their interest in travelling to dangerous places. The typology and career path were developed during the participant-
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observation and data-collection stage of the research. Over the course of the research, forum members have moved between the categories and where pertinent this has been highlighted; with these exceptions, the analysis of the forum members places them in the category they were in at the end of the data-collection period. Through the forum content analysis it was only possible to identify accurately one piece of social-demographic data, gender. Figure 6.1 shows the gender breakdown of the regular BFC posters. Female board members can be categorised in the same way as other posters and so their profiles, where relevant, have been included.
Gender of regular posters Unknown Female 9% 10%
Male 81%
Figure 6.1 Gender breakdown of regular posters on the Black Flag Café
As there is no reliable way to establish age on the Internet and the forum members do not need to specify their age when joining the forum (apart from stating that they are over 16), no specific analysis of age of the study population was undertaken in this research. It has, however, been possible to explore some age factors by analysing the forum content and from the profiles of posters who have mentioned indicators of their age (ages of children and grandchildren, year at college, etc.). A number of students on the board have asked for information about their first trips overseas, either independently or as part of an official or unofficial study aboard programme. Some of their posts appear to be general information gathering for when they can afford to travel, rather than for concrete travel plans for the near future. Most of the posters who do travel to dangerous places regularly for leisure are over thirty; this may be because they have more disposable income than the younger posters.
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There are a number of forum members over 60 (Bronco, who gives his age as 63, and cbychoice, who is over seventy) who still travel to dangerous places.
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Figure 6.2 Typology of the different types of BFC forum members
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Figure 6.3 DP travel career framework
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6.3 Newbie posters
At some point all posters are new to the board. Some, however, develop into regular posters while others choose to leave the board soon after they join it. There is no evidence as to why forum members choose to leave the BFC, although Robert Young Pelton feels that they may be put off by the masculine nature of the forum and/or the forum may have provided the information that they were seeking (personal communication, 28 June 2009). The newbie posters can be divided into three categories based on the initial questions they ask. 6.3.1 Asking for specific travel advice about one particular destination or trip
These may be first-time or regular travellers overseas; many point out in their post that they are seeking advice from the forum as it is their first DP trip. Most of the first-time travellers are people like south_sea_bubble (aka SSB) and Hansol, who are students seeking adventurous experiences during their summer breaks. They are often fans of RYP and mention him within their first post, saying that they have read his books or seen him on television. They mainly post on the travel forum, seeking information about a particular trip before disappearing after fewer than ten posts, but some of these posters (for example SSB) develop into regulars. Most do not report back to the board on their trip and leave the board once they have gained (or in some cases not gained) the information they are seeking. In the sample period, such posters include el_case asking about the present situation in Zimbabwe, g60man querying the situation in Sierra Leone and acrobatoftheroad, who has made only a total of nine posts on the board, which all relate to different overseas trips, including hitchhiking in Afghanistan and planning a drive from Turkey to Egypt via Syria, Yemen and Jordan. The poster Mel provides an example of how the regular board members sometimes flame these new posters. In her posts she displayed only a very limited knowledge about the places she wished to travel to (Kazakhstan, Iran and the surrounding areas):
Mel: Anybody know if it is safe, for women, to stay in
the cheapest hotels and dorm rooms, in Biskek?
coldharvest: Bless your heart Mel....is it safe for a
woman to stay in cheap hotels and dorms anywhere?
Cheap hotels and dorms in Biskek
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6.3.2 About the possibilities of gaining work overseas
A number of the newbie posters seek advice on how they can obtain “exciting” jobs overseas. These posters can be further divided into students asking for career advice and posters who wish to escape from their current jobs and do something which they consider to be more “interesting and adventurous”. Some of these posters mention their admiration of Robert Young Pelton in their introduction and express a desire to become like him, an adventurer, war or photojournalist. Others want to work for NGOs, join the Peace Corps or find any job which allows them to travel to dangerous places.
I am a paramedic with 16 years experience, and one of
my main interests is international travel. My latest trip
was several weeks of trekking through Pakistan,
western China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uhzbekistan, before
that was Tanzania. I am looking for a way to combine
the medicine with travel, what are the best ways to do
this? I have looked at several websites, but I still have
questions. Does anyone have experience with this, what
would those of you who do recommend?
Anders F. Lowenfish in “Medical Volunteering Abroad”
Many of these posters show only a basic knowledge of the places where they wish to work, eliciting flaming from the regular forum members: siriusss wanted to know how to obtain work as a barman in the Green Zone in Iraq, Tessa wanted to find a management job (for any company and in any field) in Afghanistan and another poster, jackrussellnyc, was looking for a short-term contract which would allow him to escape from his corporate finance job and do “something interesting” for six months in a DP or DP lite. In line with the sublime of war, jobs in war zones are seen by many as glamorous and exciting (Morris 2002). Such jobs are viewed as adventurous and attractive to some posters who are keen to experience these situations first hand.
I was curious as how one becomes a traveling
journalist/adventure type. It is a love of mine that I
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always have had. Iʹm a Political Science/International
Security major with a minor in Journalism. Any advice
would be great. I want to be a conflict zone journalist
and travel constantly. […] Also does anyone else know
of any jobs that are similar? Maybe not a travelling
journo, but someone who travels constantly from
international conflict zone to conflict zone (whos not a
soldier). Money isnʹt that important to me, just the
experience
Apoc in “Need Advice”
6.3.3 Studying overseas
While students form part of the group of posters who travel regularly to dangerous places, during their summer breaks, there are also students who use studying as a reason or excuse to travel to dangerous places. They may view studying overseas as offering an opportunity to travel overseas with a safely net provided by the educational institution or as a more socially acceptable way of travelling to dangerous places. Students ask about studying Arabic, in particular in the Yemen and Egypt, and also about studying Islamic culture. There are also a number of posts about gaining employment teaching English overseas in both dangerous and non-dangerous places. The threads “Study Abroad in Yemen” and “Average salary for Overseas English Teachers?” provide examples.
Iʹm looking to include a study‐abroad program for my
major which would entail in me traveling to Israel to
study for a semester. I think it would be fun after my
semester to travel to a couple of countries around the
area, including Egypt and maybe Lebanon (specifically
Beirut) and getting back to the States in one piece. Any
info? Thanks, much appreciated :)
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roach coach in “Looking into travel to Israel, possibly Egypt, Beirut”
6.4 People who are interested in pleasure / leisure travel to DP’s
The first division evident among the regular posters on the BFC is between those who travel, or have travelled, to dangerous places and those who have not yet visited a dangerous place but who are interested in doing so. Posters who plan to travel to dangerous places use the forum in three different ways: to gain inspiration about places that they might want to visit in the future, to gather information about travelling in preparation for when they do travel and to live vicariously through the travels of other people as they are currently unable (due to financial, family or work commitments) to travel. Woodsman is a forester in Northern America. On the forum he lists his job as Private Forester/Entrepreneur and uses an avatar of himself. On the forum he lists his interests as:
hiking, boating, hunting, fishing, foraging,
motorcycling, bicycling, skiing (all), running, fitness,
smoking crack & meth, building dirty bombs, raping
nuns, poodle snaring, semen donation (want some?),
hirsute quilting, bathing in bat blood, tea bag origami,
munching on deep fried turtle testicles, you know ‐
typical boring shit
Woodsman, personal profile
Although he is not a hot poster he is a regular poster on the board and makes an average of 4.82 posts per day. The majority of his posts (64.74%) are made in the BFC Café and very few mention travel. He travels widely throughout the USA on a motorbike and posts on the motorbike adventure forum ADVrider.com but does not travel overseas. On several occasions he has used the board to make enquiries of other forum members about the possibility of gaining employment as a security contractor in Iraq and he has also posted a few times about his need to escape from his current life to do something which he considers more exciting. But he appears to
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seek novelty in an abstract way, exploring different avenues for new ideas but never putting these into practice. OneLungMcLung is a poster who joined the forum after seeing RYP on television. He is a trainee nurse who admits to using the forum to live vicariously through other people’s travel while he is training and gaining inspiration from others. He plans to use his medical skills for aid work when he graduates. He posts around two posts per day and his posts include health and medical information. 6.5 Posters who travel to dangerous places
BFC posters who travel to dangerous places can be categorised in several ways. One of the first divisions is between those who travel to dangerous places for work and those who travel for pleasure. 6.5.1 People who travel to dangerous places for pleasure / leisure
The posters who travel for pleasure can be subdivided into those who travel to dangerous places regularly and those who travel to a DP as a one-off experience. Posters who travel to dangerous places for pleasure often, but not always, morph into posters who regularly travel or take jobs in dangerous destinations.
6.5.1.1 Posters who regularly travel to dangerous places for pleasure / leisure
People who travel regularly to dangerous places often also choose jobs which facilitate such travel. These board members are aware of each other’s “DP resumés” and use them as a way of judging other and new board members. Forum members who regularly travel use the board to find information about the destinations they plan to visit, and also arrange to meet fellow Flaggers if there is anyone at the destination they are visiting. They also describe their trips overseas to each other and offer advice and information. SRR is a moderator on the BFC. He is Canadian and joined the forum in 2004. He features as a hot poster for general posts but not for the travel-related posts. He seldom posts about travel but has travelled extensively to dangerous places: he worked for an airline for a number of years and used his discounts to buy flights to dangerous places. Following one of these trips he wrote the Bradt Travel Guide to the Democratic Republic of Congo (Rorison 2008) and has since co-written the Bradt Travel Guide to Angola (Stead and Rorison 2009). Although he travels extensively,
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he does not publicly provide travel advice or information to forum members either on the BFC or Polo’s Bastards, where he is also a member, but may do so via PMs. The two founders of Polo’s Bastards, ROB and Foulplay, are also members of the BFC (they were members of the BFC before they founded Polo’s Bastards). ROB does not appear ever to have travelled to dangerous places. During the research period, they both posted more frequently on the BFC than they did on their own website.
Foulplay is based in the UK and works as a telecoms engineer. In 2007 he travelled to Uganda and Iraq and also announced that he had obtained work as a part-time travel writer for a new upmarket publication. None of his articles ever appear to have been published. His work mainly features on free blogs and websites and he is quoted occasionally in the media as the editor of Polo’s Bastards website.
coldharvest (aka Cold) is another moderator on the BFC. He is an ex-Hell’s Angel who sometimes travels with Robert Young Pelton. His wife is also a member of the forum (Gopi) but she rarely posts. Cold has travelled widely in Afghanistan as he used to be a rug trader.
rickshaw92 is one of the longest-standing members of the BFC, having joined the forum in 1996. A Canadian who currently lives in London, he is a rickshaw driver who uses his earnings to travel overseas to both dangerous (Ethiopia and Somalia) and non-dangerous (India) places. He uses the forum to seek information but seldom uses it to tell stories of his travels or to offer useful information to others.
dogtanian, who is a regular but sporadic poster on the board, works in finance and was until recently based in India. He travels to dangerous places on holiday, visiting Syria, Israel, Iran and Lebanon.
svizzerams (aka Svizz) is the female poster who does appear as a hot travel poster. She joined the board in 2004 and posted twenty-four of the most popular threads during the research period. She makes an average of 2.18 posts per day. During the research period svizzerams worked as a rural travelling pharmacist around the north-west USA, often travelling by motorbike: she owns three motorbikes and a number of kayaks. She also posts on the ADVrider.com forum. Svizz travels independently to dangerous places and also visits people she has met through her work in destinations such as Azerbaijan, which classify as unusual if not dangerous. She posts about her travels on the forum and when
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travelling makes an effort to log on and upload pictures and provide updates. She is also one of the posters who makes the most effort to travel to BFC meetings and has been to a number of these over the years, including the Gun Fest in Philadelphia, a Brides of March meet in San Francisco, BFC Calgary skydiving event and a meeting in LA.
Another of the hot female posters on the board is Penta. After RYP she is the poster who has the most hot threads with sixty-five in comparison to RYP’s 174. Penta is a copy-editor who lives in the UK and Spain. She travels regularly between the two places and also spends time independently travelling around South America; she has lived in both Iran and Venezuela. While the majority of the posters only admit to travelling to dangerous places independently she has also posted on the board about taking package tours to Iran and Syria. She has three threads showing within the top twenty threads, although these are political as opposed to travel related. On the board the majority of her posts are political and are regularly flamed as her views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often contrary to the supportive militaristic nature of the forum and grate with the patriotic forum members. This has contributed to the high number of hot posts credited to her name. Her posts about travelling receive much less attention and are not flamed in the same way as her political posts. On some occasions the flaming against her has been violent and threatening in nature and the moderators have either asked for posters to be less violent and personal in expressing their views or, on one occasion, have removed posts which directly threatened her.
6.5.1.2 One-off and first-time travellers to dangerous places
There are several examples of regular forum members who are one-off travellers to dangerous places. The poster seektravelinfo travelled to Iraq in 2007 and does not appear to have travelled to other dangerous places either before or after that trip. Kurt has been to Haiti twice but has not travelled to a dangerous place since then. They may be posters who like to live vicariously through the forum, making excuses as to why they have not travelled recently. They also may have gained the anticipated benefit from their first trip and so have no further reason to travel. Alternatively the benefit obtained from travelling was not as great as they had anticipated or imagined, or they have demonstrated what they set out to show (either to self or others) and therefore have no desire to travel again. These forum members now mainly use the forum as a form of social interaction or to live vicariously through the travels of
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other people. When possible they remind board members that they have travelled to a dangerous place, establishing their own pedigree as experienced DPers. Other one-off and first-time travellers to dangerous places may be using the experience as a type of rite-of-passage experience (Cohen 2004). Forum members use the forum to identify destinations which might be suitable for inexperienced travellers seeking adventure:
Iʹm fairly new to the travel thing. Have an application in
for my passport, and have been saving a bit of money
for airfare. Iʹm 21, have military experience, and I think
thats pretty much my story. What Iʹm wondering is
where is a good place for a first‐timer to get their ʺfeet
wetʺ when it comes to a travel destination.
Hansol in “International Travel: Popping your Cherry”
i’d like to get as much as i can from my first major trip
outside of US and Europe.
sileni in “US to Kyrgyzstan – entry route / recommendations”
Shmuel et al. (2006) saw extended travel as a chance for young adults to test “boundaries, limits and roles” (p.231) and this is reflected among the forum membership.
I want to immerse myself in violent places and through
such a rite of passage cross into manhood
south_sea_bubble in private message
After their initial trip to a dangerous place some forum members turn into regular travellers, seeking out increasingly dangerous destinations and building up their experience, as shown in the framework of DP career (Figure 6.3).
The poster Aussie TJS provides an example of a poster who has travelled to increasingly dangerous destinations. He first went to Nepal, Chernobyl, and parts of Korea before travelling to East Africa, Afghanistan and Israel. He has since returned to Australia and is considering joining the military reserves.
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6.5.2 Posters who work in dangerous places
Posters who work in dangerous places use the board for a combination of work and pleasure. They swap information about living and working conditions: trying to find out from other board members the current situation in the places they are going to next and making plans to meet with other local BFCers while overseas. They also use the board for keeping up with news and for social interaction. They lurk when they feel they are unable to post. Workers in dangerous places have deliberately chosen to work in a dangerous place. They fall into three separate categories: those whose jobs naturally take them to dangerous places, posters who have regular jobs and who have deliberately taken a posting in a dangerous place and those whose jobs have some type of altruistic value.
6.5.2.1 Posters who have jobs which naturally takes them to dangerous places (e.g. security work, armed forces)
Several board members are currently in the armed forces and are posted around the world including Iraq and Afghanistan. Vincent is a US Army Reservist with the Intelligence Corps and Farmdog is a US Army officer. Moosehead is in the Canadian Navy and the occasional poster, patriot (who is also the poster denise’s son), was in the US Marine Corps. Several of the posters who are ex-military now work for security companies. These posters use their military experience to gain employment and the nature of the employment often means that they work in dangerous places.
flipflop is a poster who is based in the UK. He is ex-military and currently works as a security contractor. After losing his job in Iraq, he decided to travel around the world, using the forum to post updates about his trip in the thread “Around the world in 176 days”. This thread became one of the most popular travel threads on the board. The thread tells the tale of his trip and was at the time accompanied by his blog Seagulls. It includes updates on his journey and suggestions from other board members on places to visit or questions about his experiences. During April 2008 he began posting some of the pictures from his journey on a separate thread called “flip’s flicks” in the Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes part of the forum. He has since returned to employment in Afghanistan.
NIJ has been a board member since 2004 and is a hot poster. He works in land- mine clearance and lists his location as “Land(of)mines”, spending a considerable amount of time working in Angola and Afghanistan. Despite the fact that NIJ was a regular member of the forum he has not logged on since August
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2008 and there are substantial rumours that he died while working in Angola in 2008.
Nowonmai - when reversed this username reads: I am no won. He has been posting on the BFC since 2005. Although he is based near to London he has never attended a BFC meeting or met any BFC posters. Very little is known about him except that he is ex-Navy, probably ex-SBS, and may currently work in either in the UK secret service or private security.
Jumper lives in the USA where he was a smoke jumper (a firefighter who jumps out of planes); he is a former US Marine. He worked for a period of time as a security contractor in Iraq and since his return from Iraq in 2007 has been writing a blog about security contracting called Feral Jundi. In this blog he advertises jobs in the security industry and places updates and new stories about security contracting around the world. He says that he is trying to break into a writing career and often quizzes Robert Young Pelton on aspects of his writing.
6.5.2.2 Those who have regular jobs and have deliberately obtained a posting in a dangerous place (e.g. computer analyst working in the Green Zone in Iraq)
A number of posters on the board have careers which would not naturally take them to dangerous places. They have deliberately gone out of their way to obtain employment in their field in a dangerous place and are mainly involved in aid/reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bouncer works in computers and deliberately obtained a posting overseas. He was equally happy to obtain a job in either Iraq of Afghanistan, at one point asking the forum members which would be a better choice for long-term employment and living conditions. He obtained a position in the Green Zone in Iraq as a Department of Defence Government contractor. He has been there for three years and maintains a blog which is updated sporadically. During that time he has worked for a number of different employers but always seeking another contract in either Iraq or a move to Afghanistan. He appears to spend the majority of his time in the compound but he has made a couple of posts on the forum about his activities:
So I went out into the redzone the other day, and that’s
not what made it a good day. I went to an Iraqi
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neighboorhood with no PSD or armoured vehicle, and
that’s not what made it a good day either. I helped the
Iraqis set up some wireless networks (On my own time)
in a boys and then a girls school […] And that really is
what made it a good day.
Bouncer in I had a good day the other day
The BFC also attracts a number of journalists and photojournalists.
The poster Mikethehack (aka MTH) is a war journalist who has worked in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a PhD in political science and currently works as a newspaper editor and political correspondent based in Dubai. He has been a member of the community since its inception in 1996. MTH uses the same username on a number of different online forums including Polo’s Bastards and Lightstalkers.org (a forum for journalists).
Other journalists on the forum include Jose, m4p and Nick, who is establishing a journalism career by working in Haiti. Lightstalker is a photojournalist who covers a wide spectrum from paparazzi work to war zones. One of his recent assignments was in Chechnya and he posted many of these photos on the BFC. He also posts and uses the same username on Polo’s Bastards.
Qwazy Wabbit is a journalist whose assignments do not generally take him to dangerous places but he undertakes sponsored long-distance charity races which allow him to travel through remote areas. During the research period he participated in the Mongol Rally (a rally from London to Mongolia in which teams race older vehicles with limited engine size; his route went via Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan) and posted updates and photos on the forum. This thread was popular, with 2467 views. Since then he has also participated in the Africa Rally (London to Limbe in Cameroon via Nigeria).
Friendlyskies is a female poster currently working in the tourism industry in Central America. The author of some Lonely Planet travel guides, she travels and works in Latin America and is currently living in Costa Rica.
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6.5.2.3 Those whose jobs have altruistic value and for which the distinction between thrill-chasing and the job is harder to define (e.g. medics, NGOs)
The aid workers on the BFC appear to be split into those who are altruistically motivated and those who use aid work as a socially acceptable reason to visit war zones, doing it purely or mainly for their own benefit. Externally motivated posters probably undertake aid work in dangerous places for more personal reasons. They are more interested in what they can obtain for personal self- gain and self-growth by working in a dangerous place than in seeking an altruistic experience. There is less interest in the job or role as this is merely an excuse to travel, the travel experience being more important than the type of humanitarian work undertaken (Uriely and Reichel 2000; Morris 2002).
Hi everyone‐ I am a 27 yr old woman with a college
degree and management experience. What is the
likelihood of me being about to get a job in
Afghanistan? Any suggestions on how to get started?
Where to look? […] To be quite honest I donʹt really care
about ʺwhat the job isʺ as much as just having the
opportunity to experience being there.
Tessa in “Afghanistan”
any recommendations for someone like me wishing to
find a job with an NGO group or something that would
grant me a job working in Chechnya for an extended
period of time? I am a student majoring in Islamic
studies and I am very interested in the Qadiri sufi
orders of this region and want to see Dagestan so badly,
and I hear its open for tourists, technically.
rutgurt in “travel from Azerbaijahn to Dagestan
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The forum also attracts a number of posters who appear to be genuinely motivated by aid work regardless of the location. These forum members feel, or like to intimate that they find self-actualisation through helping others via missionary, voluntary or aid work while travelling overseas.
Medevac is based in Dubai but travels for work. He is a medic involved in emergency evacuations and his work takes him to both dangerous and non- dangerous destinations. In addition to working, he also uses his medical training for voluntary work: he undertook relief work in Sri Lanka in 2005 after the tsunami and travelled to Burma following Cyclone Nargis in 2007. He posted pictures of the relief work in Sri Lanka on the forum, one of them featuring Mr DP merchandise.
The poster OneLungMcLung has been known to ask about joining the aid missions run by El Pelon and svizzerams and Buzzsaw have both done aid work in Burma on a project set up and run by the poster Ultra Swain.
The research supports the unintentional evidence provided by Adams (2001; 2006) and Piekarz (2007) that it is difficult to separate the workers and leisure travellers who choose to travel to dangerous places. A significant number of posters on the board choose to work in dangerous places, undertaking a range of roles including journalist, security contractor (at different levels of responsibility), armed forces, medics and aid workers. The forum attracts a number of posters (existing and new) who ask about obtaining work and working in dangerous places. Some of these requests are from students who are searching for career options and whose posts focus on the more glamorous professions of adventurer or journalist but the majority are professionals (security, IT, medics) who wish to work in dangerous places and who are using the forum to carry out research and to make professional contacts.
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6.6 Poster profiles
A text-based online forum offers an opportunity to create profiles of individual posters using the subjects’ own words to describe their experiences first hand. Similar to vignettes, these profiles can be used to create more detailed impressions of forum members through the use of their posts over a long period. The following profiles have been developed from their posts on the forum over a number of years, the participant observation and the content analysis. They draw on the posters’ own words to stress important events, approaches to travel and their behaviour and relationships on the forum. 6.6.1 marie-angelique
Marie-angelique (aka MA or m-a) joined the forum in 2005 with a post about a seventeen- hour layover in Brussels. Since then she has started 142 threads and averages 3.38 posts per day, many of which are in the travel forum. Over the years she has used a number of different avatars including pictures of herself, photos of relatives and written statements. She is a maths teacher at a Community College in San Francisco and also a climbing instructor. She has a somewhat unusual lifestyle, living in a trailer and using her school holidays to go travelling, often by bicycle. The fact that marie-angelique does not appear in any of the hot poster statistics is deceptive, as her posts are widely read and her opinions valued within the forum. During the research period she was on sabbatical, travelling by mountain bike through Pakistan, Eastern Europe and China; this, together with her limited access to the Internet during the data-collection time frame, probably explains her absence from the statistics. She is viewed as one of the most adventurous women on the forum, a position she has gained through the stories of her travels she has posted on the board. She travels to dangerous places for leisure and encapsulates many of the forum’s attitudes towards travel. Her posts
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over the years demonstrate her approach towards travelling to dangerous places. Four dominant themes emerge from a review of her posts: anti-state travel advice, a desire to separate self from tourists, the use of the forum for self-promotion and a calculated approach to risk.
6.6.1.1 Anti-state travel advice
have you ever trolled the state department travel
warnings. no place is safe!
Studying Abroad in Mexico
iʹll give you 200 points if you can find a country
WITHOUT a travel warning from the state department.
i double dare you.
Thailand: Don’t go there
I donʹt know about Canada ‐ but if they are like the US
state department they issue a dire warning about every
place on earth.
Mali
She regularly attempts to discredit official travel advice. She also tries to convince herself and the other forum members, not always successfully, that State Travel Advice (which is the US equivalent of FCO advice) is not an accurate representation of the dangers which would be faced and in doing so denies that the danger exists or that it will affect her. She attempts to differentiate between the people to whom official travel advice applies and herself and other Flaggers, who are special and different from other tourists, and uses statements on the forum to validate her own opinion that the advice given does not apply to experienced travellers like her.
6.6.1.2 A dislike of tourists
In her posts she makes derogatory comments about tourists, tour and excursion operators. It is clear that when she is travelling she does not like to view herself as a tourist.
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i donʹt know about the cruises, but from looking at the
boats you couldnʹt pay me to get on one. tourist hell
unless you are willing to pay 4000 usd for the special
ones, see the lonely planet for that one.
Cairo travel agent?
after cuba i had a week to kill, so instead of hanging
around in cancun, mexico (a most hideous tourist trap) i
took the bus to belize
m-a pix
so i went to jordan and egypt. it almost felt like i was
paying a penance for seeing the sights. there were a lot
of touts, especially near petra and luxor. it was really
hard for me to travel in touristy areas. i never want to
do it again....
m-a pix
From there Iʹll take the train to Iran. What happens there
is still up in the air, depending on what I can arrange
with a tour guide :(
Sabbatical; - woot woot!
She often provides travel advice to other forum members based on her own experiences. In the process she makes a point of showing how she dislikes and does not associate with tourists and how she prefers to travel outside the tourism infrastructure whenever possible. When travelling, she actively seeks to have what she considers an authentic travel experience, which involves interaction with the local population.
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i think learning even a little of the local language really
enhances your travel experience since you get a chance
to talk to people who have nothing to do with the
tourist industry. good luck :)
Learning Languages
cycling gives you more access to the locals and gives
them more access to you. which makes trips to far off
places a lot more interesting. in the 3rd world, people
can relate to you better if you travel by bicycle since you
have not insulated yourself in a motor vehicle or
separated yourself by traveling in a mode few can
afford. in most places, you can leave your bike at the
hotel for a few days if you wanted to do some hiking.
i never had a problem throwing my bike on a bus, train,
car, or ferry boat if i didnʹt feel like riding the whole
way. to me the whole point wasnʹt having the freedom
from bus schedules. it was about seeing the places in
between. places that are not on the regular tourist trail
and getting the chance to interact with the locals. riding
by, i had a lot of people yell out to make conversation,
or ask me if i needed help
Long bicycle trips?
6.6.1.3 Self-promotion
MA also uses her posts on the forum to provide updates on her travels. She is active in her use of the Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes sub-forum and in the past has created
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threads to update the forum members on her trips. During September 2007, in the thread “BFC get together in Serbia” (23 September), she provided a link to her Flickr page, which contains the pictures of her trip, and she later posted pictures in a separate thread titled “m-a pix” (20 July 2008). In her posts she describes the benefits of travelling to a particular destination and seeks to establish her credibility within the forum by showing how she has managed to travel to dangerous places without incident.
no, just a few attempts. like the time they tried to charge
me 40 euros to put my bicycle on top of a bus in
pakistan.
ever been robbed in a foreign country?
There is also evidence in her posts that MA uses her tales of the positive aspects of travelling (positive in her eyes) to increase her own status within the forum and to reinforce her image as a DPer. The risks of illness and hardships encountered in Pakistan, for instance, are highlighted and the lack of tourists and living under local conditions point out that she is having an authentic travel experience.
thanks yʹall :) it was pretty cool., in 1992. i was only
there for a week :p flew in on uzbek air, with the scariest
looking hosties you ever saw. drove out through the
ferghana valley, which i donʹt recall much of since i was
sick as a dogn with no ‐invasive bacteria....
m-a pix
6.6.1.4 Approach to risk
She often considers death and misadventure in the context of climbing, demonstrating that in this context she considers herself to take calculated and informed risks within a familiar environment.
I have been in a few situations that could have resulted
in my death. If I am guiding I wonʹt go, but if it is just
me and an equally skilled partner I am taking a
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calculated risk and I donʹt mind that I might die, staying
at home watching TV is a worse way to die.
Will You Survive?
Interestingly her attitude towards travel appears to be slightly less calculated and she enjoys pushing the boundaries.
iʹm not really worried about the flight safety issues. i
wouldnʹt even be going if i just wanted to be ʺsafeʺ.
Ariana Airlines [Afghan airline]
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6.6.2 JamesInTheWorld
JamesInTheWorld (aka JITW) is a regular poster who lists himself on the forum as a “Professional Adventurer” living in “Adventure Manor @ Jakarta, Indonesia - ERS Penthouse @ Bangkok, Thailand”. JamesInTheWorld first joined the BFC in 2003 under the name of JamesTheAdventurer and then again under his current username in 2005. He joined the forum as he was a fan of RYP:
Worth Every Dam Penny, You and your book inspired
me to go beyond the borders of my cubicle, YOU ROCK
RYP!!!!!
Are there any Adventurers here?
One of his first posts under his new name was “Are there any Adventurers here?” In this post he described himself as working in Baghdad for the money.
I am in the IZ (International Zone) in Baghdad, on an IT
contract. I have been here for 9 months, before I was
here I worked on Contracts for the past 5 years in Qatar,
Indonesia and France (a DP now!). And I have explored
all around the world, been on an expedition or 2,
climbed a few mountains and shitted around. I live in
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Washington DC in the States but I only get back once a
year, currently I am living in Jakarta, Indonesia on my
off time and when I am not traveling.
Are there any Adventurers here?
He has started 485 threads and is the fourth hottest poster on the board; he is also a hot travel poster, making him one of the few people on the board who are hot posters for both general and travel-related posts. While not everybody on the board might agree with his views, or believe all of his stories, he is an influential poster with the ability to create discussions. Over the years he has used several different avatars, one portraying him with a gun in Iraq, another showing him in a cartoon as a professional adventurer. Three themes emerge from an analysis of his posts: self-promotion and a desire to be viewed as an adventurer through the use of online persona management, his involvement in a number of ongoing flame wars within the forum and a desire to be viewed as a novelty seeker.
6.6.2.1 Self-promotion of JamesInTheWorld as adventurer
In many ways JamesInTheWorld tries to emulate Robert Young Pelton by attempting to create his own a reputation as an adventurer. JITW uses the Internet to promote his online businesses and actively indulges in online persona management. He runs a website that promotes international jobs called CivilianContractorJobs.com and a blog called theprofessionaladventurer.com. These are links in his current signature. In the past he has linked to other websites he owns, including a Professional Adventurers Guide to Independent Travel, Death Valley Magazine and Expatrockstarjobs.com. JITW also posts on Polo’s Bastards using the same username and has contributed to the blogs and travel accounts published on that site. It is easy to trace him across the Internet as he uses the same username on several different forums. He also uses his real name on some of his websites, has set up accounts on other forums (not the BFC) in his real name and has occasionally signed his full name on BFC posts. He can be easily traced through FaceBook, where he also promotes his websites and blogs. All his online personas portray him in a similar way as a single man who promotes the glamorous ex-pat lifestyle he obtained by moving from the US to Asia and working as a contractor in war zones. He builds up this image in his posts by suggesting that other forum members have less glamorous lifestyles than him, as they do not share the same opportunities for a varied sex life and participation in manly activities in war zones.
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I just had SEX!!!!!!! 2 Chinese Gals, they went down on
each other first. Sex is not only good for the body but
good for the mind. JITW
I’m a 6 fig Expat that lives in S/E Asia, I could look like
screech and pull down mad ass
I just had SEX!!!!!!!
Without WAR there wouldn’t be all these great things;
24‐7 news stations, Cheap Whores, Cool Movies, 6
Figure Contractor Salaries, Snappy Cargo Pants, Groovy
Lingo (shooting & looting, FUBAR, ect.), Half the posts
on this site. WAR (huua), What is it good for (all of the
above!)
I LOVE WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In one of his posts he admitted to raping women:
JamesInTheWorld: Hay! I only paid for 3! I raped the
other one. And yes I do make more in a week than you
do in a month, Basement
Dweller…..hahahahahahahahahahaha
A Chronological listing of Derek’s Lebanon posts
This post produced a negative reaction from the women in the forum
marie‐angelique: do you actually think joking about
raping a woman is funny? or you actually raped
someone ‐ BASTARD and it forms the basis of an ongoing flame war which has continued for over four years.
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He does not manage to maintain the online persona throughout all his posts. At one point he posted a picture of himself wearing a wedding ring and made reference to his wife’s father being a wealthy politician. Several years after his rape post it became obvious that this was part of his online persona management.
The same thing happened to a good friend of mine in
Qatar
But she was lucky because she only received jail time for
being in a mans apartment wile being raped and
brutally beaten (after being dragged in there – actually
she was unconscious from being beaten by her rapist)
She cut all her hair off and killed herself
Saudi court to gang-rape victim: How does 200 lashes sound?
Because of his online persona, posters enjoy baiting JITW about the lifestyle he portrays on the forum. One member has created the troll username James_in_the_word, with a similar avatar, with which to post anti-JamesInTheWorld comments. The forum is also scattered with a running joke which suggests that JITW really lives in his mother’s basement and that all his posts on the BFC are fake as he never travels overseas.
Fuck the BFC, I’m out of here. Have fun remodeling
your moms basement losers, I’ll actually be traveling.
Don’t bother flaming me, I’ll never see it.
I’m out of here
Often he plays along with this joke teasing the forum members that their lives are the boring ones as he lives an exciting lifestyle which does not involve basements or working in a cubicle.
6.6.2.2 Attitude towards women / flame wars
Because many of his posts speak about women in a derogatory way, he is the subject of a number of ongoing flame wars with the female members of the board, in particular marie- angelique and svizzerams.
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JamesInTheWorld: I had sex with 11 different S/E Asian
gals last month, 2 at the same time the rest 1 on 1. I love
S/E Asia!
Svizzerams: one word ~jitw (does not deserve caps):
oink
marie‐angelique: Who are you trying to impress
anyway jitw? Are you so insecure that you need to post
(over and over and over again) how many times or how
many women you have been with??? Does that make
you a more interesting person?? I donʹt really care who
you sleep with, as long as itʹs not the rape you claimed
last month, or children, or farm animals. If you really
are the ʹprofessional adventurerʹ that you claim, surely
you have other, more interesting, insights to offer. And
why does being percieved as ʹcoolʹ matter so much to
you?
HOT Asian Stewardess Pictures Mega Thread!!!!!!!!!!
Not of all his flame wars are with the women on the forum. Another ongoing flame war is with the poster Woodsman.
Woodsman: I seriously wouldnʹt know a person that
lives in this world who wouldnʹt bore you oh ye God of
excitement.
JamesInTheWorld: But what you said about me is true
– I cannot appreciate living in the same country, around
the same type of people, same boring job, going to the
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same house, never traveling around the world and only having sex with a single woman for the rest of my life – yes, I cannot understand why a man would want that at all
JamesInTheWorld: I am posting on this forum from
Iraq after hanging out in Jordan for a while (before then
I was in Indonesia doing a bit of boar hunting in the jungle) – in a couple of months I will be posting on here from Israel, Jordan, Egypt and probably Afghanistan – I am not posting from my living room in a 1st world country like you are
And I banged a Romanian FOBBIT cutie last night
Posting from a War Zone in a Foreign Country after hitting 8 different countries in the past 5 months = Not
Boring
Posting from your Living Room in the USA = Boring
But I guess we both have different opinions on what is boring
Woodmen: James, seriously ‐ I seriously think you live a boring life and most of what you post on here is sheer hype and a sham. You make so many claims to make your life look like itʹs this, that and next best thing yet we never see any pictures of you or the extravagant, incredible lifestyle you claim you live.
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Really? Boar hunting? Whereʹs the pics?
Whereʹs the pics of half the incredible braggart crap you
post on this and other forums?
you bring up RYP, but see the difference is ‐ all his shit
is documented and heʹs got pics and videos and
published documents to back his stuff up ‐ but you?
Ainʹt got shit but yappity yappity yap coming out your
piehole.
Going ʺplacesʺ doesnʹt make you an exciting dude or
live an exciting life. So you live and work in a desert ‐
yippe for you! Wow ‐ Iʹm impressed!
Pets – I Don’t Get the Appeal
He continues with his posts despite being aware that to some people his online persona is unpopular.
Listen people of the BFC – you may not like the persona
I post under here sometimes – I admit I get a bit out of
control sometimes
GPS Units Needed
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6.6.3 Kurt
Kurt joined the forum in 2001. Since then he has started 764 threads and is now the head moderator of the forum. He has always used the same avatar, a picture of John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham Lincoln. His moderator profile gives his real name and provides the following information:
has been posting on the Black Flag Cafe since 2001 and
has been moderator since 2004 when no one else came
up with a better plan and they have been stuck with
him ever since.
He has been to Haiti twice and lived in the Balkans
(Bulgaria) for part of 1993 and 1994. He has been
stumbling into travel, careers and the occasional
terrorist attack for a while now and has so far come out
for the better.
He lives in Washington Heights in New York City with
his two cats.
He works in computers and appears to enjoy the social aspects of the forum, regularly holding BFC meetings (normally at Thanksgiving) and meeting forum members when they are visiting New York.
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Thursday the 22nd. Maybe starting at 4pm and then a
separate time for drinks afterwards in case others have
plans in this area to eat. PM me if you want to attend.
and I will announce who else from here is showing up.
Thanksgiving at my place this year
El Pelon better show up next time to avoid scandalous
posts like this in the future.
Scandal: Kurt Lunches with Projectalice
Kurt’s position in the forum can be divided into two main areas that are relevant to this research: his role as moderator and peacekeeper and his promotion of himself as a traveller to dangerous places.
6.6.3.1 Board information
One of his main duties in the forum is to ensure that the technical aspects of the forum run smoothly and, together with Robert Young Pelton, to act as referee in any very serious flame wars that spill over into real life. Much of his activity relates to updating forum members on software and board related issues.
I have an urgent security update to make to the board,
and this involves an edited and untested file. It will
become apparent if it is not working, If it goes down it
should be down for no more than a few minutes.
BFC May be down for a bit
The upgrade was successful...or else you would not be
reading this.
The problem is the appearance. Its not black and not
filled with skulls and stuff. I will work on that later.
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Right now I am rebuilding the search word index. It will
probably go on for about two more days so if you get
odd search results, that is the reason.
There are probably other things you like about the old
board better than the new one. But things
change...glaciers advance and retreat destroying
mountains and leaving lakes. Empires rise and fall and
opinions of them change over the centuries. And php
based message board scripts get updated to the point of
being incompatible with the previous one. So please
refer to Ecclesiastes 3, verses 1–8 for comfort....and not
me..if this bothers you.
Skulls and proper links coming soon. And chat
broke...but it should be easy to fix at a time that is not
2:45 am EST.
Thank you all for your patience.
The new board
He also maintains the forum’s concept of decency. He is universally popular within the forum and because of his position is able to enforce the rules of the forum without recourse from unhappy forum members.
Instead of forcing folks to look at them could we just
provide the link instead in case folks are at work, have
kids running around, are eating a McMuffin or
whatever. Some of us (myself included ) want to read a
thread and comment on it but since we are at dwork an
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donʹt want the boss asking ʺWhy is he always looking at
decapitation photos in his office?ʺ
Board stuff: About “Gory Pictures”
He also posts public warnings to other Flaggers about their behaviour.
Rapier09: How about we donʹt watch your gay video
and let this thread and possibly Penta die.
Kurt: Your time on this board is growing short. I advise
that you consider what you want to say and then say
something else. Time to train the crazy out of yourself
by identifying it and refusing to act out on it. If you
cannot do that, then you will not be able to indulge in
crazy here anymore.
J’accuse: flipflop
I banned his IP for 1/2 hour since he did not listen to my
request to stop asking the same question over and over.
First I Am A Journo, Now I am A “Contractor”
And Peanut..you have been banned from here
before....quite a few times. Donʹt fall back into the type
of behavior that got you banned from here the other
times (though I am sure you will but hey...I like to give
people chances.)
We are not your weapons – we are women
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6.6.3.2 DP travel experience
Kurt himself has limited travel experience to dangerous places. Within the forum he attempts to make his experiences sound more dangerous then they were, deftly referring to the Balkans in the 1990s, which were dangerous, when in fact he was in Bulgaria, which could not be considered a dangerous place.
The whole DP thing for me began in 1993 when I went
to the Balkans assuming I could become a beatnik type
writer. Prague was too expensive then so I settled on
Bulgaria...Which was an odd combination of vestigal
Stalinism and the chaos of a collapsed state. I got put in
jail in Dmitrovgrad on a trumped up herion charge,
went partialy deaf due to a Kurdish bomb in Istanbul
and got kicked out of Skopje by Albanian cigarette
smugglers who didnʹt agree with my Bulgarian friends
ʺHey I know what we can do schemeʺ to smuggle
Marlboros into Serbia.
Speaking for first time travelling
He did, however, travel to Haiti in 2005 and posted about this on the board. He repeated his DP experience to the same destination, cities and hotels three years later. It is interesting that he did not feel the need to travel to a different dangerous place. These two trips to Haiti are his only trips to a DP and he shows no interest in travelling to another dangerous place in the future. When posting his photos of the first trip to Haiti on the board he added a running commentary, which highlighted his adventuring streak in a positive way.
As my body guards they felt it prudent to try to pick my
pockets whenever they could get at my pockets. I
diffused the situation by offering them gum.
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After Cite Soliel I had a nasty experience of being
detained by a Voodoo priest in Petionville. I had to give
him some cash so his son would let me go
The thing with Haiti is that every Haitian thinks you are
there for some ʺotherʺ reason than the one you give.
Three years ago on my first trip there when I met a
friend of mine for the first time he was confused as to
who I was. Luckily he crossed off someone coming there
seeking sex with a child because (in his words) I ʺam
young, handsome and politeʺ apparently pedophiles
lack in many areas. So it was determined that I must be
a ʺspyʺ..but for whom? Luckily for me I was straight
forward with everyone and they finally believed that I
really was a nutty tourist.
Haiti is batshit bonkers right now. Especialy PAP. [Port‐
au‐Prince]
Haiti pictures (finally) dial up people beware..they are big
He regularly refers to these experiences in the forum and in doing so he reminds new and existing posters of his DP credentials.
Careful with Cite Soliel. I went once and I wonʹt be
going again. The reason is not that it is a scary place
(which it is..when you first arrive everyone is friendly
because they want money. When you leave everyone
gets mean because they want money. If you go do not
announce the time of your departure). It is because
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everyone there is armed and the shacks are paper thin.
A wandering blan will bring attention and possibly gunplay. Not directed at you (though that can be the case) but because of you being there.
In Haiti
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6.6.4 south_sea_bubble
South_sea_bubble (aka SSB) joined the BFC on 1 September 2007. He is a Chinese- American law student. He has started 146 new threads since he joined the forum. Over time he has become an accepted regular member of the forum. He participates in discussions and is also visible in chat. Since joining he has changed his avatar; his original avatar was Figure 6.4, this has since changed to Figure 6.5. He posts an average of one post a day (0.99 posts per day). During the data-collection time frame he did not feature as a hot poster or start any hot threads. Since joining the forum, SBB has started to travel to dangerous places for pleasure. His posts are interesting as they display the travel career of a Flagger, demonstrate how the BFC can encourage travelling to dangerous places and show the influence of RYP and the other posters.
Figure 6.4 Avatar: SSB v1 Figure 6.5 Avatar: SSB v2
6.6.4.1 Posts
SSB went through a lengthy initiation period when his posts were flamed by the longer- standing members of the forum. This was partly because his initial threads asked a stream of travel-related questions, some of which the forum members considered to be, at best, naïve. His first post on the forum, on 1 September 2007, started a thread entitled “The Least Courteous Country”. He often poses the question in the thread title and a potential answer as text.
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In your experience what countries are the rudest and least friendly?
What countries‐‐other than France‐‐seem to have a consensus formed against it?
The Least Courteous Country
Hotels in most of Africa will destroy my budget so is this a viable means of being cheap: I go to a church and find the head honcho. I tell him I am a student who wants to see the beautful land, not one of those princes on an UN expense account. I tell him I need to find something cheaper than the hotels. I ask him if he can recommend a congregant and suggest a price for staying at his home. Sound good? Similar ideas?
Finding cheaper accomodation through the local church
Letʹs say Iʹm in France and I have to money to get home.
Could I just overstay my tourist visa and get deported home for free?
Possible to use deportation as a free-ticket-home gambit?
Tell us about it.
A natural companion thread to ʺwhose been shot?ʺ
Have you ever fired a gun in anger?
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loot their archaeological heritage?
Where in the world can a wannabe tomb raider go?
I donʹt want to steal anything. I just want to open
something for the first time in a millennium and set foot
inside.
I have been part of an archaeological dig (Jordan). It was
cool. I found a 4000 year old vase. BUT IT WASNʹT A
TOMB RAIDING ADVENTURE.
In Jordan and Iʹm sure in the rest of the world, just
opening something without a permit is illegal. Looking
for soft laws.
Is there anywhere in the world where they will allow you to
6.6.4.2 Travel experience
When SSB joined the forum he did not have any experience of travelling to dangerous places. He did not appear to have any specific destination in mind but instead posted random travel queries about different countries (Yemen, Saudi Arabia, sub-Saharan Africa, travelling by boat), which may have been pitched to the community in order to give him ideas about interesting places to visit. He appears to be interested in poor locations where he can meet local people.
What are some festive occasions in any poor country
that would be cool to see? Iʹm thinking of Antigua
Guatemala on Good Friday. Any other
recommendations?
Festivals
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Lebanon?
What small, poor country projects the most cultural influence?
Are there any? Permissive meaning a lack of moral
codes i.e. casual sex, acceptance of homosexuality, no
fault divorces, etc.
Permissive societies that are poor
In this post “How wildly improbable would this idea be?”, south_sea_bubble states that he is going to visit Haiti with an Arabic-speaking friend and that he wants to walk through Cité Soleil accompanying a Jordanian foot patrol. He follows up this post with one entitled “In Haiti” made on 23 December 2007. He is posting from Haiti and says that:
Itʹs splendid. Port‐au‐Prince is a very stressful city to
even walk around in but the tension itself makes the
whole experience rewarding.
Iʹm here with my friend for many reasons. My most
noble reason is to learn and to see a national life, taking
another step towards seeing the entire world‐‐in the
fullest meaning. So I want to go to Cite Soleil (or at least
I think I want to), a large slum that is patrolled by heavy
units. But there is a more petty reason. We are kids who
are after the vanity of adventure. College kids find it
stylish to travel and this is an extreme attempt to utterly
claim victory over the grand pissing contest.
In Haiti
In this post, south_sea_bubble shows that he views his trip to Haiti as a way to increase his own status with his peer group and also as an adventure. The thread about Haiti is also
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interesting because Kurt uses it to remind the forum members that he has visited Haiti and offers DP travel advice to SSB, as quoted in section 6.6.3.2, above. He continues:
Kurt: After you leave and even if nothing
happens...Those people you donʹt see are likely to pay a
visit to those you did see thinking you gave them
money. […] Haiti and especially Cite Soliel is an
extremely fragile place. What you say and who you see
could mean death to someone later. And let people tell
you about politics. Donʹt offer any opinions.
south_sea_bubble: Christ that sounds sobering. I’m
going to stick w/ the stress of moving about downtown
PAP.
My kiss blue helmet ass scheme failed. I went to a strip
club to try to find blue helmets but it was empty. We see
Spanish speaking blue helmets on the streets and they
are nice but we are never able to linger long enough to
kiss ass. Any good ideas?
In Haiti
Immediately after south_sea_bubble returned from Haiti he made a post about his future travel plans. It appears that his successful trip to Haiti has given him the confidence to travel alone to other more dangerous locations and he asks about the possibilities of backpacking in Baghdad.
Curious.
Are parts of Baghdad now okay for backpacking?
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This provoked the following response from forum members:
Mikethehack: Heh heh heh heh heh
Bouncer: please do not come here. I do not want to see
video of you.
RYP: You can get through most of the roadblocks if you
have wasta or armed men but Iraqi cops will fleece you
naked if you think you can travel alone. Also once the
criminals get wind of you and work out a plan you will
be kidnapped and flipped to the highest bidder. The
odds are you can make it around the same way a naked
lady could probably make her way through a sports bar
at closing time unmolested but the chances for
misfortune are much higher that the chances for smooth
going.
Instead of Iraq, he settled on a solo trip to Africa starting in Cairo. He started the thread “Bubble’s Travel Updates”, which he used to post real-time updates about his trip and to ask forum members’ advice about his travel plans.
My first day in Cairo: Iʹm ready to go to other parts of
the country. Itʹs too smoggy, overcrowded, and just
overwhelming. Should I bother with Alexandria? Next
country: Eritrea!
Went to the Eritrean embassy in Cairo: ʺYou should
have gotten the visa in DC.ʺ *leaves* Assholes.
Now Iʹm in Alexandria searching for a cargo ship to
Aden or somewhere to the Horn. Itʹs tough going. Tried
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the port. They wouldnʹt let me in. Just tried a maritime
agent, they didnʹt have a clue about human cargo. The
sales rep suggested finding a cargo ship owner‐‐but he
couldnʹt even help for that task!
A German NGOer was kidnapped in Somaliland in Feb.
The government had to shoot it out to free him. Bad
sign considering how few people venture in? How to be
extra super special safe in Somaliland advice requested.
I visited Shashemene (Ethiopia) yesterday. It is the Rasta
promiseland. In the village of ʺJamaicaʺ a couple of
hundred Rastas, some are old original Garvey‐ites and
most are descendents of those folks, live. I was taken to
the temple, a voudou like temple, almost exactly like the
temple at which I saw a goat sacrifice in Haiti.
Ever since the war in the south, there have been
exceedingly few tourists. (the guestbook at l Laas Gee
attests to the dramatic drop) You will literally feel like
you have the country to yourself. [Somaliland]
One post provides an example of misadventure, where he acknowledges that he did not follow security procedures.
My luck ran out. Days ago my wallet was stolen while I
was at the bus station in Llongwe, Malawi. My trip was
ending and I became sloppy, barely carrying a reserve
amount of money. I didnʹt discover my loss until I was
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about to cross the border, leaving me stuck at the border
to sort out the Western Union. The first domino fell and
since then my schedule is in tatters and I donʹt expect to
see much of Southern Africa besdies buses, trucks, and
trains. Ugh. I canʹt wait for the Qatar flight. I will drink
a lot.
Soon after his first incident he was robbed again. Forum members reacted to this news in positive terms, sympathising with him at the same time as admiring him for the travelling he is doing and encouraging him to continue.
south_sea_bubble: I was robbed again. After a 30 hour
bus ride through Mozambique, I reached Maputo. Five
thugs with badges singled out four passengers: three
Kenyan nationals of Somali ancestry and me, the yellow
guy. (Somalis are economic migrants everywhere in
Africa. The Chinese have a huge recent merchant
presence in Mozambique. There is resentment and Iʺm
sure itʹs what made what happened permissible.) We
were taken to the police station. I was taunted as ching‐
chong the whole time. But my American passport
spared me. The Somalis were stripped naked. I was just
searched. Their money was taken. $20 was gingerly
stolen from me. I forked it over because I just wanted to
get the hell out of the situation. I feel very sad.
Stiv: SSB, sorry to hear that but i think all things
considered $20 and no beatdown is pretty reasonable in
some circumstances almost expected. Iʹ m actually
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impressed thatʹs all they got. When you said robbed I expected to hear worse. I think you did well. ~Stiv
Ultra Swain: Donʹt feel sad brother, you are living the dream/nightmare. Getting robbed by the cops is par for the course. Hell I went down to TJ to buy thyroid pills last year and ended spending 20 minutes driven around the shantys by the cops until I forked over 20 bucks. Its a small price to pay and you got out in one piece. Keep on trucking Bubble.
Kurt: First time I was ever mugged was by policemen. It sucks but actually they are more reasonable than the criminals here in the US. You stand a chance of at least negotiating what they will take from you and are not as likely to be harmed.
RYP: did they take the $20 dollars out of your ass or did they make you do it? Dude 20 bucks is cheap admission into the ʺI wuz robbed clubʺ Some of us have donated hundreds of dollars, cameras and laptops.
So since I assume you are Chinese just do that angry
Bruce Lee face next time they call you names. south_sea_bubble: Dude, The Iwuzrobbed club is not prestigious. It would be cool to be in the kidnapped club. I didnʹt get my moneyʹs worth.
Bubble’s Travel Updates
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Since this trip, SSB has again been asking about travelling to another dangerous place, the Wakhan Corridor in north-eastern Afghanistan, displaying a desire for repeat DP travel experiences.
How much will it cost and how long will it take to get
there from Kabul? I have 3 weeks in December.
Wakhan Corridor
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6.6.5 El Pelon
El Pelon joined the forum in 2004. He has started a total of 1019 threads, was one of the hot posters and hot travel posters and so is an influential member of the forum. He is a dentist who, in addition to his regular dental practice, runs a Christian Dental Mission called La Cima World Missions. They are active in Honduras, Central America, and also partner with other aid agencies in the South Pacific and Burma. The mission’s goal is “Taking medical and dental care to places in need, regardless of risk” (La Cima World Mission 2009) and they run day clinics for people who have limited or no access to medical care. He always uses the same avatar, a symbol he also uses (although with a different colour) on the La Cima World Missions website. His wife (projectalice) is also a member of the forum, although she joined more recently, in 2008. She accompanies him on the missions, often acting as a translator for the team. El Pelon uses the forum in several different ways. Many of his threads were updates, photos and stories from La Cima missions, providing forum members with reports about his dental and aid missions. He uses the forum members for fund raising and help with his mission work. He also regularly supplies the forum with tales of misadventure and death.
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6.6.5.1 Reports on missions
El Pelon: The ʺwaiting roomʺ for a day clinic. I am
standing at the end of the line talking to the base
commander (it was held at a military base guarding the
dam at El Cajon). They opened up the base to allow
local villagers to come in and get medical treatment.
OneLungMcClung: WOW!! Very cool ‐ thanks for
posting and thanks for helping those who need help.
SRR: This is why we love you, El Pelon. Even if you did
just wreck my breakfast.
Professor Devlin: I have gained a ton of respect for you.
Great work.
“El Pelon Action Photos” (a thread which contained photos and a description of a dental and medical Christian Mission to Honduras)
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He does not appear to seek notoriety from his posts about his mission work but instead has a more modest approach:
Iʹm glad you all liked the pics. Thanks for the
sentiments, but no compliments are necessary. I just put
the pics up because RYP said he wanted to see them, not
because I need the attention. If everyone knew how cool
I think my job is, everyone would do it.
El Pelon Action Photos
Just got back from 17 days down south. Here are several
pics from the latest trip.
New Hondo Pics
6.6.5.2 Acceptance of risks
It appears from his posts that he is well aware of the dangers that he faces when on aid missions:
This morning at 8:00am Hondo time, the director of the
mission we worked for, when we lived in Honduras
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full‐time, got a call from a kidnapping gang. They
informed him if he didnʹt transfer 80,000 Lempira (about
USD 4,000 or so) that they would kidnap him, his kids,
or his wife.
I donʹt know if there are any words of wisdom that will
help them at this point, but it is a reminder to all that
the bad guys simply do not care who you are or what
you are doing. An aid group is just an easy target.
No matter how hard we try to reduce exposure, risk,
and profile, there is always someone or ʺsomeonesʺ that
exist to do harm to those who did nothing to deserve
the intended fate. I do my best not to sugar coat the secy
situation and I strike the fear of God in some of them
that didnʹt fully understand how things are outside the
US. I prefer to have 20 paranoid sets of eyes, however,
to having a bunch who think the world sings ʺCum By
Yaʺ when the friendly Americans show up.
GRRRRRRRRRR I hate kidnappers
6.6.5.3 BFC support
The members of the BFC activity support El Pelon’s work either through donations or by working for him for free.
La Cima is now signed up with GoodSearch to raise
money. I just set it up and have no idea if it will amount
to anything or not. BUT, if you are going to search the
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web, I would ask that you consider giving it a whirl. We
get about $0.01 per search. Thanks gang
Shameless plug for La Cima World Missions
A special thanks to James for putting together a new La
Cima World Missions website for us. Since I make a
much better dentist than web designer, James took over
and did a bang up job for us. Thank you sir! You have
gone above and beyond! If you want to see his work:
www.lacimaworldmissions.org
THANK YOU JamesInTheWorld!!!
The forum members have also raised money for medical cases that EL Pelon has identified.
The day is upon us. The countdown is in the hours now.
[…] She is scheduled for surgery on Sept. 5. I have said
it before, but I will say it again, THANK YOU to all you
guys and gals that have been a part of this in any way.
Many e hav sent money, many have emailed and
blogged, all have responded with sincere concern and
compassion. It never ceases to amaze me, however, how
so many people from so many places and so many
cultures can come together with a common goal of
helping a dying child who they will never know and
who can never repay.
Final tally USD 6447.56 (we needed 6000 minimum).
Dave
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Dunia
Public Service Announcement to the BFC.
USD 560.00 is the grand total that you guys donated to
help keep Onor in food and medicine while he waits for
surgery.
Thanks to all of you who had a part in helping out
another kid that would face certain death without it. A
couple of weeks ago, Onor didnʹt stand a chance. Even
though he faces a long hard road, and is anything but
out of the woods, he at least has hope that was given by
many who will never know him.
Your generosity never ceases to amaze me.
Dios les bendiga mis amigos. [God bless my friends]
Onar in Haiti --Thanks guys n gals of the BFC
Recently he has become involved in another aid project in Burma which was initiated by the poster Ultra Swain. In comparison to the dental missions this project is not as popular with forum members, partly because the poster Ultra Swain does not run a registered charity and also because his work has less clear aims, objectives and achievements than La Cima missions. However, since El Pelon has started working with Ultra Swain, the work in Burma has gained more credibility and forum members have begun actively to support the work.
Total donated through La Cima so far is right at 1400.00.
Dry bags are on their way to Swain, heʹll have them in a
few short days. You all are an outstanding bunch,
thanks for your support in this.
BURMA: Donation time is upon us – How to help fund it all
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6.6.5.4 Interest in misadventure and death
Many of El Pelon’s threads are travel warnings and stories about misadventure and death met by people travelling in dangerous places. He is particularly fond of posting threads about plane and bus crashes and stories of people who have been murdered in particularly violent ways. He often accompanied these articles with graphic pictures until Kurt asked for links only to be provided. Many of these threads are pasted news articles, introduced with a short preamble, warning tale or comment. Some examples include:
Another ʺbus off a cliffʺ story to keep you on your toes
At least 34 killed as bus plunges off cliff in Guatemala
In case you are headed that way.
Travel Warning: Chad
At least the cows made it.
Nicaragua: Plane Crashes Into Two Cows
None of our people, but it sucks still the same. This is
why we quit letting people ride in open beds of trucks.
A rollover never ends well. Worst I saw was 12 dead in
one wreck. It is amazing how many people will fit in the
back of a pick‐up truck.
Just another reminder that the roads can be the most ʺDʺ
part of a DP. Also another reminder that your air evac
insurance could be the difference between life and
death. Donʹt get stuck in a 3rd world hospital with
lifethreatening injuries unless you absolutely have to.
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Plus you can bet they will put pictures of your body in the paper. At least they didnʹt show everything this time.
3 Americans killed in Honduras crash
Just so it can be up there, and I know Iʹve brought it up before, a standard favorite quote that applies to all kinds of places, not just Mexico. ʺI was in Mexico on vacation and I never FELT in danger on my trip for the whole time I was there.ʺ
Remember one usually doesnʹt ʹfeelʹ in danger until that sensation of impending doom, that accompanies a gang‐ banger/drug dealer/rapist/bandit/whatever other kind of bad guy putting a knife to your back or a bullet through a lung, kicks in. The feelings have a tendency to change rather rapidly at that point. They also tend to be irreversible in nature once they have turned to the ʺOh shucks, now I DO feel in danger, hmmmm...this feeling is much different than it was when I DIDNʹT FEEL in danger in EXACTLY THE SAME SPOT AND
CIRCUMSTANCE 5 seconds ago.ʺ
I know my little rant doesnʹt have much to do with the article, just venting a little because of conversations I have had in the past couple of days with people who just donʹt get it.
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Mexico: Burned, cut up body left at Mexican police station
To summarise: it is evident that marie-angelique provides an example of a person who travels to dangerous places regularly for pleasure. She uses the forum to obtain information about the places she plans to visit and also to advertise to others her own travels. She works hard to ensure that she is viewed as an intrepid traveller who has little in common with the other tourists she encounters during her trips. JamesInTheWorld can be classified on the typology (Figure 6.2) as a person who has deliberately obtained a job in a dangerous place. He actively engages in online persona management and promotes himself as a masculine adventurer, stressing the element of excitement in travel to and work in dangerous places. Kurt has travelled to only one dangerous place and so provides an example of a person who, within the DP travel career framework (Figure 6.3), has not progressed to regular travel to dangerous places. The posts made by south_sea_bubble show that he has progressed through the DP travel career (Figure 6.3) from someone who was interested in travel to a person who travels to dangerous places regularly for pleasure. Over time he has sought to travel to increasingly dangerous places but, so far, he has heeded the travel advice posted on to the forum and not taken excessive risks. Like marie-angelique, he uses the forum both to gain information and advice on the destinations he wants to visit and to share his own travel stories with the forum members; on occasion, after a bad travel experience, he has turned to the forum for comfort and support. Like JamesInTheWorld, SSB sees dangerous places as adventurous and he has described his trips to them as a rite-of-passage experience. El Pelon provides an example of someone who works in a dangerous place and whose job has an altruistic value. He uses the forum to promote his aid work. His posts show an acceptance and understanding of the dangers involved in aid work and an excessive interest in misadventure and death. 6.7 Conclusion
This chapter has presented two frameworks, the typology of forum members (Figure 6.2) and the DP travel career (Figure 6.3). Detailed descriptions of forum members have been used to support both frameworks and the different types of danger tourists that emerged from the research have been identified. The study has found that people who travel to dangerous places can be divided into those who regularly travel, those who travel occasionally or as a one off and those who work in dangerous places. The chapter concluded by setting out detailed profiles of five of the forum members using their own words to tell their stories.
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7 Forum-level descriptive content analysis
7.1 Introduction
The preceding chapters provided detailed descriptions of members of the Black Flag Café forum. The analysis of the forum content identified a community that was interested in a number of key topics including all types of travel, war and politics. Threads demonstrated a widespread curiosity about misadventure and death; many of the male posters also felt the need or desire to portray themselves in a positively masculine way. The sample of threads taken forward for the detailed qualitative analysis contained the 368 threads which, when coded, related to one of the categories displayed in Table 4.6. The data from the threads was broken down into 56 sub-categories and the data pertaining to travel to dangerous places has been written up and is presented in this chapter. The analysis of the data was thus able to focus on the forum members’ attitudes and approaches towards travelling to dangerous places. In this chapter a number of other key themes are identified, which emerged from the participant-observation and data-analysis phases of the research. The first sections focuses on what forum members describe as an “experience” and also how travel to dangerous places is used as a means of achieving and maintaining status within the community. The second segment presents data relating to the danger tourists’ search for authenticity and how forum members approach travelling to dangerous places to ensure that they are (or feel as if they are) independent travellers. The final part of data analysis presents the mechanisms that danger tourists use to assess the risks involved in travelling to dangerous places. It also considers whether the data provides evidence that danger tourists experience “flow” during or after travel and places this and their travel choices in the context of misadventure and death. 7.2 Having an “it” experience
Cool ‐ best of luck. Should be a great experience.
svizzerams in “off to the peace corps”
What exactly counts as an experience is unclear from the posters’ descriptions. It is not something tangible but differs from poster to poster. While experience was often referred to as a concept, only two specific examples were provided on the forum during the sample period:
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I had the taxi driver stop at the Ministry of Defense on
the way to the airport; there is a memorial at the gate of
tanks and artillery pieces encased in concrete 4‐5 stories
high. Pretty cool if youʹre into that stuff. Overall it was a
great experience
armsdealer in “What should I do in Lebanon for 9 days?”
For instance, in India once hitched a ride in the back of a
gravel truck at 2am to get down the coast for no reason
whatsoever.
NIJ in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
Posters see the quality of the experience (authenticity; meeting locals; experiencing local culture and daily life) as more important than the number and type of destinations visited. The term BTDT (Been There Done That) is used to refer to what they view as a less rewarding type of travel based on destination and sight-seeing and an overt bragging culture.
if it’s not the experience then it’s just for the BTDT
bragging rights
Medevac in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
I don’t actually place any special prestige on those who
travel for the sake of travel.
RYP in “Experienced BFC Posters Gone?”
i think quality is better than quantity. i’d rather get to
know a few countries really well than win a pissing
contest about how many places i’ve been for only a
week.
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Kilroy in “How Many Countries?”
7.3 Improve status and self-image
In order to gain acceptance within the community when joining the forum, and when they start posting on the forum, participants often outline their own previous travel experience. Newbies – and sometimes established posters – are occasionally challenged about what the forum calls their DP résumé.
Phoenix: Please refresh my memory. Which warzones
have you been too. Or are you just being pretenious
again?
rickshaw92: Coldharvest has already posted his DP
resemue. We are all waiting for you to tell all ass flappin
sphincter monkey. Where have you been?
“Writer requires help”
Whenever possible, posters remind other forum members of their previous travel experience. The poster seektravelinfo used a thread about a missing Canadian traveller to remind forum members that she had travelled to both Iraq and Syria:
I traveled alone in Syria although didnʹt venture out of
the cities of Alleppo and Damascus, except for transit
between the two. […] I travelled with folks to N.Iraq.
seektravelinfo in “Syria: Canadian Traveler Missing”
by congo jungle I mean the former zaire. travelled there
myself in 87 for 4 months
erwin in “What is the most dangerous non-warzone, non-urban location?”
Telling travel stories for the benefit of self or other posters is, naturally, a key feature of the forum. Posters highlight any difficulties or illnesses they encountered along the way.
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Pakistan is great! In the last 4 days I got altitude sick,
hypothermia, dysentery, and heat exhaustion.
marie-angelique in “From the Mid-West Frontier Province”
I was bed ridden around that point for 2 weeks with
what was originally diagnosed with typhoid. I still have
the fax from the travel insurance company telling me to
get the fuck out of the country. But I was too sick to
move.
Camel in “Is it now James in the Underwater World?”
Dude none of the places I have lived in Africa had
electricity, except the capitals. That what we love about
it.
cochiseintheeast in “Advice”
Although some threads are created specifically so forum members can share their tales and display their travel experiences, forum members also hijack threads requesting information about destinations to share their own stories of when they visited those destinations. For example, a post about potential travel destinations was used by one poster to point out that he had been to Ingushetia and to establish his own travel credentials and experience of travelling to dangerous places:
Try Ingushetia.I recommend it. But don’t blame me if
you end up stuffed into a carpet bag and sold for meat.
lightstalker in “International Travel: Popping your Cherry”
A post asking about Djibouti was used to prove that the author had been to Yemen:
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When I was in Yemen, everyone told me not to go there
because it was dirty, ugly, and too expensive. Maybe
that puts it into perspective.
spicymos in “Djibouti”
Regular posters often start threads with the explicit aim of offering forum members – and by default themselves – an opportunity to tell and compare travel stories of when they have experienced danger. These posts are used by regular posters to reaffirm their own authenticity by telling stories of their own adventures and dangerous activities.
waking up in Grozny and finding entire houses missing
on our street and I slept like a baby.
“RYP in “Worst Places You Have Woke Up”
In a booby trapped building in Bosnia after I got drunk
and went on the wander. God knows how I never set
any of them off or even got into the place. Getting out
was a nightmare, not made any better by the killer
shakes from the hangover from hell.
Mikethehack in “The most dangerous situation that you've been in…”
Forum members also use them to prove to themselves and others that you do not always need to visit dangerous places in order to experience danger. The focus is more on the “experience” than on the location where it occurred.
Having a gun pulled on me in a car in Albuquerque,
and getting driven around for a couple of hours then
locked in a hotel room; I squeezed out the bathroom
window and ended up jumping about 15 feet to escape.
friendlyskies in “The most dangerous situation that you've been in…”
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Robert Young Pelton describes himself as an iconoclast adventurer. Thirteen per cent of the posts on the forum relate in some way to adventure, indicating that the topic of adventuring is of interest to members of the virtual community in general. The posts included forum members discussing adventurers (The long way down motorbike trip, Adventurer’s 13-year glocal odyssey nears end), providing each other with information about adventurous activities and expeditions (Here you go Adventure Mongers, Expeditions: Desert Warrior) and threads which ask about having an adventure (I got the degree now what, Exciting job ideas for the adventurous, Travel to Afghanistan or Africa) In the forum, and his own public image, Robert Young Pelton portrays himself as an authentic adventurer and often starts discussions around the idea that as other well-known adventurers experience little or no real danger they are not “real” adventurers: they have support networks in place and do not have to rely on their own experience.
So I says to myself. If he brought a video camera, then
why didnʹt he bring a fucking BIC lighter or maybe even
a flare gun..or a gas cooking stove...or perhaps a fucking
cel phone? I mean c’mon gimme a friggin break. Oh
yeah and he just happened to have ean ic axe...and of
course was hiding in the woods when a helo went over.
[…] I understand its entertainment....but its dumb
entertainment.
RYP in “Les Stroud The SurvivorMan?” (talking about Bear Grylls)
7.4 Search for an authentic travel experience
Participants feel that package and organised travel does not offer them opportunities to meet local people in a genuine context as opposed to when they are acting for tourists. The importance of meeting local people is often stressed within the reports on travelling to dangerous places that are posted on the forum. Posters feel that this adds to the authenticity of their trip. They can also be seen asking where they might encounter locals when planning their trips to dangerous places.
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So, some of us prefer to go where guidebooks dare not
take us and meet people that guidebook authors would
steer us well clear of
Foulplay in “Oh great, Lonely Planet to publish Afghanistan guidebook”
All I wanted to know was places to visit that are out of
the way cheap hotels and bars where I could meet locals
so they can show me their country.
Ezekiel in “Advice”
When travelling, Flaggers deliberately seek out ways to meet local people, trying to make certain that they are viewed by the local population as different from tourists.
Its about seeing the people and going to a place where I
can do something that gives me an excuse to interact
with them as something other than a tourist.
marie-angelique in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
7.4.1 Avoiding mainstream tourists and tourism
Independent travel as advocated by The World’s Most Dangerous Places is also promoted in other travel books such as the Bradt and Lonely Planet guide books and by travel writers such as Rolf Potts (2008), whose books, for example, Vagabonding (2003), focus on leaving the tourist crowds behind and seeking authenticity. Among the forum members who travel to dangerous places great importance is placed on, and status achieved by, travelling independently and seeking out real and authentic travel experiences as opposed to those that are staged for tourists. This approach can be summarised by the quote from Gilbert K Chesterton which is regularly used by different forum members in their signatures:
The traveller sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he
has come to see.
Forum members use this search for authenticity and independence of travel to distinguish themselves from tourists in their own eyes and the eyes of others. Posters like to
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feel that they are doing something different from other tourists and they view themselves, and like to be viewed by others, as special.
Is he a DPʹer or a regular sort of folk?
NIJ in “Anyone been to Angola recently?”
And as having their own ethos of travel
redharen: Just got into J’lem this morning from
steaming, teeming Tel Aviv. Nothing exciting to report,
but tonight I’ll be watching the march [...] if any
bombers were to get through the security wall, there
would be no shortage of easy targets. Here’s to hoping
it’s a quiet evening.
nowonmai: “Hereʹs to hoping it’s a quiet evening.” You
haven’t quite got into the spirit of this site.
“Jerusalem”
Within the forum, people who travel to dangerous places prefer to be known as travellers. They view tourists as less experienced travellers with a closed view on the world and some actively dislike them. As part of their efforts to avoid being viewed as tourists, whenever forum members travel they seek to avoid mainstream tourism and any of the locations and activities they associate with mass tourism.
Siwa is cool but probably touristy as fuck now.
rickshaw92 in “Travel from Cairo”
Morocco is the big one full of annoying package
tourists.
RYP in “Cyprus to Lebanon by boat?”
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Equally, they do not like being associated with backpackers, who are often derided and criticised on the forum as not proper travellers.
I’m of backpacker age, but I’m trying to stay as far away
from those types and their haunts as possible (which is
why I’m asking you guys…) Wouldn’t mind meeting
some expats and real travellers, though.
padtye in “Myanmar-Southern Thailand-Sri Lanka”
at least he’s not some trustafarian hippie backpacker
getting drunk night after night collecting as many
passport stamps as possible with a fucking eurail pass
marie-angelique in “A Walk Across Afghanistan”
I go out of my way to avoid German tourists when
travelling.
Medevac in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
It is not always clear from the forum what the actual difference between “real travellers” and other tourists is in practical terms; posters appear to use the concepts indiscriminately without distinct meanings. A satisfactory travel experience appears to be one in which few or no other tourists are met:
The good news is that there are Almost No Tourists in
Pakistan. In Passu I was the only guest, and the last
guests had been there a month ago. I am pretty sure I
am the only guest in the hotel I am now, and there is No
One in the internet café here!
marie-angelique in “sister sends the State Department Travel Advisory to mom!”
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The aim of avoiding locations where tourists frequently visit is also evident in their destination choices. There is a fixation about the lack of tourists that a person might encounter while travelling:
Have u met any other Europeans, travelling in
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan?
Mel in “Anyone in Central Asia?”
Is there a good chance I will be the first American that
many of these people would ever see in their life?
rutgurt in “travel from Azerbaijan to Dagestan?”
In some cases they appear to be trying to be among the first at a destination.
Do tourists actually go to Dagestan??? Will I see tourists
at Derbent??
rutgurt in “travel from Azerbaijan to Dagestan?”
It is obvious that several forum members enjoy the notoriety that travelling to dangerous places gives them. For example, one poster responded to my original thread asking about tourism to Iraq or Afghanistan with the response:
Iʹm being interviewed today by the local newspaper
about going to Afghanistan.
coldharvest in “Tourism Iraq or Afghanistan?”
7.4.2 Interacting with the tourism infrastructure
Within the forum, travel to any destination, but in particular dangerous ones, by independent means as opposed to using a travel agent or tour operator is highly valued; posters seek to dissociate themselves from acting as tourists by undertaking independent tours. By making their own bookings (of flights, hotels, transfers and excursions) they feel less touristy.
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Basically I want to plan the trip myself and just grab a
plane ticket and go. No travel brochures, no travel
agents, etc.
Hansol in “International Travel: Popping your Cherry”
I must point out that I did not go with a tour company
and managed to set up the trip all be myself
Naroz in “Travel to North Korea – Is it right?”
There are amazing things far away from the towns and
roads waiting to be rediscovered. None of which are
written up in guidebooks.
RYP in “Afghanistan: The Dupree Book Online!”
Although the Flaggers portray themselves as not participating in tourism and deliberately travelling outside the tourism infrastructure, there is evidence of their engagement with traditional tourism infrastructure in a number of different ways. There appears to be a pick- and-choose approach, with posters taking advantage of it when it can be useful to them but denying, criticising and decrying its use at other times.
Anyone got the juice on a good travel agent so I can
throw together a budget
Destro in “LIBERIA / SIERRA LEONE”
Should I wait until Iʹm in the city and find a travel agent
rather than do it online?
Lotus7Productions in “Airline Traveling in SE Asia”
When travelling in dangerous places, forum members often believe they are buying non- traditional tourism products, tailor made to their own requirements, but in fact these are standard tourism products. Buying what to them appears to be a “non-traditional” product
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makes them feel more independent and authentic than people who buy organised tours and they feel more special and different from tourists who buy organised tours through reputable agents.
Across the former green‐line (now Martyrs square)
there is a couple of cheaper but ok places‐ I recommend
ʺTalalʹsʺ. Zaher, the manager, is a dude and can (or used
to) arrange most things including sight seeing tours of
the south.
Kapa in “Accommodation in Beirut?”
Better to book someone inside Kabul when you get
there or at least double check that your tour is run by a
local. Which I am sure it is.
RYP in “Travel to Afghanistan”
While they decry the use of travel agents and tour operators, they are also happy to engage with tourism infrastructure when it facilitates them in carrying out their plans to visit dangerous areas.
they have a ʹTourist Officerʹ who would organise tours
of the Hezzy‐controlled parts of Beirut.
snaark in “What should I do in Lebanon for 9 days?”
They have no problem in using tourism infrastructure when it smooths their travel plans and assists them in obtaining visas. Forum members who use travel agents to obtain visas for dangerous or difficult to visit places often recommend travel agents to each other.
I’ve been corresponding with a tourist agent in Iran
marie-angelique in “Iran”
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I booked transport through Asia Mountains from
Uzbekistan ‐ if you need the help of a tourist agency
they did a great job.
marie-angelique in “US to Kyrgyzstan - entry/route recommendations”
7.4.3 Destination novelty value and escape from normality
Forum members appear to choose their destinations based on their novelty value, picking a destination specifically because it is seldom visited; occasionally the novelty of a destination outweighs the other attractions that it might offer.
the visa is pretty cheap, and WTF, I don’t know anyone
who has been there….wanted to get Algeria under my
belt
crotalus01 in “anyone been to Mauritania?”
I think I will put those countries, on my want to go list.
Just becasue I don’t know anybody(besides u), who has
been to them. They seem so mysterious.
Mel in “Anyone in Central asia?"
Posters show a desire to escape from safe places, which they see as boring, the prospect of danger making a place seem more exciting.
worry worry worry...geez if we didnʹt go where they
drive bad, weʹd never go anywhere. Iʹm sure there are
plenty of reasons not to go places. There are a heckuva
lot more reasons to go. It is beyond me how so many
people do their best to create a ʺsafeʺ world devoid of
risk. All so they can one day die in their cocoon of
routine, and insulated isolation from reality. A
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standardized cocoon where it has been perceived to
have been nice, calm, and safe, forever. I realize Iʹm
preaching to the choir here, but it sticks my craw when
so many just donʹt get it.
El Pelon in “Travel ‘percautions”
Travelling to intrinsically safe destinations gets boring
very quick
Medevac in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
I just like to travel, meet new people and see new things
Bronco in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
Destinations are described, in particular by the younger male posters, as neat and cool. It is not clear, however, from their posts what makes a country neat or cool or why these destinations would be chosen above others.
I […] want to make sure I visit some neat countries.
WEMT in “Travel from Cairo”
Everythingʹs subject to change depending on how cool
or not cool any of these places are
padtye in “Myanmar-Southern Thailand-Sri Lanka”
To anyone that has been in Yemen or that area of the
world before, can you recommend places to visit while
I’m there. Also, would it be easy to get a boat and travel
to other cool places, like Somaliland?
spicymos in “Study Abroad in Yemen”
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7.5 Approach to risk, danger and death
The risks at the type of destinations forum members choose to travel to include incendiary devices (bomb and rocket attacks), kidnapping and hostage situations, and higher than normal levels of crime (Control Risk Group 2007a). Since the choice of such destinations implies acceptance of these risks, participants must feel that the benefits of travel (improved self-image, self-actualisation) outweigh them. This section explores whether and how the forum members understand and evaluate the risks involved in travelling to dangerous places and how they approach travelling to dangerous places. The forum members’ attitude towards death and the possibility that it might happen while travelling to dangerous places is also established and the unexpected lack of notable evidence to support sensation seeking by any of the forum members is explored. 7.5.1 Perception of the risks involved
As mentioned earlier, the term experience is used in the forum to describe both a moment of self-actualisation and also the idea that people become wiser and safer travellers through regular independent travel to dangerous places. Formal methods of risk and threat assessment and management (Roper 1999; Broder 2006) do not appear to be used by posters before or during travel. Instead, there is a general feeling that the residual risks of travel can be reduced by “experience” and that travelling to dangerous places allows them to build a greater set of skills with which to mitigate future risks;
my travel buddy and i are nowhere near experienced
enough for DPs, this is just the first of hopefully many
trips to some completely remote/different locations in
the developing world
sileni in “US to Kyrgyzstan - entry/ route recommendations”
Flaggers believe that skill can be gained by travelling and that travel experience and knowledge should be progressively built up before very dangerous destinations are visited.
What Iʹm wondering is where is a good place for a first‐
timer to get their ʺfeet wetʺ when it comes to a travel
destination. […] I would like to go to someplace with a
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bit of danger, but donʹt quite think Iʹm ready for a
Chechnya or Columbia.
Hansol in “International Travel: Popping your Cherry”
Importance is placed on recognising one’s own mistakes and learning from previous travel experiences.
We all do and have done stupid things. That is a great
way of learning.
Professor Devlin in “Into The Wild”
I was arguing with a guy once in Bogata about how
boring a certain area of town was and finally he said
ʹshut up and follow me.ʹ I did and ended up having one
of the best days of my life in the place I thought was
boring. I learned a few lessons from that one.
NIJ in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
Conscious of their need to accumulate experience before travelling alone to dangerous places, some forum members choose to travel to DPs for the first time in pairs or as part of small groups.
Iʹm visiting Haiti in December. I want to walk through
Cite Soleil, the largest slum in Port‐au‐Prince. I am
travelling with a friend who speaks Arabic. There is a
large Jordanian contingent in the city. We plan to knock
on their door and kiss ass; and, then, be like ʺpretty
please let us tag along on a foot patrolʺ.
south_sea_bubble in “How wildly improbable would this idea be?”
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Despite the fact that travelling to dangerous places is a risky activity, very few of the posters ask specific questions about the safety or risks of a destination. The focus is more on practical aspects of crossing borders or visiting destinations than on investigating the potential risks before a decision to travel has been made. There is no evidence of an information search through the BFC leading to a participant changing or cancelling their proposed trip to a dangerous place; information is sought once the decision to travel has been made. Posters ask a variety of practical questions about safety and security, ranging from hotel recommendations to the overall safety of a particular area.
what is the overall safety in Dagestan? Are there areas i
should stay clear of? Would it be considered dangerous
to go to some random mountain villages just for
exploration?
rutgurt in “travel from Azerbaijahn to Dagestan?”
Has anyone been through the fatah checkpoint since
hamas took over in the territories? I was wondering
what the reception has been like for travellers heading
into fatah…
air.options in “Anyone travelled from Egypt to Rafah (Palestine) lately?”
Is it worth it? How much of the country can be covered
in that time? What’s the beer like? Can I drink a beer
without being hounded by hoes? Must sees and does?
Visa at the airport? Food, surpriseingly good or shitty
like most of Africa?
rickshaw92 in “Etheopia for 3 weeks”
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Forum members provide each other with recent safety and security information. They often take this opportunity to demonstrate their own knowledge of the destination and to relive and reiterate their own travel experience.
Don’t be a hero – don’t walk anywhere after 5 pm.
Harare may look tranquil at the moment but it’s lethal.
el_case in “Zimbabwe current situation”
Stay the hell away from Cite Soliel unless you actually
have a real guide with real experience and even then
you will not be safe, but just less likely to end up as rat
food.
Kurt in “How wildly improbable would this idea be?” (talking about Haiti)
Even if it does kick off again you won’t get naped
[kidnapped] in the City centre if you stick to the right
areas.
dogtanian in “Accommodation in Beirut”
This informal first-hand advice is more valued than second-hand advice or information from formal sources, possibly because the Flaggers who travel to dangerous places do not appear to place much value on what they describe as book learning, and also because they are aware that the security situation in dangerous places is volatile and can change daily.
This is second‐hand info, but about a month ago I was
assured that visa‐on‐arrival is standard for US passport‐
holders (as long as you donʹt have an Israeli stamp in
your passport) in Erbil.
Gary in “Erbil, Kurdistan Info”
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Will be in Zimbabwe shortly. Aside from the obvious
(avoid demonstrations, don’t criticise The Man etc), any
tips?
el_case in “Zimbabwe present situation”
Hi Guys, off to Israel soon for a look around, does
anyone know the score about getting into Gaza or the
west bank, just to go there and have a chat with the
locals
Bristol in “Israel”
Information from people on the ground in the destination is the most prized.
It might sounds cliche, but the best advice is given from
someone who has experienced it first hand
Apoc in “Need Advice”
any current intel about the situation on the ground in
the perimeter around Darfur, what to avoid, and current
hazards is appreciated…
jamesy in “Need East Africa Intel”
Although they do not undertake obvious risk and threat assessments, most of the regular forum members are aware of the risks, safety and security issues involved in travelling to dangerous places.
okay Afghanistan was pretty dangerous but it was a
wrong place wrong time kind of danger as were the
Palestinian authority areas
crotalus01 in “Only 3 five star DPs on the new Dangerous Places online??”
241
The posts made by people who travel to or who work in dangerous places display an understanding of the danger involved and they are aware that even after taking sensible precautions the residual risks remain, that incidents may still happen while travelling in dangerous places and that not all risks can be mitigated.
No one is immune from violence in a DP. […] The bad
guys donʹt care who you are or what you do (unless
what you do means you have better stuff to steal, then
they like you even more).
El Pelon in “Aid worker killed in Central African Republic”
This does not appear to worry them and in some cases there is an almost fatalistic acceptance that occasionally they may be in the wrong place at the wrong time; incidents are often attributed to luck and there is little or no investigation into the real cause of an incident.
rr3’s potential kidnappers were highly recommended to
him as being a safe ride home by some contractors.
Kurt in “Travel to Afghanistan”
Sorry for him to go that way. I think it just wrong place
wrong time.
muskrat in “The Story of My Security Guy In Baghdad’s Murder”
While they might not consciously complete a full risk assessment, there is evidence that forum members do assess some of the risks involved in travelling and that they avoid activities or locations which they perceive to be unnecessary or excessively dangerous. For example, forum members chose airlines based on their safety record.
Don’t use Garuda unless you are planning to fly wile
wearing a parachute
JamesInTheWorld in “Quick Intro”
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I spent 200 bucks extra so I could fly Japan Airlines
instead of Garuda Indonesia on my trip next week
JamesInTheWorld in “Another 737 crashes and burns in Indonesia…James?”
When parts of a destination have been identified as especially dangerous, the forum members moderate their behaviour when travelling to mitigate some of the risks involved or amend their proposed activity to take the most obvious dangers into account.
Yup, Iʹm Luanda mostly, sometimes Sumbe. Traveling
on the coast is alright but inland you donʹt stray too far
from the beaten path because of all the landmines.
NIJ in “Into The Wild” (about Angola)
While they obviously attempt to reduce some of the risks involved, when travelling the forum members also actively seek out activities and locations which put themselves in greater danger.
Head to the Kola district in South Beirut if you want to
fraternise with Hezbollah or if you want to visit Baalbek
and Southern Lebanon (mini buses to those places all
depart from a taxi stand there).
pyrohydra in “Lebanon pics”
Iʹm concerned about the difficulty of access to LTTE
[Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] controlled areas, but
everything Iʹve read so far just advises against it
without mentioning any restrictions.
padtye in “Myanmar-Southern Thailand-Sri Lanka”
Forum members can be seen to differentiate between travel to dangerous places with acceptable risks and travelling to places where the travel risks, regardless of the individual’s skill levels, are too high.
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I think avoiding Zim might be a good idea.
Kurt in “Gotta get out of here”
Regular forum members actively promote safe travel to other members who are new to travelling. When new posters join the forum asking questions about travel which they perceive to be overly dangerous those forum members with extensive experience of travelling to dangerous places try to dissuade the newbie poster from taking what they view as unacceptable risks. For example, when, in December 2005, Amanda Lindhout (a Canadian freelance journalist later kidnapped in Somalia in 2008 and held for fifteen months) asked about backpacking in Iraq, the general response from the board was that it was too dangerous:
thereʹs ʹdangerousʹ and then thereʹs ʹfucking stupidly
dangerousʹ and the old sand box is defo in the second
category. Anyone who looks remotely
european/american/indian/non‐arab... should receive a
good slap from someone sensible if they even consider
ʹbackpackingʹ to fucking Iraq, christ on a bike...come on
flipflop in “has anyone been backpacking in iraq recently?”
Another new poster on the board asked about illegal entry into Dagestan and received the following response:
Despite what you may read,the door into Chechnya is
firmly shut for now.If you want to go to Chechnya
officially,you need FSB [Federal Security Service]
permission. Unless you can hook yourself up with a
good fixer,the unofficial expense entry in Chechnya is a
shit load of greenback, and your vital organs which will
act as insurance cover.
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[…] If you got accosted by the muj,one of two things
would happen: they would either befriend you,seeing
as you speak Arabic,or take you hostage for ransom.
Franky its not a very good idea.Dagestan is very
dangerous for foreigners, probably more so than
Chechnya.You would have to be out of your fuckin
mind to even attempt something like that.
lightstalker in “travel from Azerbaijahn to Dagestan?”
The evidence therefore suggests that the forum members who travel to dangerous places are more measured risk takers than the image portrayed in the media. When discussing their travel plans, Flaggers often underplay the risks of travelling to themselves and others. They can be seen to deny that their proposed destination is dangerous.
I donʹt believe there is actually a dangerous place. Any
place can be super safe or super dangerous RIGHT
NOW...and most of the time itʹs ʺsafeʺ, despite the fear
mongerʹs efforts...
Woodsman in “The most dangerous place you’ve been to in the past year”
Negative Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice is normally seen as a barrier to travel, discouraging tourists from visiting a destination (Sharpley and J 1995; Sharpley et al. 1997). Even if there is first-hand information or reliable official advice that a location is dangerous, BFC posters, however, disregard it if it will interfere with their proposed travel plans. When planning or undertaking their trips to dangerous places, forum members deny that this information is correct, taking the view that such travel advice is not written for people like them, as they are special and not like other tourists.
I never heard of such a thing! Iʹm assuming you got that
from our namby‐pamby ʺyouʹll poke your eye outʺ State
Department site.
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Son of Loki in “Israel”
Proceed with caution, but pay scant heed to the boffins
that write that tripe.
Foulplay in “Mali”
Last weekend I met a guy from the state department
who actually wrote those things and he admitted that
they exaggerate the dangers in order to cover their ass
and scare people who have never been futher than
disneyland.
marie-angelique in “sister sends the State Department Travel Advisory to mom!”
And in some cases they enjoy rebelling against authority.
Me and a pal are headed to Bamiyan in the morning by
bus. It seems theyʹve put some type of restriction on
foreigners traveling out of Kabul ‐ in that they need to
either inform the Ministry of Security or get permission
‐ but who listens to that stuff anyways. Our routel wil
pass close to Maidan Vardak where the Taliban recently
captured those two German guys and their 5 afghan
colleagues, but word on the street is that all should go
fun.
Fansy in “Bamiyan from Kabul”
Forum members compare the risks in the dangerous places they plan to visit with other locations and activities that are familiar to themselves or other forum members. They bolster the risks in the locations they are familiar with or have visited before promoting the view that
246
the dangerous place they wish to visit is less dangerous than the destination with which it is compared.
Israel is about as safe as any western capital at the
moment.
dogtanian in “Need Advice - Israel Travel”
About the dodgiest I’ve been to have been Ecuador and
Cambodia, and neither of these places felt dodgy as the
Rue St. Denis area of Paris at 2 AM
ReptilianKittenEater in “Writer requires help”
In a similar way, the forum members who travel to dangerous places differentiate between real and non-real danger, real danger being found in destinations which the forum views as too dangerous to visit. For example, they seek to differentiate between the safer and more dangerous areas of a dangerous country that they plan to visit, thus allowing themselves to think that the area they are visiting is not too dangerous, distinguishing “real” or bad danger from ordinary or less threatening danger.
As far as ʺrealʺ danger I try to avoid it but I figure if
people live someplace and are surviving that Iʹm likely
to do ok as well
svizzerams in “Getting the most out of a travel experience”
7.5.2 Misadventure, death and sensation seeking
Examples of misadventure experienced by danger tourists might include being a victim of petty crimes such as theft or bribery or of personal attack (rape), getting caught up in a wider attack (bomb, rocket) or being kidnapped or taken hostage (Control Risk 2007a). In the worst cases these misadventures might lead to death. Over 15% of the threads on the forum were found to discuss some type of misadventure and over 9% related directly to death. Within the hot threads, the topics “An angry photographer in Chechnya”, “IF I AM FOUND DEAD: Clandestine Capital Punishment Revisited”, “Did they snuff the rooster?” and “AP: Iraqi Deaths Fall by 50 Percent” are all death related. The other hot threads listed above describe
247
either deaths in dangerous places or the deaths of famous people. Others, which do not feature in the hot threads, focus on unusual ways of dying; forum members show particular interest in deaths in unusual circumstances or of people on adventures or travelling. The forum contains a number of pictures of dead bodies and stories about death:
It is one of many pictures of the dead today (even
though the story is of the murder of these two a couple
of months ago). The violence is out of control and it only
gets worse. These were just a couple of students riding
in the chicken bus, minding their own business
when.....BAM lights out.
El Pelon in “Bad day in Hondo, this pic of the dead bums me out”
There is evidence among the regular forum members that some deaths are “feared more than others because the deaths they produce are much worse than deaths from other activities” (Slovic et al. 1979, p.118).
what a horrible way to die, burned to death
JamesInTheWorld in “Another 737 crashes and burns in Indonesia…James?”
But one of the best ways to die is while travelling or on an adventure.
At least if this is the end for him he went out doing what
he loved.
Professor Devlin in “Aviation Adventurer Steve Fossett Missing”
If I fell on the mountain I would like to be left there. I
am an adventurous person, I don’t mind the gap
CR3 in “2 Climbers Die in McKinley Fall”
248
In the press it is often suggested this type of tourist has a death wish. Occasionally the forum attracts this type of one-off poster:
i got testicle cancer and will die in…a year i guess. so i
want to go out with a bang. if i went there [Chechnya],
not speaking anything but english with a NJ accent, will
i get beheaded?
Rod Munch in “Is Chechnya absolute suicide?”
But the forum members who regularly travel to dangerous places for work or pleasure appear to have a more fatalistic approach.
So why waste so much of life worrying about it? It’s
only death for fuck’s sakes.
NIJ in “Into The Wild”
The last great adventure it’s been called…….meanwhile
gotta keep rolling the dice.
yorick in “Life Sucks and Then You Die - Motelympics version”
There was only one mention of thrill seeking in the data during the data-collection period:
Of course there is an added element of danger for
women traveling alone ..…. but we do it because we are
thrill seekers just like you boys.
seektravelinfo in “Syria: Canadian Traveler Missing”
In forum members’ minds, thrill and risk are not necessarily the same thing.
thrills don’t necessarily come from risk. something can
be exhilerating for reasons entirely unrelated to how
dangerous it is.
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kilroy in “Media: Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know”
7.6 Conclusion
This chapter has presented the data obtained from the detailed content analysis of the forum. During analysis four main themes emerged and the data has been grouped into these themes: the forum members’ search when travelling for “experiences”, their use of travel to establish status within the forum through the telling of their own travel adventure stories, their search for authentic travel experiences which involve the need to be seen to travel independently outside mainstream tourism and a desire to be seen as a traveller instead of a tourist and finally their approach to risk.
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8 Discussion and conceptual framework
8.1 Introduction
This chapter discusses the research findings and focuses on how travelling to dangerous places is seen by participants as a source of moments of self-actualisation, how forum members use their online personas to establish and maintain status within the forum and how travelling to a dangerous place might improve an individual’s perceived self-image, the forum members’ search for authentic experiences and their approach to risk and danger. The chapter then goes on to consider the research findings within the context of dark tourism, backpacker and other types of independent tourists and how the research informs the behaviour of online communities. The final part describes how the research findings were used to create a conceptual framework of the forum members’ approach to travelling to dangerous places. 8.2 Having an “it” experience
The data shows that forum members unconsciously use the term experience in two different ways: first, as a method of establishing salience and experience on the ground as an independent traveller; and secondly, as a way of describing what might be described as “it” experiences. Forum members describe moments during their trips as “great experiences” and they relate them to each other as quality and memorable moments. Participants describe these “it” experiences as one of the main reasons for their travels. They are perceived by participants as seminal moments in their trips and these in turn lead to satisfactory travel experiences. The “it” experience appears to make the trip worthwhile. Having this type of experience while travelling is perceived by the forum members as more important than the number of destinations visited or activities performed, which are felt by the forum members to be evidence of the BTDT (Been There, Done That) approach to travel; they describe the latter in derogatory terms as typical of the backpacking promoted by Lonely Planet. When a forum member goes on a trip and has no “experience” to report, they either describe the trip as uneventful or boring or emphasise other highlights such as meeting locals, visiting museums or encounters with women; while these are not seminal “experiences”, they demonstrate to their peers that learning and personal development have taken place. Interestingly, there is limited evidence of what a seminal “it” experience might be. Even outside the data-collection window there are few examples of forum members citing particular “experiences”. This may be because forum members do not feel comfortable speaking about these types of experience or because they are only experienced by a small number of them
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and they do not occur as often as forum members might like to portray to themselves or others. When they do occur these moments might be considered forms of self-actualisation, specifically the authenticity-based “it” moments identified by Redfoot (1984) and the peak experiences identified by Maslow (1964), which provide the person with “personal therapy, personal growth, or personal fulfilment” (p.29). In the hierarchy of needs (Maslow 1943), safety is displayed as a low-level need and pleasure, social interaction, image and self- actualisation are higher-level needs. The forum members who travel to dangerous places may be neglecting their basic need for safety in order to aim for the higher needs of self- actualisation. Among the forum members who were identified in the typology (Figure 6.2) as not yet having travelled to a dangerous place there are a number of students, younger posters and first-time travellers who regard travelling to a dangerous place as an adventure. They appear to have a more goal-orientated approach to their trips, seeking to gain a sense of achievement and becoming, in their own eyes and the eyes of others, an adventurer. Those posters who are considering travelling to a dangerous place for the first time often approach the activity with awe, often comparing it to a sexual experience, with their threads entitled, for instance, “Popping DP Cherry”. In their minds the trip appears to have a higher purpose, and the elements of the trip (independent travel, authentic experiences, risk and danger) may provide a background for a transcendent experience. Both wanderers (Vogt 1976) and backpackers (Cohen 2004) consider travel as a rite-of-passage experience and it is possible that travel to a dangerous place might be considered to offer an opportunity for a person to undertake an extreme rite-of-passage experience because of the lack of organised support network and the higher risks involved in such travel. The forum members who were identified in the typology (Figure 6.2) and DP travel career (Figure 6.3) as having undertaken only one or two trips to a dangerous place provide examples of how, once this activity is over, the seminal affirming moment has been met and passage achieved. The typology of tourists divided people who travelled to dangerous places into those who travel for leisure and those who travel for work. As mentioned in Chapter 1, it is often difficult to make a clear, unambiguous distinction between tourism and work; this is particularly true of some workers who deliberately volunteer to work in dangerous places. The typology developed in this research takes the category of “duty/working traveller” (Piekarz 2007) – people who travel to dangerous places because of work requirements – and has developed this, taking motivation into account. Within the typology the category of posters who work in dangerous places was further divided into three separate categories: those who have jobs which naturally take them to dangerous places and who might be classified as
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highly skilled travelling workers (Uriely 2001), those who deliberately take a job in a dangerous place and those whose jobs in dangerous places have been selected because of their own altruistic values. The motivations of those workers who deliberately seek out a job in a dangerous place appear from the data to be very similar to leisure travellers to dangerous places. Although in some cases, for example JamesInTheWorld, they cite money as a motivating factor, overall they are looking for adventure and experiences that they believe travel, and working in, a dangerous place can provide. These people can be described as the migrant workers who “travel in order to make a living” and “have fun” at the same time (Uriely 2001, p.5) and who, in this case, travel and live in dangerous places as a lifestyle choice because of the additional experiences if offers them. The exception to this appears to be people such as El Pelon who travel to dangerous places to carry out aid work, for more altruistic reasons. These people have a real affinity with the aid work that they do, in contrast with those who can be seen on the forum asking about joining the Peace Corps, volunteering in disaster zones or working in orphanages or small one-off aid projects; the latter are interested in the experience of doing aid work for their own benefit and might be described as working holiday tourists (Uriely 2001). To summarise, the data shows that, when travelling, forum members seek out “it moments” which might be considered peak experiences. They manipulate their travel plans to maximise their chances of having these experiences. These seminal moments might be considered a form of self-actualisation and when they occur they lead to satisfaction with the trip overall. The limited amount of data, however, makes it difficult to define fully what exactly constitutes these moments. The lack of details on the forum may be either because they are mainly personal and are not shared with the wider community or because they are not as common as the forum members might like. As suggested by Phipps (1999), there was evidence within the data that some tourists used travelling to dangerous places as a rite-of- passage experience. Surprisingly, this was not limited to younger posters; there was a number of people who had travelled only once to a dangerous place and for whom the experience served as an affirmation of self. As identified previously by several authors including Adams (2001; 2006), Piekarz (2007) Smith (1996; 1998) and Pitts (1996), it is difficult to differentiate between the workers and tourists who visit dangerous places and analysis shows that they share many of the same external motivations, with only a small number having a truly altruistic motivation.
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8.3 Improve status and self-image
Forum members use the tools provided within the forum (username, avatar, personal information) to establish their online personas. These online personas are their external face to the forum and reflect the image they wish to display to other forum members. The high proportion (80%) of regular forum members who use an avatar demonstrates that they feel this is a valuable way of creating and maintaining their online identify, showing greater engagement with the community and active management of their own online persona (Olaniran 2008). A typology of avatars used on the BFC was developed from the content analysis and is displayed in Table 5.7. Analysis shows that some forum members never change their avatar while others regularly change the image; some posters use different pictures which follow a theme (for example, coldharvest always uses a skull-based avatar and RYP always uses a picture of himself) while others make more varied changes. This research did not investigate why forum members chose a particular avatar; instead it focused on their use of avatars in projecting their self-image. The interpretations draw on the limited amount of previous research into the use of avatars (Taylor 2002; Suler 2004; Nowak and Rauh 2005; Williams 2007) to develop and analyse the typology of the avatars and to draw some conclusions about online persona management as desired self-image on the BFC.
Forum members use a variety of still and animated cartoon characters. The wide range of characters makes it difficult to define all the characteristics they are intended to portray but generally speaking, when used as avatars, cartoon characters are employed to display a personality type, Bugs Bunny as confident trickster, for example (Suler 2004). Forum members are choosing a cartoon character as their avatar in order to project a certain image: the use of a cartoon character from The Muppets provides an example of this approach as Animal (the drummer) has a non-conformist, rebellious, womanising personality and the poster Mikethehack may have chosen this avatar with this in mind. In other cases it is harder to pinpoint the image that the forum member wishes to project, particularly where the image has been specifically designed by an individual forum member.
Members of the BFC often use their avatars to provide statements aimed at promoting and/or establishing their views, sometimes ironically. The picture is often accompanied by a written statement. These are signs of the posters’ political or ideological beliefs and have in the past included statements which were anti-Islamic and anti-US government. In these instances, forum members
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are clearly articulating their views to the rest of the community. Such evidence supports the findings by Suler (2004) that this type of avatar is used by those who have something to say and are not reluctant to display their thoughts.
Forum members also use symbols such as flags or regimental signs to provide a subtle form of identity. Many of the symbol avatars like El Pelon’s can also be linked to the posters’ work; this is often the case with military regiments, aid workers or medics. Sometimes these are only recognisable to others who have insider knowledge of the symbol, while others, for example medical signs, are more widely known. The symbols recognisable to only a small number of like- minded individuals are known as clan avatars (Suler 2004) and are used to show that the user holds true to the values of the clan.
The majority of the animal avatars used in the Black Flag Café are of aggressive or predatory animals displaying traits that the users feel are worthy or important within the forum. Like cartoon characters, animal avatars are often used to represent an aspect of the poster’s personality (Suler 2004).
Mr DP, the motif of the BFC, is a hat-wearing skull, so skulls feature prominently in the website design and throughout the posts and threads on the forum. Skulls are more generally considered evil avatars (Suler 2004) and are used by forum members who are aggressively trying to alienate other users (Breeze 1997) but on the BFC they may be more of a fashion statement, with forum members who use a skull avatar trying to fit in and associate themselves with the community.
The real and fictional human avatars used by forum members include dictators, assassins, murderers, debonair risk takers and powerful film characters. Again, these are traits that the poster may wish to promote as similar to their own personality, with the poster attempting to show affinity with the person whose picture they are using (Suler 2004).
Real-faced avatars, pictures of either the poster or someone s/he knows, are also used. In many cases these are posed pictures chosen to represent an image of the person to the forum. Examples here include a picture of the user participating in a wild party, standing near a famous travel-related icon or participating in a pursuit felt to be meaningful within the forum (e.g. on patrol in Iraq). Some pictures only provide a partial view of the user and so some anonymity remains. An avatar showing a full face is mainly used by forum members who are comfortable with the environment and community and who are
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honest with the other people participating in the online environment. One of the main users of a full-face avatar is Robert Young Pelton, who has nothing to hide from forum members who already recognise him because of his television appearances.
There are some seductive avatars in use on the forum. They normally feature naked or semi-naked women. Male forum members comment on the attractiveness of each other’s avatars. Outside the BFC the most common use of a seductive avatar is for a woman to post a picture in an attempt to seduce male forum members (Suler 2004) but in the BFC it is interesting to note that, contrary to expectations, seductive avatars are used by the men and not women on the forum. In this case it is therefore more likely that men are promoting themselves as attractive to women or they are affirming their own masculinity through the use of a semi-naked female.
Many of the avatars on the forum combine an avatar with different symbols of violence or death, in particular guns and swords. This shows that there is an underlying current of and acceptance of violence within the forum and supports the interpretation of the aggressive nature of the forum.
From the analysis of the avatars it is clear that the forum members use their avatars to portray traits which are either important to themselves or which they believe will improve their standing within the community. For example aggressive and/or masculine role models and activities, military insignia and the skull avatars which are used to integrate themselves with the community. All members of the BFC have a username. Forum members who are regularly online have been found to identify greatly with their username, which becomes a component of self (Stommel 2007). Much like avatars, the usernames on the Black Flag Café often depict traits or professions that are likely to be highly valued within the community. An individual’s username is chosen to establish a particular identity as well as information about their personality, gender and lifestyle. The usernames within the BFC were analysed to develop a typology which is displayed in Table 5.8.
The first category describes usernames that are related to travel (mapandcompass) or reflect affinity with a current or previous location (PerroAndaluz, buffybot_in_beirut); these forum members may be seeking to place themselves by location or nationality within the community.
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The second category comprises usernames related to an individual’s profession (e.g. lightstalker and Bouncer); these posters currently work, or have worked, in the jobs which their usernames describe and attempt to integrate or place the person within the community. Fantasy names reflect fictional, or some cases real, notable characters: for example, Bobby Sands, Caliban, yorick, docwatson, which may be an attempt to be viewed as this person or to associate with the views or the characteristics they are thought to represent.
Many forum members use a real-life name. Although the real names used on the forum do sometimes reflect the forum members’ own names that is not necessarily the case. Some have been chosen because the name is meaningful to the owner (for example, names of relatives). At least three of the female posters have used their usernames to establish their gender (michelle in alaska, Penta, denise) showing that they are comfortable with displaying their gender in the masculine environment or alternatively they are trying to attract male forum members. Some female users deliberately leave their gender vague (shivers).
Similar to the avatars, a number of animal-related names are used on the forum, which may have significance to the user (Renard, Moosehead, copperhead and Piggs).
There are a number of cool-sounding names which partly reflect the ethos of the forum (Royal, cowboycraig, warrior/poet, Expat). These show attempts to impress the other forum members with a name the owner feels reflects the subversive nature of the forum or projects an image which the user wishes to portray (dastardly, worldly).
The category of random within the BFC typology is comparable to the category of usernames “containing play with language and typography” developed by Bechar-Israeli (2001). These names appear to be random combinations of letters and numbers but are in fact meaningful to the user. Of particular interest within the BFC is the username nowonmai, which when reversed reads “I am no won”. This provides an example of what Bechar-Israeli (2001) describes as a name which makes a comment on the anonymity of the medium, where the poster wants to nullify his/her identity further and is seeking anonymity more than others, possibly displaying nervousness within the community. This might be an inherent learned reflex which is typical of intelligence or special forces training.
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Figure 2.8 shows the hierarchy within the BFC between regular and newbie posters and how posters might move between the different levels. There is also an unmarked hierarchy in the forum between experienced posters who have travelled and worked in dangerous places and posters who have limited or no travel experience of dangerous places. This hierarchy of membership sets the group’s cultural norms. The forum has developed a set of control mechanisms for governing behaviour and these have been mapped to more mainstream online behaviour (Burnett and Buerkle 2004) in Table 2.3. As Lampel and Bhalla (2007) suggest, the forum acts as a mechanism through which the group, or tribe members, can verify status and obtain social recognition and prestige; their posts, travel reports and the level of their questioning is used by their fellow forum members to gauge an individual’s status and authenticity, which, in turn, validates the legitimacy or fraudulence of group members and their level and status within the seen and unseen hierarchies of the forum. Within the forum there is also evidence to support the findings of Fung (2006) that the regular forum members seek to establish and then maintain a clear identity, building rapport and confirming their status with other forum members. The four categories of people within an e- tribe identified by Olaniran (2008) that can be found in the group are evident in Table 2.3. New posters and one-off or irregular posters who have made fewer than a hundred posts on the board fit the designation of Tourists, “who lack strong social ties to the group and maintain shallow interest” (p.47). Those who post regularly on the board but do not make the effort to attend offline meetings might be classified as the Minglers: people who maintain a token interest in the group. The Devotees, who, according to Olaniran, “maintain strong interest and enthusiasm for group goals” (p.47), are the regular posters who also attend BFC meetings. The moderators, hot posters and forum members who set the tone of the group through their loyalty, heavy usage and cultural references are the Insiders. Forum posts suggest that forum members use their posts to secure patina (McCracken 1988), a method of establishing status and authenticity which can be used to validate the legitimacy or fraudulence of group members, and from this the travellers who visit dangerous places acquire and enhance their own status and gain acceptance from the forum. The Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes sub-forum provides forum members with a place to post details of their travels; before it was created in 2008, members used to post the details of their trip in one or two dedicated threads. Examples of this type of thread include one started by svizzerams with text and photographs about her trip to remote regions of Azerbaijan; and a series of threads started by Fansy, who described his trip through Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In many cases these threads acted as a type of travel narrative or blog and contained descriptions and photos of the trip. Within the hot threads there are a number of examples of threads which were started specifically to display travel experience:
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“How Many Countries?”, “Around the world in 176 days”, “Your next destination” and “Worst Places You Have Woke Up”. Forum members aim to make their own journeys sound as dangerous and as daring as possible and appear from their posts to relish these aspects of their trips. In some cases being ill or in a dangerous situation counts as an “it” experience and is reported to the forum in a positive way. The findings show that within the forum status is established by providing information and advice to other members of the community in a competitive manner and by undertaking activities (posting travel tales, photos, etc.) designed to enhance standing within the virtual community (Lampel and Bhalla 2007). It is evident that people who travel to dangerous places have their own ethos and subculture that dictate their approach to and view of travel. Just as experiencing backpacker culture is seen as an important part of the backpacking experience (Cohen 2004), experiencing DP culture is seen as essential to becoming an accepted danger tourist. The culture promoted by the forum members is in many ways similar to that promoted by backpackers in their search for, experience of and retelling of stories through which they either gain or maintain their peer status but the Black Flag Café community has its own form of road status with an increased emphasis on hardships undertaken, the risks experienced and other adventurer traits. There is little or no evidence, however, that this is any different from existing approaches to travelling, with the key elements of their subculture (search for authenticity, an emphasis on independent travel and escape from routine) being similar to adventurers, second-order tourists (1984) and to backpacker ideology (Welk 2004a). That being so, danger tourists nonetheless push their pursuit of these ideals further than the other tourist typologies and in doing so may have developed a greater tolerance to, and have a need for, more extreme experiences than the other tourist types identified. In the main, forum members’ status seeking is often unconscious, although it has been increasingly overt since the creation of the Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes part of the forum. It is evident, however, that the telling of travel stories is not limited to the Travel or Photographs, Etchings and Daguerreotypes parts of the forum. Forum members take the opportunity to drop stories and information about their own travelling into any vaguely relevant post, thus supporting their claims for patina and group membership, and the two acts, information giving and obtaining status through storytelling, are often interlinked, with nuggets of useful information provided within a travel story. The tales often take the form of mini-travel histories or narratives, with the forum members acting as virtual story tellers placing themselves in the leading role (Theune et al. 2003). It is possible that this acts as another method of self-discovery (Galani-Moutafi 2000) and it may add to the “experience” of some forum members. This storytelling is similar in nature to that observed by Mukerji (1978)
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among hitchhikers, who portray themselves in their adventures as heroic and brave independent travellers. The members of the Black Flag Café use their stories to establish and gain road status or road culture (Riley 1988; Errington and Gewertz 1989; Pryer 1997), which is defined for the backpacking community by Sørensen (2003) as comprising “hardship, experience, competence, cheap travel” evident in “paying local prices, getting the best deal, travelling off the beaten track, long term travel, diseases, dangerous experiences” (p.856), through the telling of tales about their own travel experience. Because of this need to obtain or improve status, they make a conspicuous purchase advertising their own adventures in a positive light on the forum, which, in turn, allows them to achieve enhanced reputation or status. In this instance, the behaviour of the forum members is similar to the travel styles of both the wanderer and the hitchhiker. Mukerji (1978) named “the stories or bullshit that hitchhikers tell one another during the long rides to entertain themselves, forget their boredom with the scenery and transform themselves into heroic characters” (p.241) as road lore. Within the hitchhiking community, tales of previous travels and experiences on the road and the sharing of good knowledge and “bad ride stories of menacing pictures of local police and locals” (p.245) were used by hitchhikers to promote their own positive self-image. The wanderer (Vogt 1976) gains motivation from peer social recognition and prestige, social recognition being achieved through the degree of “autonomy, independence and freedom of action, exoticism of destination; exoticism of travel mode” (p.28) displayed during travel and through participants’ adherence to a code of conduct while on the road. Vogt found this code of conduct was similar to that developed by hitchhikers and backpackers. The social dependence and need for recognition from other members of their sub- group apparent in the forum members could be related to Maslow’s (1943) need for social acceptance; it is also evidence of their need for affiliation with and acknowledgement from a community whose values they admire. Self-esteem is located beneath self-actualisation in the travel career ladder (Pearce 1988), described as “behaviour influenced by external rewards, prestige, glamour of travelling” (p.31). Improving an individual’s perceived self- image and status with others may be a major benefit of travelling to dangerous places. A virtual community can act as a reference group (Robins 2000) and in the case of the BFC its members gain formal acceptance by the group and recognised status (Blackwell et al. 2001) from visiting dangerous places and seeking out dangerous experiences which will enhance their own status or self-image both on and off the forum. Gardner and Levy (1955) and Levy (1959) established links between self-image and product image. Individuals consume products which they feel, consciously or unconsciously, embody the particular symbolic meanings they wish to incorporate into their own self-image (Wattanasuwan 2005)
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and travelling to dangerous places can provide opportunities for this. The product would be the act of travelling to dangerous places as promoted by Robert Young Pelton. The frequent use of the terms DPer and Flagger show a desire to identify with Robert Young Pelton’s dangerous places concepts and this kind of labelling leads to an increased likelihood of increased label-consistent behaviour (Tybout and Yalch 1980). By taking up the product of travelling to dangerous places, which, through the marketing efforts of Robert Young Pelton, could be described as associated with the positive characteristics and images of the product within the media (Smeesters and Mandel 2006), the traveller then identifies with the product and has been transformed through consumption (Schouten 1991). The image of an adventurer may be, to the tourist, their ideal self-image. Public consumption of the product thus in turn improves their own self-image. The literature highlights the potential role of the media in influencing tourists to visit dangerous places. Against expectations, there was no evidence to show that tourists were motivated to visit dangerous places because it featured on the news. Instead, there was considerable evidence to support the view that they are appreciative of the media’s role in promoting the sublime of war (Hoskins and O'Loughlin 2007), with war zones appearing to participants as glamorous (Knightley 1975). Because of its links with the sublime of war, travelling to dangerous places makes people feel more masculine, more adventurous. It therefore seems that people who travel to dangerous places are seeking to have adventures and gain experience, and exhibit to themselves and others the characteristics of adventurers identified by Anderson (1970) and Mortlock (1984; 2001). It appears that within this community the glamour of war zones has been expanded to include all dangerous places (as opposed to only those which could be formally classified as war zones), so this work expands the notion of a sublime of war and puts forward the concept of the sublime of dangerous places, which forum members seek as it is portrayed to them in associated literature. The pro-military stance of the forum and the respect given to the posters who work in war zones means that they are regarded by many forum members as wise and knowledgeable about working and travelling in dangerous places. The emphasis on “cool” destinations is evidence that participants seek to obtain road status through their choice of destination and that some forum members visit particular destinations because of the kudos attached to it rather than any other motivation, as some destinations are more highly valued for status than others. From the earlier literature on war tourism it was anticipated that the images of each dangerous destination and the forum members’ perception of the destinations would prove to be influenced by the media; the media would play the role of an autonomous image-formation agent (MacKay and Fesenmaier 1997), promoting the destination as one attractive to danger tourists because of its links with the sublime of war
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(Knightley 1975; Taylor 1998). There is, however, no evidence to demonstrate that the mass media influenced forum members’ choice of destination. Balanced against this lack of supporting data from the forum is the forum members’ interest in war reporters, adventurers and the books published by ex-journalists and soldiers which demonstrates that, while the media itself does not appear to be a major influencing factor, forum members do buy into the “Hemingway effect” which promotes the romanticising of war (Evans 2003); this may be more influential than daily news reports. Among the participants, the romanticising and glamour appear to extend beyond war zones to dangerous places. With its pictures of naked and semi-naked women, the aggressive tone of flame wars and acceptability of trolling, the forum has an overtly male feel which may discourage women from participating. Over 80% of the BFC forum members are male, although this imbalance might be accounted for by the fact that younger (under 30) males are Robert Young Pelton’s target audience for his books and magazine articles. Robert Young Pelton has been described as an alpha male; Black Flag Café forum members admire alpha males, who they see as more attractive to women than other males; and several of the board members also seek to portray an overt masculine personality through their avatars and usernames as well as in their posts and projected behaviour. Men such as JamesInTheWorld actively promote a glamorous masculine lifestyle, creating online an idealistic image of what they perceive to be the ideal lifestyle of a single young male living overseas, supporting and disseminating traditional hegemonic masculinity (Clatterbaugh 1990) throughout the forum. Gender behaviour online is not widely researched but the behaviours on the BFC mirror those found by Kendall (2002) on a synchronous forum-based virtual pub. A core group of predominantly white males was identified there, leading, in turn, to the display of masculine behaviours, with talk about sexual behaviours, practices and relationships, performance masculinity and jokes about women’s sexuality. The masculine nature of the forum may also account for the paucity of female board members. Logan (2006) suggests that adventure is a masculine pursuit and Gordon (2006) observed that masculinity can be gained or increased by having an adventure. Proportionately more female than male members of the forum, however, travel to dangerous places and so, while Zuckerman (1983) found that men were more likely to be willing participants in risk-laden situations, there is no evidence that women do not travel to dangerous places. This finding supports the literature relating to adventurers as Anderson (1970) felt that the Ulysses factor was not linked to gender but that “its manifestations, however, are much less common in women than in men” (p.252). Nevertheless, there was no evidence to support his other findings that adventurous women preferred group adventures with supportive companions or that they used mechanical power for single-handed exploits; in fact marie-angelique’s solo travels by bicycle directly contradict this.
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To summarise: forum members use travelling to dangerous places to improve their own self-image and the image perceived by others within their peer group. The findings of this study suggest that one of the main methods of establishing patina is to tell stories or narratives of daring or dangerous episodes which verify the travel experience and portray the tourist in a positive way, coping with difficulties and stress and exhibiting the positive characteristics of an adventurer, including courage, integrity, gameness, gallantry, composure and presence of mind (Anderson 1970; Mortlock 2001). They use travel narratives highlighting their own heroic adventures in the face of adversity to increase their own self-image; this method of establishing patina also allows forum members to gain status within the forum, which acts as a peer reference group. This reference group provides a mechanism for affiliation and also meets the forum members’ needs for social recognition and acceptance. Alongside their narratives, forum members use the online tools of avatars, signatures and usernames to create their own online personas, often portraying the desired positive characteristics of adventurers and masculine role models. By adhering to the values and ideologies which the forum promotes, the members gain and maintain status within the forum and thereby associate themselves with the glamour and sublime of dangerous places, heightened masculinity and adventurer characteristics, improving their image in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. As anticipated from the literature (Blayne 1988; Sharpley 2005), there was evidence to show how travel to a dangerous place can be used to establish status within a peer group and to improve self-image. Early on in the research it became obvious that the forum had its own subculture. Although this incorporates many of the traits identified in adventurers, it is in many ways an extreme form of the ideology and ethos created and used by backpackers (Sørensen 2003). Because the research is confined to the Black Flag Café forum, it is not clear if this subculture is representative of other danger tourists or confined to the BFC virtual community. 8.4 Search for an authentic travel experience
The results of the study also indicate that tourists to dangerous places seek out what they consider authentic travel experiences, travelling independently and wherever possible outside what they perceive to be the mainstream travel infrastructure. The findings highlighted the forum members’ views about the differentiation between tourist and traveller, which they feel to be pertinent to any discussion about travel. They display a desire to escape mainstream tourism and to be viewed as independent and different from other tourists. Forum members made a conspicuous effort, through their disdain of the tourism infrastructure and their efforts to be viewed by the local population as something other than
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tourists, to dissociate themselves from tourism, but the evidence shows that their efforts to do this were not successful. Forum members wish to be known and described as travellers rather than tourists. They display anxiety at being labelled tourists and actively seek real or “it” experiences by developing conscious strategies to avoid other tourists. These include travelling alone, attempting to learn the local language, eating in places known only to locals and showing an interest in local life. In seeking this authentic experience, danger tourists take on the characteristics of outward-orientated drifters “concerned with experiencing the host country” (Cohen 1973, p.100). It is interesting to note that, while they seek to dissociate themselves from tourists and backpackers, people who travel to dangerous places share many of the characteristics of backpackers, hitchhikers and wanderers and their motivations and method of travel do not form the basis of a separate genre of tourist. While the forum members like to view themselves as deviant and special, there is considerable evidence that they engage in the tourism infrastructure and participate in tourist activities in ways similar to other tourists by staying at hotels, using travel agents and tour guides. Although they dislike and disparage backpackers, the research shows that tourists who travel to dangerous places share many of their motivations and methods of travel, so they might best be described as a niche or sub-group of backpackers, who derive similar meanings from travel (Uriely et al. 2002). The findings show that the participants in the forum who travel to DPs highlight the authenticity of their travels as one of the factors that make the way that they travel different from – and in their eyes better than – other tourists. Despite their efforts, there is considerable evidence to show that they act like second-order tourists (Redfoot 1984): their goal is “to have a more immediate experience” (p.297), one that could be described as unspoilt or authentic or that produces an emotional high (Berger 1963). This search for authenticity, however, often means that the second-order tourist remains an outsider, seeking “it” experiences which have been authenticated by others such as novelists and anthropologists (Wilson and Richards 2004); or possibly, in the case of dangerous destinations, searching for authentic “it” experiences which have been validated by Robert Young Pelton or other forum members. The majority of the members of the Black Flag Café appear to understand that travel has increasingly become a highly predictable product (Ritzer 1996) and this has led them to search for authentic experiences and, like backpackers, to “reject everything that is assumed to be typically touristy” (Welk 2004a, p83). However the search for truly authentic experiences is becoming increasingly difficult (Goffman, 1959; Urry, 1990). Posters within the Black Flag Café appear to have little understanding that their “authentic” experiences may be staged for their benefit (Goffman 1959; Urry 1990; MacCannell 2001), or they don’t wish to
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admit this to each other or themselves as it would spoil the illusion that they had have an “it” experience. Forum members encourage each other to undertake independent travel, characterised by an evolving itinerary, willingness to take risks and a desire to experience the unplanned (Hyde and Lawson 2003). By travelling independently to dangerous places, the forum members could be said to be moving away from organised holidays, which are viewed as predictable and controlled and where danger and unpleasantness do not feature, into less calculated and controlled environments, offering increased opportunities to gain flow and self- actualisation (Weber 1930; Ritzer 2004). Like the new tourists identified by Poon (1994), they appear to be seeking an authentic and more natural experience away from mass tourism. While the differentiation between traveller and tourist is clear within the minds of the forum members, it is less obvious to outsiders. Potts (2008) described the anti-tourist feeling within the traveller community as “a self-conscious parlour game” and observed that “regardless of how far we try to wander off the tourist trail we are still outsiders, dilettantes, itinerant consumers” (p.4). In the context of war zones, there is evidence that locals view all visitors (soldiers, journalists, aid workers and tourists) as tourists (Keenan 1994; Pitts 1996) and treat them accordingly. This is an example of where self-image collides with reality. Forum members’ perceived self-image (French and Glaschner 1971) as something other than tourists, an image they try to project because they perceive it as an indicator of high status (Sirgy 1982), is not the same as the real image viewed by the local population with whom they seek to integrate themselves. Forum members’ fond view of themselves as a special type of traveller is therefore merely a distinction in their own eyes. Krippendorf (1986) predicted that changes in society would lead to new types of tourist. The intelligent tourist would accept their status as a tourist because they had understood that “however much we object, even if we keep far away from other tourists, if we try to use disguises so as not to look like tourists, even if we think we are more ‘locals’ than tourists – as soon as we travel we become, and remain, tourists” (p.134). This type of intelligent tourist is not yet evident within the forum, as members of the BFC continue actively to try to distinguish themselves from tourists. To summarise: forum members feel it is important to separate themselves from tourism and tourism infrastructure but there is little evidence to support the division and they are at best described as a niche group with strong associations with backpacking. They seek out and attempt to experience real as opposed to staged tourism situations but it is probable that in many cases the authentic experiences they report to each other are in fact staged.
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8.5 Approach to risk: risk assessment / acceptance of residual risks
Traditionally, tourists see the risks of travelling as clustered into seven different areas: law and order, transportation, hygiene, the possibility of criminal attack, political stability and the possibility of contracting infectious diseases (Tsaur et al. 1997). Specific risks include health and wellbeing, war and political instability, terrorism, strange food, political and religious dogma, cross-cultural differences and petty crime (Lepp and Gibson 2003). While war, political instability and terrorism concern tourists, most tourists are risk averse, viewing risk and danger as a barrier to travel (Tarlow 2009) and they do not actively seek out these environments. While this study found evidence of how the residual risks of travel were dealt with by the participants, a most interesting finding was the lack of evidence demonstrating how tourists to dangerous places consider and assess the risks involved in travel to dangerous places. Within some social groups there is a tendency to downplay certain risks as a means of maintaining the group’s status quo (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982) and this may explain the lack of data on this topic. The daredevil attitude towards risk taking promoted by Robert Young Pelton in the forum and The World’s Most Dangerous Places may promote the ethos that worrying about risk is not socially acceptable within the forum. This is perpetuated by the regulars and moderators who often flame newbie posters who ask about the risks of particular destinations. Despite the obvious importance of risk perception as a topic within this dissertation, it is interesting to note that the topic is not of great importance to the participants of the Black Flag Café. There was very little evidence within the forum during either the data-collection phase or the longer period of participant observation that the risks involved in travel are pivotal factors in the participants’ decisions to travel. This was contrary to expectations. Within the forum, great emphasis is placed on salience and experience. Flaggers feel that their previous independent travel experience to DPs has made them more aware of the risks and better prepared to deal with them. They regard themselves as better and safer than other tourists who have either not travelled independently or who have only travelled to traditional locations. Forum members believe that experience is built up over a number of trips to increasingly dangerous places and, when travelling, posters seek to learn from their bad experiences to improve how they travel in the future; this type of decision making is thought to demonstrate that the forum members who travel regularly to dangerous places make informed decisions based on the possibility of good and bad outcomes. A tourist’s perception of risk is influenced by their previous travel experience (Lepp and Gibson 2003) and forum members use their previous knowledge and plan ahead to determine their travel
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choices “having experienced good and bad outcomes in the past” (Mowen 1993, p.265). The concept of developing one’s own travel skills is highlighted as beneficial in dealing with the potential risks. Mowen (1993) called the type of people who make this kind of judgement call “peerless decision makers” (p.239), who use “intuition and experience to make appropriate judgement calls when the stakes are high” (p.240), learn from past events and accumulate wisdom from previous decisions and events. Similarly, the forum members who are new to travelling to dangerous places (the one-off and first-time travellers) recognise their own lack of knowledge to make these types of decisions and, while they aspire to act as peerless decision makers, in the main, they recognise their own limitations and seek first to gather information and knowledge from less dangerous travel experiences. Before departure, forum members undertake a cursory information search about the destination or location, focusing mainly on the practical aspects of travel. Both regular forum members and the newbie posters who request specific information about a particular destination may be using the forum as an information-gathering tool because there is limited information about travelling to dangerous places in the public domain. Traditional information sources such as brochures, guidebooks, local tourist offices and travel guides (Fodness and Murray 1997) are not always available or up to date for the destinations that the forum members wish to visit and so they turn to more personal non-traditional sources, even though they have no way of verifying the information they are given. In this the forum members appear to use the forum as a replacement for, or supplement, to offline information searches (Jepsen 2006) but it may also be acting as the primary reference source because traditional primary sources like brochures and sales personnel are not, or have not been, available to them. Slovic (1987) found that, when assessing risks, the majority of people “rely on intuitive risk judgements” (p.280) and that these judgements are greatly influenced by friends and the media, so it was anticipated that within the forum there would be evidence of posters consulting their peer group on the risks of travelling to a particular destination. Surprisingly, there was no evidence of any forum member changing their travel plans after asking fellow forum members for information about potential destinations, although it is impossible to know how many of the new one-off posters who requested information in preparation for a particular trip went ahead and travelled to the dangerous place they were enquiring about as no follow up was posted on the board; it is not possible to trace if these journeys went ahead. There was evidence that posters appear to accept the residual risks involved in travelling to dangerous places: forum members employ a number of coping mechanisms to resolve and accept these residual risks in their own minds. These methods can be recognised using the “modes of resolution of belief dilemmas” (Abelson 1959), which demonstrate how a person resolves their desire simultaneously to approach and to avoid
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something which might cause them harm. Abelson identified four ways to gain a personal acceptance of the residual risks: denial of the danger and risk factors; bolstering by highlighting to self and others the positive benefits; differentiation of the risks into good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable and controllable and uncontrollable; and transcendence, in which the risk involved takes on a higher meaning and is undertaken for the greater good. In the forum there is direct evidence of members using three of these approaches, denial, bolstering and differentiation, to resolve the dilemma between the risks and perceived benefits of travel to dangerous places and to persuade themselves or others that their trips are not as dangerous as they seem. The fourth method of belief resolution, transcendence, might come into play as a form of self-actualisation when travellers to dangerous places undertake their trip as a rite-of-passage experience. Forum members used a combination of denial, bolstering and differentiation to accept the residual risk involved in travel and they supported and encouraged each other to disregard travel restrictions and more traditional forms of risk assessment on the grounds that they were applicable only to tourists and not to the experienced travellers they view themselves as. Contrary to expectations, the study did not detect any evidence that tourists to dangerous places are indiscriminate risk takers with a death wish. Instead, the analysis showed that they carefully balanced their skill levels and other controllable factors which might influence the outcome of their travel plans and made their decision to travel or not accordingly. There was no evidence to support the view promoted by the media that these tourists want to be where the action is, in the sense that they deliberately seek out situations that they think are uncontrollably dangerous. Rather it became clear that, on the whole, the danger tourists are fully aware of the risks that they take and make informed choices accordingly. The majority of danger tourists do not take what they perceive to be unnecessary risks while travelling and they discourage this type of behaviour in others. There was no evidence that they “diced with death” (Stone 2006, p.148), endangering themselves and others. 8.6 Thrill / sensation seeking
When travelling to dangerous places, forum members voluntarily choose to place themselves in danger; this should have produced some evidence that they weigh up the risks and benefits of travel and the dread factor of a negative outcome (Slovic et al. 1980). However, there is no evidence to show how forum members actually consider the risks involved in their travel plans and how, or indeed if, they consider the risks involved in travelling to dangerous places in any detail. Csikszentmihalyi (1975) maintained that it was the sense of control over identified risks that provided pleasure (flow) for people participating in potentially dangerous
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activities. Csikszentmihalyi (1975; 1990) described the flow experience as the favourable balance between the participant’s skill and the activity they are participating in, resulting in a pleasurable and optimal experience for the participant. Apart from discussion about having “an experience”, there is very limited discussion on the forum about feelings which might represent flow. While pleasure is gained from risk taking in high-risk sports (Celsi et al. 1993; Stranger 1999), there is limited evidence of danger tourists experiencing flow or enjoyment from their activities. Flow and thrill seeking appears only sporadically within the posts and in some cases thrills are not connected to the risks taken while travelling. Even though there was little data to support it, forum members probably experience flow while travelling to dangerous places and this, together with other motivational factors, can become addictive, leading forum members to seek an increased flow experience by travelling to ever more dangerous destinations or by trying to gain more control over their risk-taking experience. The forum members who deliberately choose to visit dangerous places could be described as deliberate risk seekers or as having sensation-seeking personalities (Zuckerman 1979). Zuckerman (1979) delineated the profile of a high-sensation seeker as “one of an impulsive, risk-taking (adventurous), non-conforming, dominant type of extravert but not necessarily a socially oriented type” (p.153). There are four main areas in the sensation-seeking scale: the search for experience, in which sensation seekers look for arousal through a non-conformist lifestyle; disinhibition, whereby opportunities to rebel against strict social codes of conduct provide the more traditional sensation seeker with release through social disinhibition; boredom susceptibility, a dislike of repetitive experiences; and thrill and adventure seeking (TAS), gaining arousal by taking risks in physical activities. Forum members demonstrate signs of enjoying a non-conformist lifestyle and rebelling against authority and also thrill- and adventure-seeking tendencies which include engaging in high-risk activities or sports as work or leisure activities, gambling, drug taking and a willingness to “entertain the idea of travelling to more exotic places even if such travelling seems more risky” (Zuckerman 1979, p.217). Furthermore Zuckerman examined the relationship between travel and the sensation-seeking trait, using travel scenarios to assess the desirability of destinations; he found that high-risk destinations induced anxiety in both high- and low-sensation seekers, but that the reaction to the assessed risk differed, with high- sensation seekers showing the desire to move from familiar surroundings to new ones. Forum members appear to be novelty seekers similar in many ways to dark and atrocity tourists seeking out uniquely interesting experiences (Ashworth 2004; Seaton and Lennon 2004). Undertaking novel activities can provide enhanced status (Levy 1959; Mukerji 1978) and, in their role as early adopters, the forum members who travel to dangerous places are displaying a novelty-seeking approach (Hirschman 1980; Mayo and Jarvis 1981) to their
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trips. They show traits associated with novelty seekers, including risk taking, variety seeking, curiosity and innovativeness (Raju 1980) and among the forum posts there is evidence of behaviours related to other novelty-seeking behaviour, including decision making under risk and gambling (Steenkamp and Baumgartner 1992). Despite the fact that high levels of novelty seeking are normally evidenced in younger, educated and employed people (Raju 1980), all the forum members who travel to dangerous places display these tendencies. 8.7 Misadventure
Prior studies on high-risk seekers can be applied to the forum members who travel to dangerous places and offer a number of explanations as to why they seek out high-risk activities. Just as the price for doing extreme sports can be disability or death (Jirasek 2007), travelling to dangerous places can result in physical harm including injury by an incendiary device, kidnap, hostage and ransom situations or, in the extreme, public execution (Pilgrims Group 2006). In their posts forum members provide a number of examples of misadventure while travelling in dangerous places. The support given to south_sea_bubble after being robbed (6.6.4.2 ) shows how forum members see this as a natural part of travel. A number of hot threads (“The most dangerous situation that you’ve been in…”, “Worst Places You Have Woke Up” and “The most dangerous place you’ve been to in the past year”) contain posts from forum members relating tales of misadventure when travelling. In the adventure experience paradigm, if skill levels and actual risk are out of balance, misadventure and death can occur (Cater 2004). In adventurers, Anderson (1970) found that the imperfect or malignant development of the Ulysses factor could lead to tragedy and Palmer (2002) observed within the backpacking scene a number of dangerous “thrill seekers whose appetite for adventure often exceeds their skills and competence” (p.327), whose misjudgements could have ended in unnecessary deaths. The extent of any benefits obtained by the tourist from misadventure would almost certainly depend on the seriousness of the misadventure, how it is portrayed and reported to others through self-narrative and how peers react to it. Again, SSB’s post “Bubble’s Travel Updates” shows how his status within the forum increased after incidents of misadventure. Ultimately, a minor misadventure which could be reported in a positive light might result in a greater positive benefit than a trip during which no misadventure occurred. This is supported by Varley (2006), who shows how a bad trip during an adventure can result in a positive experience for all involved. Although there are no immediate benefits to death, fame and death are linked in celebrity culture and there is evidence that both misadventure and death through adventure can lead to notoriety (Manning 1999). The most notable example is Christopher McCandless, an adventurer who died at the
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age of 24 from starvation in Alaska. His adventure has since spawned a book, a Hollywood film and a number of copycat adventurers. The adventure experience paradigm (Martin and Priest 1986) charts the flow experience in adventure tourism and regards the competence and skill of the participant as a factor contributing to their levels of enjoyment. Within the paradigm it is the level of risk as perceived by the participant, rather than the actual level of risk, that determines the extent of flow experienced. The balance of actual competence and perceived risk provides an optimal level of arousal for the participant. Ideally people seek out risk levels equal to their competence. Cater (2004) found that if, due to personal misperceptions of either risk or competence, “an activity moves towards a condition of risk being greater than competence to deal with that risk, there is the potential for misadventure and at levels of complete imbalance devastation and disaster may occur” (p.319). 8.8 Death
While travel to dangerous places is generally encouraged in the forum, travelling to destinations where the risks of death are considered too high is discouraged. Any poster (new or otherwise) who asks about a destination that is considered too risky is actively discouraged from travelling by flaming and the provision of accurate information about the current security situation. This shows how forum members make informed judgements about the security situation in the destinations they wish to visit. Although the media promotes as fact the notion that travellers to dangerous places do so because they have a death wish, this does not appear to be the case with forum members, who instead seek situations where they can control some of the risks involved in travel. The experienced forum members who travel to dangerous places appear to be only interested in taking risks that are known and controllable as opposed to those which might be considered, on the psychometric paradigm (Slovic et al. 1980), to be uncontrollable and unknown. When the experienced forum members who often travel and work in dangerous places feel that the risks are totally beyond their own control and/or skill, they can be seen to decline the challenge, as the residual risks are considered too great (Tolbert 2005). When death or misadventure occurs to people travelling or working in a dangerous place, forum members often justify this by describing it as a chain of unstoppable events, being in the wrong place at the wrong time or as a result of the person working beyond their own capabilities or making senseless travel decisions. They use the concepts of fate, chance and luck to relieve the “person of any responsibility for what happened” (Bernstein 1996, p.197) and often the real cause of the disastrous event is not fully explored. Similarly, participants in high-risk sports view death as a natural part of the sport (Celsi et al. 1993);
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when a fellow participant dies it does not have a negative impact because of the group’s acculturated understanding of the risks involved, denial tactics and belief that it is unlikely to happen to self. Møller (2007) proposed two motivations for people who seek out dangerous situations: the first a “form of self-therapy for an excessive fear of death” (p.193) and the second, more common motivation, a way to become more familiar with death, with the participant eventually developing a “relaxed relationship to his mortality” (p.194). Lyng (2005) was of the view that edgeworkers, who are defined as people who take risks and go over the edge of acceptability, using their own skills to “offset impending disaster” (Milovanovic 2005, p.53) in search of transcendent or peak experiences and an adrenaline rush similar to flow, enjoyed cheating death, thereby affirming their own existence, whereas Hamm (2005) found elements of self-destruction in edgeworkers who were flirting with death. Like Lyng (2005), Kastenbaum (2000) felt that some people have a subtle inclination towards death and suggested that a risk-taking youth experiences a high from challenging death; similarly, danger tourists may gain pleasure from successfully confronting death. Nevertheless, he also observed that “even high-risk activities – sky diving, for example – do not necessarily signify a powerful wish to die” (p.199). This concept of becoming more familiar with mortality echoes Stone and Sharpley (2008), who viewed dark tourism as “a means for confronting the inevitably of one’s own death and that of others” (p.585). Although in the case of dark tourism this took place in a socially acceptable environment, visits to places where death is occurring, may, in a similar way, allow an individual to contemplate and become familiar with their own death. On one hand, the descriptive content analysis shows that forum members are particularly interested in misadventure and death but on the other, there was no evidence within the qualitative analysis or participant observation that they travel to see dead or dying people in an extreme form of the Schadenfreude observed in dark tourists (Sharpley 2005; Stone and Sharpley 2008) or that they have a death wish. Although this may, in part, be because admitting to experiencing pleasure through the pain of others is not socially acceptable even on an anonymous Internet forum. Instead, they may be seeking familiarity with their own mortality in a way which is similar to dark tourists (Stone and Sharpley 2008). Trips to DPs could then be seen as less about blood lust (Stone and Sharpley 2008) and the desire to view people dying than providing the opportunity to view death first hand, in order to reduce “the potential sense of dread that death inevitably brings” (Stone and Sharpley 2008, p.589). Among the forum members there is evidence of members’ involvement in other high- risk activities, including gambling, drugs, sky diving, mountaineering, wilderness kayaking,
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unprotected sex and motorbiking, so their enjoyment of risk is not limited only to travel. The danger tourists who post on the Black Flag Café share many of the same characteristics as edgewokers including addictions (drugs and alcohol), enjoyment of other high-risk activities, a need to escape the norms of society and notoriety within the media (Lyng 1990). The borderline that Milovanovic identified within the typology of edgework experiences differentiates between controlled, packaged edgework and the out of control edgework which can produce transcendental experiences and is similar to the misadventure identified in the adventure experience paradigm (Martin and Priest 1986). Lyng (2005) felt that edgeworkers were trying to escape modern consumerism and “stultifying environments of daily worklife” (p.23), elements also described by Ritzer (2006) as influencing destination choice. The bad- boy image enjoyed by edgeworkers like BASE jumpers and other daredevils (Ferrell 2005) sits well with the image of individuality and deviance that the forum members like to project. People who choose to work in dangerous places might also be placed in this framework as undertaking a form of “workplace edgework”, which is portrayed as having clearer boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and more defined rules of conduct (Milovanovic 2005). Forum members appear to gain pleasure from successfully balancing their own skills against dangerous situations but, since this feeling can become normalised over time, they seek increasingly more dangerous situations in order to gain similar feeling. As shown in the DP travel career (Figure 6.3), forum members who undertake their first trip to a dangerous place often become repeat travellers, seeking increased thrill or greater flow. In edgework this is described as a junkie-like addiction (Ferrell 2005) and in high-risk activities such as sky diving it is explained as a need to gain an increased or different type of thrill (Celsi et al. 1993), which can manifest itself in a shift in the method used to obtain the thrill. The emphasis during the activity changes from hedonism linked to flow to motives of efficacy, with the individual gaining their pleasure from their own control over the risks and danger involved by pushing the envelope and the illusion of control; and risk acculturation (Celsi et al. 1993). The number of danger tourists who repeat their trips to dangerous places to ever more dangerous destinations demonstrates that this type of addiction is present within the danger- tourism community. The tourism to dangerous places portrayed on the forum could therefore be considered a form of unpacked edgework, placed, depending on the destination and the actual danger encountered by the tourist, in the edgework framework described above (Milovanovic 2005) between sneaky thrills that can be gained from illegal activities to the transcendental peak experiences that include near-death encounters (Milovanovic 2005). This should be considered beyond packaged adventure (Holyfield et al. 2005) because there are real as
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opposed to perceived risks involved. Some tourists may over-calculate their personal skill level, resulting in misadventure or death, while others assess their skills and experience correctly and plan their activities, taking control and edgework into consideration. Edgework alone, however, does not appear to satisfy the forum members, as they also require other elements to be present in their travel experience, including peak experiences, opportunity to improve status, novelty and authenticity. In some cases, for example North Korea, where there is little or no opportunity to experience edgework, these other factors appear to take on a higher priority than the edgework experience. To summarise: in reviewing the data there was a notable lack of evidence to support any interpretation about the forum members’ approach to risk assessments, seeking, obtaining or experiencing flow nor any overt signs of sensation/thrill seeking. There was, however, data that showed that the forum members acted as peerless decision makers, using salience and their previous travel experience to make their decision to travel. They accepted the residual risks involved in travelling, using a combination of different approaches, including denial of the risks, highlighting to themselves and others the benefits and the differentiation of risks into “good” and “bad”. Forum members balanced their own skill and the actual risk involved in travel to control their own situation; the possible outcomes of this included flow (a positive experience) and misadventure and death (negative experiences). Instead of a death wish, there was evidence that people who travelled to dangerous places are seeking greater familiarity with death and no evidence that forum members were seeking their own deaths. Finally, a number of similarities were noted between edgeworkers and travellers to dangerous places, including novelty seeking and a desire to escape conventional consumerism, individuality, a dislike for authority, and risk- taking behaviour. 8.9 Danger tourism and its relationship with dark tourism
Reflecting on the dark tourism literature at the beginning of this thesis it is now possible to explore the findings relating to danger tourism within the existing dark tourism frameworks. Considering first the term dark tourism Miles (2002) envisaged darkest tourism as involving virtual real time tours. Tourism to dangerous places takes place in real time, although it is a real life physical activity as opposed to a virtual one. The spectrum of dark tourism (Stone 2006) set out criteria for darkest tourism involving a short but tasteful time from event to visit and an authentic location in which there is limited tourism infrastructure. Tourism to dangerous places also meets this criteria and so might be considered to adhere to both definitions of darkest tourism. Conversely there may be little to link danger tourism to dark tourism. Instead it may be that travelling to dangerous places is a form of pale tourism
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(Sharpley 2005) as it has minimal links to death and the sites visited by danger tourists are not currently intending to be, and indeed might never be, tourist attractions. The findings indicate that “during the war” tourism (Smith 1996) does in fact include visits to live war zones and battlefields and so some elements of danger tourism might be classified as battlefield or war tourism. This moves the concept of battlefield tourism from a historical one (Baldwin and Sharpley 2009) to live battlefield tourism and also embraces elements of the hot war tourism described by Piekarz (2007). The research identified several examples of on the spot and official tourists (Seaton 1999). Like Keenan (1994), Pitts (1996), and Piekarz (2007) this research has struggled to differentiate between tourists, journalists, aid workers and other people who are visiting dangerous places for work. This research highlights the fact that people in dangerous destinations and/or war zones are difficult to categorise. Furthermore the research has identified that the majority of workers in dangerous places share many of the same motivational factors as tourists and so there may be little benefit in trying to classify and divide tourists and workers during future analysis. This research found evidence to support the hypothesis that danger tourists share similar motivations to thanatourists (Seaton 2009) who are influenced by the romantic sublime. Therefore people who visit dangerous places may be more likely to be searching for the intense emotional experiences brought on by hot authenticity as described by Cohen (2011) than led by a desire to visit locations of death. Bowman and Pezzullo (2010) found that backpackers and other anti-tourists, in order to disassociate themselves from tourists, wilfully “subject themselves to something unpleasant or disturbing” (p.196) in order to set themselves apart from pleasure seekers. It may be that tourism to dangerous places is an extreme manifestation of this activity. Seaton and Lennon (2004) raised the notion that dark tourism articles in the press were creating moral panic. Several of the newspaper articles that describe travel to dangerous places highlighted the issue of the moral and social acceptability of these trips. Piekarz (2007) mentioned that tourism to hot war zones raised questions about the morality of certain types of traveller (thrill seekers; the rubbernecker and cocktail travellers) and that this, within the context of war zone travel, should be further investigated. This research has not explored the moral and ethical issues surrounding tourism to dangerous places but the evidence suggests that the forum members do not explicitly travel to view death and so the activity may be less morally suspect than it is currently portrayed within academic literature and mass media. There is however, no denying that the boundary between the acceptability of visiting locations which was key to the original interpretation of dark tourism (Lennon and Foley 2000) may be shortening as the time between event and visit merges.
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8.10 Danger tourism and its relationship to independent and backpacker travel
The literature review identified a number of similarities between independent travellers and backpackers. These can now be considered within the context of danger tourism. The Black Flag Café forum itself acts as a type of enclave (Cohen 2004) where like minded travellers can group together to share knowledge and experiences. The current study confirmed that many of the traits identified in Table 1.1 were evident in the forum members who travelled to dangerous places. In particular the findings showed that forum members shared the curiosity values and thirst for adventure identified in drifters (Cohen 1973) with novelty seeking both a reason for travel and also a factor in destination selection. Forum members wanted to be viewed as more adventurous than others and valued the adventurer characteristics (Anderson 1970) this label gave them. With regards to the wanderer (Vogt 1976) two characteristics were valued by the BFC members: independence of travel and the need for peer recognition and prestige. As mentioned earlier forum members value independent travel seeking to avoid organised travel in favour of authentic tourism experiences. There were links between the forum members need for peer recognition and prestige and the methods they used to establish their own identities through story telling. This was very similar to the bullshitting identified by Mukerji (1978) in hitchhikers. Many of the forum members’ posts focused on relating travel stories and providing travel advice to others. These travel tales which feature acts of heroism, the hardships, dangers and diseases encountered along the trip are a key feature of the forum. The hitchhiker culture is adapted for an online environment. Stories are used by posters to create or improve an individual’s image, to establish status within the community and to remind forum members of a person’s previous travel experience and travel credentials. They are also used to demonstrate an individual’s knowledge, their experience in dangerous places and on occasion their own masculinity. This use of travel tales to gain peer recognition is also a trait of backpacker road status (Sørensen 2003). Other similarities were evident. Backpacking is associated with a rite of passage experience (Riley 1988; Cohen 2004; Shmuel et al. 2006). There was evidence that in some instances travel to dangerous places was used as an extreme rite of passage experience. However, as the forum contained more repeat than one off travellers, a rite of passage experience should be considered as a motivation for the initial danger travel experience only. The independent travellers identified in the literature review and the forum members both valued meeting strangers whilst travelling (Vogt 1976), although Flaggers appear to place more value on these people being local as opposed to other travellers as they feel this adds
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to the authenticity of the trip. Both value the use of local transportation (Cohen 1973) although for drifters and backpackers this is driven by a need or desire to save money whereas forum members tend to value local transport for the greater opportunity that it offers to meet local people. Considering the five “badges of honour” (Bradt 1995) that identify backpacker ideology the findings confirmed that backpackers and tourists who travel to dangerous places share three of the five badges: a) meeting different people, b) being or feeling free, independent and open minded and c) organising one’s journey individually or independently. There was less evidence to support the common value of travelling on a low budget. Whilst some forum members did attempt to travel on a limited budget others were willing to pay for security and comfort. Regarding the final value, travelling for as long as possible, the study found no evidence that the forum members who travel to dangerous places valued this trait. Instead they valued the activities undertaken during travel regardless of the length of stay. 8.11 Findings in relation to online communities
Prior studies have described online communities as groups (Rheingold 1993) or tribes (Olaniran 2008) who share common interests and the Black Flag Café forum provides an example of how a physically disparate group of people have formed a virtual community which has developed its own social standards, terms of reference and social norms (netiquette). From the mappings of the forum members online behaviours (Table 2.2 and 2.3) it is interesting to note that the Black Flag Café does not conform to the traditional expectations for online group netiquette (Rinalidi 1998) or online behaviours (Burnett and Buerkle 2004) instead the forum has developed its own version of acceptable behaviour which is aggressive, masculine and self focused in nature. These findings support the work of Fung (2006) in that over the years forum members have developed into a strong cohesive group which breaks geographical, racial, generational and class boundaries. The analysis of the forum members’ profiles adds to the limited previous research on how people create and manipulate their own online persona. It adds to earlier works which have explored how avatars (Scheidt 2001; Suler 2004), usernames (Bechar-Israeli 2001; Stommel 2007) and signatures (Rains 2006) are used to establish online identity. In addition the usernames and avatars chosen for use on the Black Flag Café provide examples of how the topic and nature of the forum itself influences the forum members’ choice of username and avatar. The Black Flag Café forum members’ use of these tools within a text based forum provides strong examples of how text can be used in an asynchronous online environment for impression management (Jacoobson 1999). These findings are particularly useful as
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much recent work has focused on online persona management in synchronous chat and MUD’s as opposed to text based asynchronous environments. The fact that Robert Young Pelton acts as a focal point for the forum members indicates that the Black Flag Café may be categorised as, or shows elements of, a fandom site. Although it was developed by the star (RYP) as opposed to his fans the membership of the site, and much of the site content, can be categorise as WWW fandom. This is because it provides forum members with an opportunity to enter into “dialogue with the “artist” and the fan community” (Soukup 2006, p.319) and to identify with them personally. The Black Flag Café provides an example of how a celebrity’s own website can become a hybrid of a formal and informal celebrity fandom site as the online content is adapted by fans. The research and diagram (Figure 2.8) confirm previous findings which describe online communities as having a strict hierarchy of positioning within the forum (Olaniran 2008) and there was evidence that the forum members at the top of the hierarchy influence the purchases made by other forum members. This demonstrates that the diffusion of innovation (Rogers 1995) is taking place in this online environment. The research confirms the findings by Koznits (2000) and Adams and Smith (2008) that online communities bond to consume. However in the case of the Black Flag Café the purchasing is not, with the exception of buying RYP products, carried out on the website but instead the purchase is made offline and pleasure from product consumption is gained from sharing the purchase with like minded individuals in an online environment. The way in which forum members share travel information with each other and by doing so establish their own status, supports the findings by Lampel and Bhalla (2007) that forum members undertake competitive status seeking by offering advice and information to each other and places this within a tourism context. Paris (2009) suggested that “communication technologies have created the social structure to support the mainstream backpacker culture of today” (p.25) and that this has resulted in the virtualization of backpacker culture. The Black Flag Café offers forum members the opportunity to join a travel community which allows them to engage with backpacker ideology online before, during and after their trip as they search for information and travel tips, upload photos, contribute to forums and share their travel experiences. The forum demonstrates how backpacker ideology can be played out virtually by forum participants in an online environment.
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8.12 Creation of conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour
This section introduces the conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour. The framework integrates the four factors which influence tourists who choose to travel to dangerous places and has been developed from the research findings and accompanying literature.
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Figure 8.1 Conceptual framework of danger tourists’ approach to travelling to dangerous places
Figure 8.1 indicates the four factors that influence a danger tourist’s behaviour.
The search for self-actualisation, which is obtained through seeking peak or “it” experiences, is shown in the first box. The study showed self-actualisation and the search for “it” or peak experiences as a motivational factor for tourists who travel to dangerous places. This supports the evidence from the two models used to inform this part of framework: the model of backpacker travel (Richards and Wilson 2004a), which established the desire for experience and personal development as central for backpacker tourists, and the model of evolution of motives for high-risk consumption in relation to risk acculturation and experience (Celsi et al. 1993), in which transcendent experiences are considered a hedonistic motivation for the high-risk activity of sky diving.
The second influencing factor focuses on the use of travel to establish or maintain status and improve self-image. These influencing motivators to travel were drawn both from the data showing substantial evidence of image management and manipulation and from the motivational parts of the evolution of motives for high-risk consumption in relation to risk acculturation and experience (Celsi et al. 1993). The latter highlights the development of social status, identification with a new subculture, a desire for adventure and a new identity as normative motivational factors.
The search for an authentic travel experience by travelling independently and away from the tourism infrastructure is the third influencing factor. This underpins backpacker ideology (Welk 2004a) and is symptomatic of people’s desire to escape the McDonalidisation of tourism (Ritzer 1996). It was also found in the current study.
The fourth factor is the close relationship between travel to dangerous places and risk and danger. The focus is on danger tourists’ perception and awareness of danger and the methods used to accept the residual risks of travelling. The limited data on risk perception found that the tourists’ perception of the risks involved in travelling to dangerous places appeared to concentrate on the controllable and observable risks identified by Slovic (1987). That has informed this part of the framework, which focuses not on risk assessment or perception but on the acceptance of residual risk.
These four factors lead into the decision part of the framework, which identifies the moment when the tourist makes the decision to travel and accepts the risks involved in travelling to a
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dangerous destination. The data showed that the forum members used the modes of resolution of belief dilemmas (Abelson 1959) to justify the residual risks involved in travel and that they accepted those residual risks (Tolbert 2005). At this point the potential benefits of travel are weighed against the known risks and a decision to travel made. Once travel is underway, the participant must balance skill and risk to obtain a positive outcome to their travel experience. The results showed that calculated and controlled risks were taken and that decisions were based on skill and experience. This part of the framework was therefore informed both by the adventure experience paradigm (Martin and Priest 1986), where situational risk and personal competence are finely balanced to provide a positive outcome, and by later stages of the evolution of motives for high-risk consumption in relation to risk acculturation and experience (Celsi et al. 1993), which emphasises the use of prior experience to control and manage risks. Depending on the actual risk factors, as well as the forum members’ levels of skill and ability to work to the edge of but not beyond their abilities, a number of outcomes are possible. The research indicated that tourists were aware of the two potential negative outcomes: death and misadventure. These outcomes are drawn together in a tourism context in the adventure experience paradigm (Priest 1992) but are also listed as the possible outcomes of adventure by Anderson (1970) and Mortlock (1984). The research found strong evidence of many of the benefits that tourists obtain from travelling to dangerous places. This, together with the literature, was used to identify the five major potential benefits from travelling to dangerous places.
The first, self-actualisation, was evident within the data and might take the form of a rite of passage, learning experience or seminal peak or “it” moment (Maslow 1964; Redfoot 1984). These have been identified as positive benefits from high- risk activities (Celsi et al. 1993), within adventure culture (Anderson 1970) and also in backpacker tourists (Richards and Wilson 2004a).
The second and third benefits, improved self-esteem and the achievement and/or maintenance of status, were identified within the data, are evident within high-risk, backpacker and adventure culture and are also linked to both subcultures, and may be perceived as exceptionally valuable to tourists who subscribe to the sublime of dangerous places.
There was little evidence within the data to support the fourth benefit, flow, but the literature strongly supported its inclusion as the flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) has been identified in numerous studies of high-risk activities, including sky diving (Celsi et al. 1993), surfing (Stranger 1999), as a
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part of edgework (Lyng 1990) and within the model adventure commodification continuum (Varley 2006).
The final benefit is gaining a greater awareness of mortality. The data presented evidence of an interest in death. This was further supported by the literature, which found dark tourists who sought a similar benefit (Stone 2009), and the concept of spiritual enlightenment during near-death experiences (Kastenbaum 2000).
In many cases, the positive benefits gained by travelling to a dangerous place lead to a repeat travel experience. Participants search for stronger experiences both by taking greater risks and by seeking out destinations where their level of skill and control over the situation can be increasingly developed and challenged (Maslow 1964; Celsi et al. 1993; Ferrell 2005). They will also seek to maintain and develop their own status and image by making reference to their trips or by travelling to increasingly dangerous destinations in order to develop and challenge their existing skill levels. 8.13 Conclusion
This chapter has discussed the research findings. It has reviewed the data and identified four major themes. The results showed that, when travelling, forum members actively sought out experiences to provide them with seminal moments during their trip and that these, in turn, led to a satisfactory travel experience. It was also evident that travel to dangerous places provided an opportunity for individuals to gain or improve their status within the community and in their own self-image, and that forum members were actively purchasing a product that, they felt, embodied the characteristics they wished to emulate and be associated with. The discussion also presented evidence that forum members sought out what they considered to be authentic travel experiences, showing disdain for backpackers, tourists and the tourism infrastructure, but that, in reality, there was limited evidence to support the concept that travelling to dangerous places was anything more than a niche of backpacking, with which they share many of the same concepts and values. The data showed a mature approach to balancing skills and risk and it was apparent that, on the whole, tourists to dangerous places do not take unnecessary risks; their approach to risk taking is more calculated than was anticipated from the literature. While there was limited data on the methods of risk assessment employed, interestingly, there was evidence to show how the forum members justified the risks involved in travel to themselves and each other. The findings were considered within the context of the dark tourism literature identified in Chapter 1. Tourism to dangerous places might be described as one of the darkest forms of
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tourism but equally as pale tourism due to its lack of links with death and organised tourism infrastructures. The findings indicated that danger tourists were seeking an intense emotional experience and that they may be attempting to separate themselves from tourists through deliberately experiencing the unpleasant. The research also provided evidence that, if danger tourism is to be classified as a form of dark tourism, the timeframe between disaster and tourist visit is shortening. The study found that danger tourists shared many of the characteristics of other independent travellers including novelty seeking and a thirst for adventure. There was substantial evidence that the “bullshitting” (Mukerji 1978) used by hitchhikers had been adapted for use in the online environment and that this was used to establish road status within the virtual community. The findings concluded that danger tourists and backpackers shared three of the “badges of honour” (Bradt 1995) valued by backpackers: meeting different people, needing to feel free or independent and wanting to travel independently. The chapter also explored how the research findings have informed our knowledge of online communities confirming much of the previous knowledge about the behaviours of virtual communities and placing this within a synchronous text based environment. The final part of the chapter presented a conceptual framework drawing together the forum members’ approach to travelling to dangerous places. This framework sets out the factors which influence danger tourists more generally and demonstrates the point at which a danger tourist makes the decision to travel and identify the possible outcomes (negative, misadventure and positive) that might occur during travel. The conceptual framework shows the five positive benefits that might be obtained from travelling to dangerous places (flow, self-actualisation, improvement to self-image, the achievement or maintenance of self-image and familiarity with death) and depicts how these benefits might in turn feed into the influencing factors leading an individual to seek a repeat, and potentially more extreme and challenging, travel experience.
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9 Quality and evaluation of methodology
9.1 Introduction
This chapter establishes the quality of the research and issues of validity and reliability. The methods undertaken to conduct the research are then explored: the methodology used is evaluated and the choice of methodology, the influence of the forum, data collection and analysis are considered. The implications of the research choices on the research itself are explored. 9.2 Demonstrating quality
Qualitative data should be able to demonstrate its importance, contribution, conceptual and methodological rigour, clarity of writing and argumentation. Many of the criteria for assessing the reliability of qualitative data have been adapted from quantitative methods (Bryman 2008) to assess the external and internal reliability of qualitative research methods. In some of the criteria developed there is a focus on trustworthiness, rigour and quality as opposed to the actual terms validity and reliability (Golafshani 2003) but “quality” has also been used to encompass the plausibility, credibility and relevance of research findings (Seale 1999). LeCompte and Goetz (1982) established four main areas where reliability and validity could be established: external and internal reliability and internal and external validity.
External reliability is summarised as an assessment of the extent to which a study can be replicated, although this can be difficult to demonstrate within qualitative research as social settings adapt and change.
Internal reliability concentrates on the accuracy of the researcher’s observations and findings.
Internal validity strengthens the production of the qualitative research by assessing the match between the observations made and the concepts and theoretical ideas developed and applied.
External validity seeks to explore the generalisability of the findings.
A different set of criteria was developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985) and Guba and Lincoln (1994). Instead of focusing on reliability and validity, they examine two main areas: trustworthiness, which encompasses the credibility, transferability, dependability and conformability of the research; and authenticity. The criteria for authenticity are concerned
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with the wider implications of the research and include the fairness of the research representations and the ontological, educative and catalytic authenticity of the research. This research combines a number of different ways of data collection and analysis within an ethnographic qualitative framework and so the leading criteria against which this research should be considered is that written for ethnographic work. Within this framework the relevant criteria for the judging of reliability and validity of particular tools (case study, the online environment, content analysis) have been applied. Through this approach the credibility, generalisability, transferability and reliability of the research will be established. 9.2.1 Ethnography
Criteria for considering the quality of ethnographic research have been developed by several authors. In this research two versions of these criteria, those developed by LeComte and Goetz (1982) for reliability and those to assess the validity of ethnographic research (Hammersley 1992), have been applied. The relevance and generalisation of the ethnography have also been considered.
9.2.1.1 Reliability of ethnographic work
LeComte and Goetz (1982) defined reliability as the “extent to which studies can be replicated” (p.35) and divided it into two areas: internal reliability and external reliability. They highlight the difficulties of assessing the replicability of ethnographic work since “exact replications of research methods may fail to produce identical results” (p.35) because of the unique setting of each ethnography. The methods suggested for the assessment of internal reliability focus on multiple observers and inter-observer reliability, participant researchers and peer examination. Using participant researchers entails asking local informants to confirm what has been seen and recorded; it is similar in concept to the use of respondent validation within a case-study context (Yin 2003), which involves using key informants and participants to review the research findings. Respondent validation involves “taking the research findings back to the people you have studied to see whether they conform to their own ‘experiences’” (Silverman 1993, p.292). This was carried out twice during the research and demonstrates how the researcher interacted and discussed with the forum members the claims made.
1. A draft of the conceptual framework and initial findings were sent to Robert Young Pelton for comment during 2008. His response and comments were considered and incorporated into the research.
2. Six forum members were asked to comment on the research findings. Four of the forum members returned the findings and three of these provided detailed
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feedback. One respondent found it difficult to separate their own experiences from those which were representative of the forum but in general their comments supported the research findings. A summary of the respondents’ views can be found in the Appendix.
The criteria developed by LeCompte and Goetz (1982) to assess external reliability drill down into five separate areas which might influence the research outcomes: the researcher’s status and position; the choice of informants; the social situations and conditions; the analytical constructs and premises; and the methods of data collection and analysis. Within this research, reliability in these five areas can be established:
Researcher’s status and position: in the Black Flag Café the researcher’s status and position was clearly that of participant observer. Normally, the social status of an ethnographic researcher is relevant because it may influence the extent of their participation and therefore the type of data collected. In this ethnography, the data was collected without any direct physical contact with the participants, so it could be said that my social status and standing within the forum was of limited influence: another researcher could obtain exactly the same data set. They would not necessarily, however, have the knowledge and understanding required to interpret the data in context unless they participated in the forum for an extended period of time.
Choice of informants: in this research the choice of informant was more significant. With regards to data collection, however, it was only a limited factor as the two informants did not directly provide data but acted as gatekeepers for all (as opposed to a selection of) the data collected from the forum members.
Social situations and conditions: LeCompte and Goetz (1982) consider the informants’ role in passing data to the researcher important, since informants might choose which data and participants from a range of social settings the researcher has access to. As there was only one social setting (the Black Flag Café), there was no opportunity for dialogue and data to be hidden by the informants. The informants did not select participants for interviews or respondent validation and they did not try to influence the data interpretation but instead acted as facilitators and gatekeepers in the research process. Because the researcher personally collected the information, the informants did not have undue influence over the data as they did not have the opportunity selectively to pass appropriate or inappropriate information. The informants also participated in
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the forum themselves and so did not form an additional research-related presence or provide extra reports on the daily activities of the other forum members.
Analytical constructs and premises: this criterion ensures that future studies are replicable should the research be carried out again because the researcher has documented and defined their research choices. It checks that coding and analysis have been carried out within a clear framework, which might then be used by another researcher. Chapter 4 clearly lays out the coding schemes and research framework used during this research. The database and protocols in place also strengthen the replicability of the research framework. Operational procedures and checks embedded within the research protocol were developed early in this research and applied and adapted during data collection to “minimise the errors and biases in a study” (Yin 2003, p.37). The use of these protocols increased the reliability of the data and findings. Data can be traced through the case-study database to show the original source of the data, its collection method and that data-collection protocols have been followed. A case-study database is used to “ensure ready access to the case data at any point during the study” (Drake et al. 1998, p.283); one was developed for the systematic storage of the raw data, memos, matrixes and tabular materials which were created during data analysis. All data (both paper and electronic) were stored securely and indexed so they could be easily located and reviewed. Data have been indexed by research method, with crossover areas double referenced. Data-collection methods have been clearly documented to create a chain of evidence from the collection method through the raw data to the findings.
Methods of data collection and analysis: similarly to the issues identified under analytical constructs and premises, the exact methods of data collection and analysis used to carry out this research have been detailed and described, so there should be little difficulty in replicating the data-collection and analysis methods used. The BFC itself provided one source of data but the use of different data sets (images, text, personal profiles, etc.) avoided the isolated use of a single type of data, which might have been unrepresentative. Data have been collected rigorously and the sampling process was robust. The sample of threads analysed for this study was drawn from all threads on the Black Flag Café forum, so there was no bias in the selection of the texts considered for the initial sample (all threads as opposed to a sample of threads within the time
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frame were examined). The long time frame over which the data was collected (six months) allowed for all regular board members to have been active posters and to have participated in the original sample. Scotts pi (1955) was used to ensure that the initial sample selected was as reliable, representative and fair as possible; the sample used to represent the case (i.e., the threads used to represent the Black Flag Café) can accordingly be considered statistically valid and therefore representative and fair. The reliability of the content analysis is further explored in 9.2.4. Regarding the coding, the analytical categories used in the analysis “accurately describe meanings and uses in the chosen context” (Krippendorff 2004, p.319) and the categories used for content-analysis coding can be considered valid as they were developed from the literature and the knowledge gained through participant observation. Each category was clearly defined and documented and clear coding rules were developed and documented in the code book. Coding sheets were kept in the case-study database. As the sample being analysed became smaller, the depth of the analysis increased (the final sample to be qualitatively analysed examined every post made within the sample thread). This means that at this point of the research the full site content was analysed: data was not limited to the front pages of the forum; all clicks and pages were followed to their end point.
9.2.1.2 Assessment of ethnographic research
In his reformulation of the criteria for the assessment of ethnographic research, Hammersley (1992) focused on issues of validity and relevance rather than reliability. He defined validity within ethnographic research as the extent to which an account is valid, accurate and true. Three main areas are identified: the plausibility of the knowledge claimed; the amount and type of supporting evidence provided to demonstrate the credibility and acceptability of the research; and the type of claims made by the researcher. His focus is on how the evidence supplied by the researcher supports the plausibility and credibility of the claims made. In his earlier work Hammersley (1988) provided greater detail on how ethnographic evidence and claims can be assessed. He pointed out three main sources of potential error within descriptions of small-scale phenomena like danger tourism as researched on the Black Flag Café: reactivity; observation and the misinterpretation of data; and the researcher and the circumstances during which the research was carried out. These are considered below:
Reactivity: reactivity concerns the participants acting for the researcher and the researcher’s impact on the research setting. In this research, there was no formal research announcement, so there was only a limited likelihood of the forum
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members acting for the researcher. They were unaware of when and how the data collection was undertaken, which forum members or even which areas of the forum were involved in the research. While some forum members might engage on a more general level with online persona-image management, it is difficult to maintain this over a period of time and through face-to-face meetings, so this is not considered a threat to the overall data findings. Although the research was overt, my interaction with the board members was only through the medium of the Black Flag Café and its associated face-to-face meetings, so my age, gender and social class were unlikely to have a significant impact on the daily activities on the forum, where I was only one of many people participating. I had a low profile on the forum and early in the research process I developed, with Kurt, an online behaviour protocol. This provided me with guidelines on acceptable behaviour within the forum and focused on replicating netiquette appropriate to the BFC. It limited the type and nature of the posts I could make on the forum (specifically that they should be non-inflammatory) and also ensured that the online persona I presented to the forum members was non- confrontational and so less likely to provoke either negative or positive reactions.
The misinterpretation of observed behaviour: the second source of potential errors is that of observation and the misinterpretation of observed behaviour. In this research, the likelihood of such misinterpretation was minimised by the prolonged period of participant observation that formed an extensive part of this research. Participant observation allowed me to gain a detailed understanding of the dynamics of the forum and to understand the difference between newbie, joking, serious and trolling posts. I also developed knowledge of the rhythm of the forum (some topics are regularly repeated, although sometimes in different formats) and through this I was able to gauge the importance of topics and interpret posters’ comments in context.
Researcher and the circumstances during which the research was carried out: this third area considers the accuracy of the data used (transcripts, documents and informants) and the likelihood of researcher bias. The data used for this research can be described as accurate as it is taken directly from the forum in its entirety rather than collected and transcribed from an interview or developed from field notes based on observations or informants’ views. It is felt that the data presented within the chapters has been accurately selected and is relevant to the statements it supports; data can be traced using the chain of evidence and case-
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study database. Biases and the possibility of manipulating events during the participant-observation phase of the ethnography were minimised by the behaviour protocol, which emphasised lurking as opposed to posting within the forum. The behaviour guidelines described previously show an awareness of the potential influence I could have had on the research and how this was limited. Chapter 3 explored the issues around the researcher “going native” and my own objectivity.
In addition to the three listed criteria, Hammersley (1988) mentions two other methods to check the validity of the research findings. First he examines the claims made by the researcher and how they are supported by both the evidence provided and through links to references or published sources. The claims made within this research are supported by corresponding evidence from the data collected and analysed during the research. Findings have been interpreted using academic sources which relate to the situation being described. Descriptions are detailed and use excerpts from the forum and descriptions of forum activity to provide supporting evidence relating to the claims made. Secondly, Hammersley proposes the triangulation of different data sources to confirm findings. Baym (2006) suggests using “multiple forms of online discourse” (p.84) to collect and analyse data. The multiple data sets produced and used in this research show how the raw online data from one data source has been manipulated to provide data sets (images, text, statistics) which, once analysed and triangulated together, can be used to build a stronger argument adding validity to the data, ensuring that the findings are as representative as possible (Bryman 1992).
9.2.1.3 Relevance of the ethnography
The importance of the topic and its contribution to existing knowledge are the two criteria provided by Hammersley (1988) to assess the relevance and practical value to practitioners of an ethnography. Similar criteria are proposed by Brewer (2000), who considers relevance and ethnography’s potential uses and practical value to society through its contribution to policy research and or decision making as important.
Importance: Hammersley states that the “research topic must relate (however remotely) to an issue of public importance” (p.111). While it may be difficult to argue that tourism to dangerous places and an online forum are of public importance, this research is of public interest as articles about tourism to dangerous places feature regularly in the press.
Contribution and practical value: research can be considered to have made a contribution through theory building, added to the existing literature, providing a
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picture of modern society, plugging a gap in current knowledge and by challenging and reformulating ideas which were previously taken to be facts. It might also inform policy decisions but is more likely to have value to the media that publishes articles on tourists who travel to dangerous places. Chapter 9 further explores the contribution to knowledge.
9.2.1.4 Generalisation of ethnography
Generalisability considers the extent to which the research findings can be applied to the general population. Hammersley (1988) identified two types of generalisation: empirical generalisation and theoretical inference.
Empirical generalisation: this can be demonstrated by showing the similarities of the case to other cases in the same finite population (Hammersley 1988), with the findings from one case aggregated and applied to other similar events and settings from a specific time period. The main difficulty with applying Hammersley’s criterion for empirical generalisation to this research is the need to identify the finite population of danger tourists and, within this, the representativeness of the case or cases studied. It is hard to generalise all of the findings from this research in this manner as neither the finite population of danger tourists nor a specific time frame of events can be applied to the wider population.
Theoretical inference: this allows for conclusions about one or more social scientific theory to be drawn from the features of the local events observed and described within the text (Hammersley 1992), but it should be noted that the theories developed through a single ethnography are unlikely to be considered universal laws of social behaviour and so claims of this nature can be controversial.
Case studies are not always considered generalisable as it is difficult to find other case studies where the exact conditions of the original case study are replicated (Bryman 2008). Rowley (2002) argues that some case studies may be best accepted as insights allowing readers to make their own interpretation, since no case study is wholly representative of the phenomenon it studies. An alternative view of generalisation is provided by Williams (2000), who offers moderatum generalisations as a method of generalising from interpretative work. This allows the findings from the case studied to be viewed as providing “instances of a broader recognisable set of features” (p.215). Detailed thick descriptions of phenomena can be used to paint a picture of society and, from this, inferences about the wider society’s
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characteristics can be made. This means that a carefully selected single case can be considered representative of the wider population if a rigorous approach is used. Even if the context studied does not conform in all ways to an ideal type, it is likely that the many of the features identified will resemble the ideal types described. By using moderatum generalisations, the findings from the Black Flag Café can be applied to other similar groups. The detailed study of the online environment and its people has provided an insight into their society and, from these, inferences about the behaviour and motivations of people who post on the BFC and who travel to dangerous places, or who undertake dangerous activities, can be gained. Although this study is itself a single case, the approach has been rigorous and within the case study different cases (individuals) have been studied, so the single case-study approach offers an insight into the wider population of people who travel to dangerous places. Ideal types have been developed and these could be applied to the wider population of danger tourists. Generalisations about the physical environment, in this case an online forum, may also be considered to offer generalisability to other similar physical environments. The physical environments of online forums are very similar as most run on the same software used by the Black Flag Café. This research provides a detailed description of an online society which focuses on high-risk activities and so it may be considered to be representative of other similar online forums (for example, those forums based around sky diving, adventure motorbike riding, etc.) some of which operate in a way similar to the Black Flag Café. 9.2.2 Case study
When assessing the rigour of a case study, much of the emphasis is on the quality of the research design. Yin (2003) identifies four criteria which can be used to test the quality of a social science-based case study. Construct validity establishes that the correct operational procedures have been applied to the use of different data sets and the collection and analysis of the data. These have been explored in Chapter 4. Internal validity is used to investigate how causal relationships have been developed. It is only employed during explanatory and causal case studies and is not, therefore, considered relevant to this research. External validity “establishes the domain to which a study’s findings can be generalized” (p.34) and has been discussed in 9.2.1.1. Reliability demonstrates that the case study can be replicated; section 9.2.1.4 explored this further. 9.2.3 Online environment
Baym (2009) introduced the question of quality within all types of Internet research by highlighting the fact that the “internet presents novel challenges to qualitative researchers” (p.173). She recommends that a practical approach be taken in the application of quality
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standards. The criteria she developed in 2006 are listed as the main method for assessing and demonstrating quality in Internet research and still appear to be the principal criteria used by researchers. Baym identified six indicators of quality. Four of these (rigour in data collection and the extent, depth and time period from which data has been collected; multiple strategie0s to examine the phenomena of interest and multiple forms of online discourse; that claims are grounded in discussions with the users; and the reflexivity of the researcher) have been explored previously. Two criteria remain:
Grounded in existing theory and research, making use of existing theories which relate to Internet research and also existing theories which are not Internet related: this work is grounded in existing theories. As explained earlier, data has been analysed using a range of theories identified during the literature review and data-analysis phase relating to self-actualisation, obtaining status and improving self-image, the search for authentic travel experiences and risk taking. Previous research on complementary virtual-related areas, including MUDs, chat, VLEs and blogs, has been used: Burnett and Buerkle (2004), Suler (2004), Stommel (2007) and Wang et al. (2008), for example. Findings have built on existing offline models and the conceptual framework (Figure 8.1) produced from the research can be applied to the offline environment. The research has also adapted a range of data-collection techniques (used by both traditional and online researchers) for its use.
The interweaving of online and offline experiences: the sixth criterion involves placing the online research in the offline environment and awareness of how offline and online behaviours permeate and influence each other. This research has used an online environment to study offline behaviour and so combines both online and offline behaviours in its research findings.
The work by Baym (2006; 2009) does not address all the reliability and validity concerns about researching over the Internet. Mann and Stewart (2000) raise the issue that “the online researcher may not even be able to verify the identify of the participants – that they really are who they say they are” (p.124). While there is no guarantee that a forum member is who they say they are, several methods have been used to validate BFC forum members. The prolonged period of participant observation and my attendance at several BFC meets has increased the reliability surrounding the identity of forum members. It was possible to piece together accurate information about individuals from their posts. At face-to-face meetings (which do validate personas) other forum members (who are not present) are often discussed and other BFC meets are described. Through these discussions it was possible to confirm
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forum members’ locations and to gain an insight (although second hand) into their lives and personalities. A number of forum members post their travel experiences to live blogs or have their own websites, MySpace and Facebook pages which reflect their real names, locations and identities; many individuals could be tracked and validated in this way. Since 2008 the forum has also had an area specifically for forum members to upload photographs from their trips; this provided an additional way to check forum members’ travel activities and personas as, from the photographs, the age and gender of the forum member and the locations they have travelled to are often clear. Through word of mouth, photos, blogs and other online media it has been possible to validate many of the forum members who state they travel to, or work in, dangerous places. This allowed for individuals’ histories and stories to be confirmed. This was a new method of validating participants and it strengthened the reliability of the data by affirming that the online personas of many of the forum members were true to their offline selves. A concern which might impact on the earlier discussion about the generalisability of the research (9.2.1.4) is highlighted by Smith and Leigh (1997), who stated that data obtained via the Internet cannot be considered generalisable to the wider population as the population will be “computer-literate people who have some self-interest in participating” (p.499). Forum members are self selecting and whilst those in this research did not directly choose to participate in the research they did take the decision to participate in an online forum about dangerous places. It is very possible that a number of people, who choose not to post on the Black Flag Café forum, undertake tourism to dangerous places although the wider population is not known. The Black Flag Café user statistics show heavy use (approx 80% of board members) by native English speakers (Google Analytics 2008) and the use of the English language on the board may prevent some danger tourists from participating. Carrying out the research online may have meant that the population studied may be of a more IT literate and socially wealthy profile than other parts of the population (Brewer et al. 2006). In addition, tourists in some areas of the world may not be able to access the Internet at all or the BFC site in particular. This might be due to security issues, because they are working in locations where access to the Internet is limited (Yemen, Pakistan, etc.) or because they live or work in areas where the forum has been banned by firewalls due to its adult content (China). 9.2.4 Content analysis
9.2.4.1 Reliability
Reliability within content analysis depends on accurate coding of the data. The coding and coding scheme can be validated by a method which aims to show high data inter-coder
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reliability. Relevant threats to the reliability of content-analysis coding include a poorly developed and executed coding scheme and coder fatigue (Neuendorf 2002). I was the main coder participating in this research but recruited a second coder to assess the reliability of the coding. He was provided with a blind sample of the coded materials, the code book and the coding record sheets. After some dual coding for training purposes, he coded a random sample (38%) of the threads as a double-blind test. This made possible two coding-reliability calculations. Scott’s pi uses joint distribution over two coders (or in this case two sets of coding undertaken by one person) and takes into account both the number of categories and also how the categories are used by the coders: 0.00 indicates chance agreement while 1.00 indicates perfect agreement (Craig 1981). This measure was applied to the relevance-sample coding which was used to establish the initial sample group. Results showed a 0.74 agreement on the sample coding using Scott’s pi. Cohen's kappa is an extension to Scott's pi, in that it has the same basis, but gives improved accuracy by taking into account the differences in coders' distributions (Neuendorf 2002). Both calculations (found in Appendix 11.2) demonstrate if agreement has been reached during the coding. Cohen’s kappa was used to establish the reliability of the themed content- analysis coding that was carried out on the sample group. The kappa results showed a 0.76 agreement on the content analysis, which compares favourably with the 0.74 agreement using Scott's pi. This shows substantial agreement within the coding as it was within the range of 0.61–0.80 (Stemler 2001) and demonstrates that the coding scheme and its implementation can be considered reliable.
9.2.4.2 Validity
Krippendorff (2004) states that all content analysis should be validated in principle to ensure that the findings are not backed only by the authority of the researcher. Within content analysis, validity is described as the quality of the research, which leads the reader to consider the findings and to “accept them as true, as speaking about the real world of people, phenomena, events, experiences and actions” (Krippendorff 2004, p.313). In this research, three distinctions of validity are considered: face validity, social validity and empirical validity. Social validity assesses the extent to which the research is socially valuable. It has been explored in section 9.2.1.3. Empirical validity concerns the way the content analysis was undertaken and was considered in section 9.2.4. Face validity is “the extent to which a measure ‘on the face of things’ seems to tap the desired concept” (Neuendorf 2002, p.115) and is an individual reader’s judgement and acceptance of the research findings because they are, or appear at the time to be, obvious or common truths. Face validity is often used in content analysis as it takes a snapshot of a particular time and place by interpreting texts,
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images and a shared culture, “which is difficult to measure, but often highly reliable at a particular time” (Krippendorff 2004, p.314). It is hoped that the findings presented in this research are considered by the reader to be rooted in common sense and present common truths. To conclude, the four areas in which the quality of this research can be assessed are related to the research techniques used to collect, analyse and interpret the data. To return to the criteria set out by LeCompte and Goetz (1982), the work can be described as demonstrating external and internal reliability because the content-analysis code book and coding can be considered reliable and replicable, there were protocols in place for the participant observation and for the collection of data, and the case-study database provides a clear link from the raw data to the data findings. These protocols also limited the reactivity of the forum members and the researcher’s influence in the field. In addition, the research findings were confirmed by two different types of respondent validation and steps were taken to limit informant bias and influence on data collection and interpretation. The research also demonstrates validity as the findings were produced through the use of multiple data sets and the interpretation supported by a prolonged period of acceptance in the field. Findings are also supported by theoretical ideas. The data findings might be considered generalisable to the wider community of danger tourists and people who work in dangerous places, and they can also be applied to high-risk-taking groups and are relevant to both the forum members and the general public. 9.3 Evaluation of the practical considerations of the research
9.3.1 Choice of research method
One of the main challenges in this research was to find a way to carry it out without visiting a dangerous country. The proposed research methods changed a number of times, often entailing changes in the underlying approach of the research. There were also more fundamental changes: at one point the focus changed from quantitative to qualitative which, in turn, led to corresponding changes in the paradigm, epistemological and methodological approach employed. At the start of the process, and still now, Internet research was a new and developing field of investigation; the absence of clear worked examples on which to base the analysis made designing the methodology challenging. The different types of data collected and the various methods used to analyse the data required the adaptation of existing on- and offline methods. Overall, the combination of different ways of collecting and analysing the data worked well, with the different levels of analysis feeding into each other.
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The wide approach of this research, particularly the use of different data sets, allowed for triangulation of the data. Because similar data and conclusions were evident from different data sets, it was possible to confirm the research findings. This could then be fed into the ethnographic analysis, making the ethnography more robust and reliable. Kozinets (2000) defines a pure netnography as one in which there are “no important in person elements” (p.67). While this might be true in a literal sense, it implies a method which requires little personal communication, whereas in a virtual ethnography the researcher sometimes has to spend more time interacting with participants: they would have no visible presence if they were not online (in particular in an asynchronous forum). Virtual ethnography might be seen as an easy option requiring no fieldwork but integrating with an online community can be a lengthy process, especially in a closed community like the BFC. A virtual ethnography may, in fact, require more effort as the researcher is required to identify and implement different ways to meet members of the online community, gain their trust and integrate themselves. Early in the research it was important to keep my online presence sufficiently in the background to prevent influencing the forum data and the existing relationships between the forum members but I also had to ensure that I was visible enough to build trust and relationships within the forum. Sharing information with the forum members and undertaking status-gaining activities, for example establishing my own travel credentials was important in gaining acceptance into the community. Gaining acceptance in a closed forum like the BFC was potentially very difficult as initially there were no face-to-face opportunities for integration; this phase of the research framework was, however, accomplished without mishap, possibly because of the protracted and gradual approach. Over a period of time, I managed to integrate myself in the forum and become an accepted member of the community able to interact with forum members at different levels, both publicly on the forum and in chat and privately through private messages and e-mails. This involved an extensive amount of work. In order to become known to a large number of the forum participants I had to log on to the forum at different times of day, I also spent time waiting in the synchronous chat room for people to talk to and ensured that this covered a range of time zones and days of the week. Without a long period of participant observation, a researcher might have collected, chopped and presented data out of context, characterising the subjects unfairly and subjectively. While this might have been easier it is not good practice; cutting down on the participant-observation phase of a virtual ethnography risks serious distortion of the data. I also had to dedicate significant amounts of time, to managing the two informants (RYP and Kurt). RYP was particularly demanding at the start of the research when he tried to guide and influence the direction of the research and also when he was given, as a form of
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respondent validation, the opportunity to comment on the initial findings which were not as he hoped. When working with Kurt it was important to be flexible around the time and method of contact. A mutual approach towards protecting the forum members was developed and this in turn meant that over time Kurt became increasingly involved and supportive of the research. 9.3.2 Working with the forum
The forum itself had an impact on the research, in that the BFC statistics are not always accurate and the data can also be unduly influenced by the moderators and forum members themselves. Details of posters’ joining dates and the number of posts they have made are sometimes misleading. Posters leave and rejoin the forum with another username: the poster Dawn, for example, has joined the forum on three separate occasions, once as Dawn, again as NUNYABIZNACK and most recently as hatcher1. Another example involves the moderator coldharvest, who deleted the entire history and account for the poster Lonelymoon. It was only after intervention by Kurt that the username was reactivated but the date shown as a joining date and number of posts do not truly reflect the user’s contribution to the forum between 2003 and 2009. For this reason, poster statistics need to be interpreted in context and the history of the board, and the history of individual forum members taken into consideration. The fact that the forum archive contains all the posts used in the research (although avatars, signature, etc., may have changed) provided an additional mechanism to ensure reliability, giving no opportunity for the data to be corrupted or misquoted. While it is possible to identify and view online the original thread which formed part of the data set and also to browse the history of individual poster’s threads and posts to identify themes and key events in their BFC history, the forum does not keep any record of changes to usernames, avatars, signatures and posters’ personal information. Even so, the BFC’s own online archive was particularly useful during the data analysis for checking quotations and posters’ information but the forum’s search engine was damaged during an upgrade and did not work for over 18 months. This had a particular impact on the KWIC data as each thread had to be located manually, by date, as opposed to using the search engine to find a thread by its title or poster. Virtual environments are often transient, with participants joining and leaving the community, and there can be little continuity over a long period of time. For this reason, it can be hard to gain a detailed and in-depth picture of particular individuals (unless forum membership is stable throughout the research period); research can therefore be restricted to a superficial rather than deep level, or parts of the research may be deeper than others. This research focused on the core population of the BFC and did not follow the short-term
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members who made interesting posts about their plans to travel to dangerous places and then left the board soon after joining. Even within the core population of the BFC it could also be difficult to keep track of individual posters who changed their usernames or used several different ones (for example, lerenaissanceman and therenaissanceman are the same person) and who occasionally shared or subverted each other’s avatars (examples in Figure 9.1 and Figure 9.2). Extra attention had to be paid when reporting the data to ensure that comments were attributed to the correct poster.
Figure 9.1 Avatars: Kurt and Bizzaro Kurt
Figure 9.2 Avatars: Penta and Jefe
Because this research is computer-based, a number of technical issues affected the way the research could be carried out and the limitations of the data obtained. All the coding and data analysis was initially done by hand, making it easier both to consider the data in the context of other posters’ comments and to capture the data from the online environment. This limited the likelihood of analysis being influenced by personal feelings about the posters or threads but meant that the data was not very portable. An electronic method of analysis might have been useful in this respect if a way to input the data into a qualitative analysis software tool had been found. While the fact that the data was already in an electronic text format meant that there was no need to transcribe it and it was easily portable into other programs (wordle, textstat), it did mean that whenever the data was moved from one electronic format to another it always needed clearing of superfluous data such as the dates posts were made, usernames, avatars and users’ statistics. There was no way to lift only the forum members’ posts from the live website or collected data without the superfluous data, URLs, disclaimers, etc. In addition the use of an electronic method or computer programme
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to analyse the data may have meant that posts made to flame other posters or as deliberate jokes were taken out of context and used as data which was representative of the forum. Analysis by hand was more natural and allowed for the context and knowledge gained from the participant observation of the forum to be taken in to account during the analysis phase. This way posts made by regular forum members were used in the data and the data set was not distorted by new posters and ongoing flame wars. Since the research methods were so new, there was also, and remains, a lack of clear ethical precedents. Significant time was required to investigate possible ethical issues by considering both online and offline ethical dilemmas and precedents and to explain each issue to Kurt and obtain his agreement. The forum provided a source of material in which participants behaved naturally (within the constraints they imposed on themselves through their own online persona management) and, since the data was not obtained by interview, it is a direct representation of the posters’ own comments and views. Research participants were able to raise questions and issues of particular interest to themselves and the data was not led or directed in any way. The BFC therefore provided a rich source of data directly from the participants in a natural context. 9.3.3 Data collection
As mentioned earlier (4.5), attempts were made to use spiders and bots to collect the data from the forum electronically. A number of pilot projects involving different data-collection methods were tried out and discarded. Initially, the site was mirrored to provide a directly accessible copy of the forum (Chau and Xu 2007). The resulting data was, however, too large to access from one server: although the data had been collected, it could not be accessed or analysed. An attempt was made to collect data using web crawlers (Wang et al. 2008) but the parameters of the research did not allow for the selective data collection required by this method as the key words used by the web crawlers were too broad to allow for meaningful data collection. After these unsuccessful trials, data was collected and catalogued manually. This was reliable but it was detailed and time-consuming work. The data was also coded manually and these manual methods took longer than anticipated. As each data set fed into the next level of analysis it was difficult to speed up the process and so data analysis took longer than anticipated. This in turn impacted on other data analysis and so adaptations in the proposed time line had to be made to the research plan. An alternative method of data collection and coding would have made it easier to obtain data from the forum but none was available at the time and there has been little development of tools that can be used to research forums since then.
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The sampling plan created required identification of each thread by its initial post. This entailed examining all 3701 threads on the forum during the sample period for content and relevance and again this was done manually. As anticipated by Weare and Lin (2000), the sample criteria were on occasion difficult to apply because, by their nature, online threads can and often do wander into other topics. The initial subject did not always accurately reflect the thread’s content. This meant that several threads where content might have been relevant to the research could not be included in the sampling group without a change to the sample group criteria because the initial topic did not fall within the sample boundaries. This was where the multiple methods of data collection were critical in ensuring that all relevant data was collected from the forum: the data from these threads did appear within the KWIC data and thereby contributed to the ethnography through an alternate data-collection method. 9.3.4 Data analysis
There was a lot of data to be read and analysed (both during participant observation and data analysis), covering a wide range of topics, by no means all relevant to the research. The useful data from the Black Flag Café was authentic and unsullied by the researcher’s own perspective as there was no need to write down, annotate or note fieldwork and subjects’ behaviour. Instead, the textual data was ready for collection and analysis. In short, the forum contains a large amount of data on a wide range of topics, interspersed within which is information about people who travel to dangerous places. The challenge was to separate the worthwhile data from that which was superfluous to this research. The various levels of research provided a structured format in which to investigate the forum and analyse the different levels of information contained within it. Despite the online and technical nature of the research, as mentioned earlier, much of the analysis was carried out manually since the online environment did not naturally lend itself to electronic analysis. When comparing the methods and research framework used to analyse the BFC forum with analysis of other forums (Uca 2004; Stommel 2007; Wang et al. 2008; Markham and Baym 2009), this reliance on manual methods to analyse an online electronic environment does not appear unusual. There are limitations on what can currently be done with data produced online unless the research aims are particularly narrow. Considering each level of analysis in turn:
Forum-level analysis identified the hot posts and hot posters in the forum. It also provided an overview of the sub-forums within the Black Flag Café. Previous research had not detailed the exact methods used for forum-level research, so the methods used to identify hot posts and posters for this research were developed without guidance. The coding of forum-level content and the
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identification of hot posters and threads went well and the results proved useful in identifying which forum members are influential. The forum-level analysis also detailed forum-level activity such as the number of posts, the most popular sub- forums and the most viewed threads. Reviewing the hot posts and poster data it becomes evident that this type of analysis is purely quantitative and fails to take into account the context of the data. As is natural in conversation, some posters were more vocal and present than others and the analysis shows them as frequent posters on the board even though they did not always make useful contributions to discussions. The results of the hot posts were therefore not necessarily representative of the most popular threads and posters. For example, one very popular thread on the board is Jokes, which was started by the poster Moosehead. The thread, which has been running since 2005, has 386 replies and 81,835 views but is the only very popular thread Moosehead has ever started. The hot posts and hot poster data need to be interpreted in the wider context of the forum, another example of the fundamental importance of the period of participant observation in the field.
Thread-level analysis provided a detailed breakdown of the forum’s content. It identified the travel-related content of the forum and also produced a detailed analysis of the content of individual threads. Thread-level analysis was not always easy. First, as pointed out above, the fact that threads morph from one topic to another meant that they were difficult to categorise and code, so that, even though the content analysis only considered the initial post in each thread, the thread itself might cover several different topics of interest to the researcher. Secondly, in many cases much of the content of the thread was irrelevant to the research. Some threads cross-reference previous threads, or other poster and BFC folklore; the extensive participant-observation phase again proved its value as I was able to follow the flow of threads across the boards and between posters (flame wars erupting between the same posters across several threads and/or ongoing discussions), which would not have been possible if I was not fully aware of the individual posters and history of the threads. After the trial and subsequent adaptations, the coding framework was fit for purpose but the manual coding and then inputting of data to create data sets was time consuming.
Forum member-level analysis provided information about the posters. The participant observation and content analysis of individual threads set out to
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discern forum members’ individual narratives and also their social and demographic information. From this data it was possible to establish forum member profiles and develop the typology of forum members (Figure 6.2). The poster-level analysis sought to capture a range of social and demographic data including age, gender and location but was not particularly successful. The nature of online forums, in which location, gender and age can be changed or in some cases not disclosed at all, and the fact that this data was not always available or was blatantly fictional (for example locations of posters include: “On a junket”, “Just Passin’ Through”, “Virginia – Indonesia - Iraq – Stabbing Some Fool in the Mother-Fucking Face Son!”) meant that the analysis of this poster- level data was not as useful as it might have been, so the results provide only indicative information. As the data was insufficient to provide more than a snapshot of the forum population and reliability could not be fully established, this data and any subsequent findings cannot be generalised upwards to the wider population.
In this research it was not always possible to obtain all the data required to research the topic of danger tourism from the online forum. As a participant observer, the researcher in a virtual ethnography is not in a position to ask questions and lead conversations towards a particular topic without influencing the data and research field; the data depends on the topics posted by other forum members, which may not always be relevant to the research. It therefore follows that the only data which can be collected and analysed is that which occurs naturally on the forum. While I could have posted a series of specific threads asking questions, it would have changed the nature of my role within the forum: I would no longer have been a participant observer but would have been doing something similar to online e-mail interviews. Forum members would have been more actively aware of the research and probably more reactive, and the data collected would have been less honest and more staged for the research topic. In addition, I had not obtained permission to carry out this type of activity within the forum and I think it would have been very badly received by the forum members. Another frustrating element emerged when Flaggers made an interesting comment in one of their posts but there was no mechanism within the research context to follow this up and ask for more information without taking the discussion offline into private messages. If I had taken this approach, continual private messages to forum members asking them about their posts might have led them into more active online persona management. It would also have raised the profile of the research, with potentially detrimental effects. It might also have been seen by the forum
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members as annoying, intrusive and an invasion of privacy and thereby damaged my relationship with other forum members. The multimedia nature of the BFC sometimes produced extra problems. Images, video clips and other web pages linked to the forum from other websites were not always current or valid pathways. Forum members did not always identify when they were quoting a particular website or news story and quotations from other websites appeared in the data set as a comment written by a BFC poster, so this had to be checked before data could be used. Online forums do not lend themselves to long, detailed posts. The Internet allows us to “observe and analyse actual behaviour from its electronic traces“ (Rasmussen 2008, p.89), but electronic communication can be brief and fragmented, without formal grammatical and spelling conventions, and make use of a variety of keying and textual presentation styles (Hiller 2004). In general, participants tend to write short, pithy comments and not long reflective contributions. This meant that the in-depth data which would normally be present in qualitative interviews with the opportunity to probe and question subjects was not present. The quotations available to support the qualitative data analysis were short and often not very detailed. This might be perceived as a major flaw in the use of content analysis in an online forum but the drawback was offset by being combined with other methods, such as participant observation, and additional data sets. Within crossover texts like the BFC, it is generally recommended that the original text is preserved to protect the quality of the original data. In order to maintain the flavour of the ethnography within this research, the data, including usernames, signatures and forum members’ comments, are presented as originally posted on the Internet. Therefore in this research grammatical errors have not been corrected and the original spellings and punctuation have been retained. In addition to the use of jargon, Internet and BFC terminology, addressed by the provision of a glossary, there were spelling and grammatical errors that might have made the data seem incoherent to readers who were not accustomed to reading forums and/or the BFC. 9.4 Implications of the methodology on the research
9.4.1 Use of the forum
The use of the Black Flag Café forum as the locus of this research was a suitable solution to the problem of finding a way to investigate and take the research topic forward without the need to travel to dangerous places. Given the nature of the topic and the associated security constraints of visiting dangerous places to interview subjects, there is no safe way of identifying and working with danger tourists in the field without travelling to a dangerous place. The use of an online environment to research the target population is a valid and
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practical choice and the Black Flag Café forum remains the only forum dedicated to travelling to dangerous places of an analysable size. The move to the study of the BFC virtual community did, however, change the nature of the research, both its focus, which became much more centred on the Black Flag Café forum, and also the way the research was carried out. The interview format of the original research plans would have allowed for more specific research aims and objectives to be answered. Instead, a broader picture of the phenomenon and some of its participants has been developed. The methods used to investigate the forum required adaptation over the research period as the difficulties of working online, the constraints of a virtual ethnography and analysing an online forum had not been fully appreciated during the planning stage because the literature available at the time focused on the outcomes and possibilities of virtual work rather than its limitations. The data collection and analysis methods I used all relied on the BFC as the data source. Combining the BFC data with extended interviews might have offered a more detailed insight into individual posters’ approaches to travelling to dangerous places but, as I discovered during the respondent validation, individual posters appeared to be unable to view their individual journeys objectively or dispassionately; the results of any such interviews might well have turned out to be personally biased, depending on who was available, accessible and willing to be interviewed. Another way forward with the potential to improve the data and produce more refined findings might have been to combine the BFC data with data from other online sources, such as particular posters’ blogs, to investigate their travel experiences in more detail. I found no way to explore the multimedia links within the forum data (images, links to other websites, blogs, etc.). Analysing such links might have provided an additional source of data on the interests of forum members but might not necessarily have contributed much towards answering the research questions. It is clear from a brief analysis of forum members’ signatures that many have personal blogs and/or websites that they like to advertise on the forum; analysis of these might be an interesting additional source of data on the forum members. Apart from where it had a direct impact on the research, I did not explore the frequent use of images by forum members to troll, make political statements and amuse other forum members. Analysis of these images might have proved a useful data set or, equally, have been a waste of resource; it could also have provided yet another set of data findings that neither reflected nor contributed to the research questions.
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9.4.2 Research framework
The original research framework included e-mail interviews. I had designed a set of questions to ask the posters to investigate their approach and interest in travelling to dangerous places in more detail. I approached posters through private messages asking them if they would be prepared to complete an e-mail interview. While I had a number of positive responses from people who were keen to participate in the research, only one of these interviews came to fruition. Hine (2000) stated that e-mail interviews are difficult to carry out because it is hard to establish rapport with the subjects; this shortage of respondents could possibly have been anticipated in the context of a forum but this was not necessarily the problem with the Black Flag Café. Participation in a forum is seen by forum members as a social activity they undertake willingly; in comparison, more time and effort is required by the subject to respond to specific queries by e-mail, which may account for subjects’ initial willingness to participate but failure to follow through with the interview itself. A method of data presentation and analysis which was discarded during the research process was the use of the textual analysis software, Wordle (Feinberg 2008). I originally intended to use this alongside the analysis of individual threads, creating word clouds (like Figure 4.12 and Figure 4.13) to display the key aspects of the threads visually. However, before it could be input in to the software, the text content of each thread had to be cleaned of irrelevant phrases and unoriginal content (for example, stories pasted into the forum from news sites like the BBC, usernames) and then the remaining data input manually into the software. The results from the word cloud were not sufficiently useful to make this process worthwhile and so only five key threads were analysed this way. Figure 4.12 and Figure 4.13 display two of these threads, the other three can be found in Appendix 11.3. Another area of the research where the methods used did not go according to plan was the Key Word in Context data. First, its collection proved difficult: while there are many different types of software available to analyse KWIC data, most of these require the data to be input manually into the engine. As this was not possible with the large amount of data I wished to analyse, I located a textual analysis programme which could analyse live websites, but it worked from individual URLs and provided no method to select specific data for analysis. The data produced (list of word frequencies and lists of words in context) was very varied in quality and content. The word frequency lists contained generic words such as and, it, the, etc., and the software also pulled each URL and disclaimer, which skewed the data towards the words and names (Robert Young Pelton, Ingle, Insurance, responsibility, etc.) that appeared in the disclaimer. These were impossible to eliminate, making these lists redundant. The lists of key words shown in context were more useful but contained a significant amount of data which had been lifted by the textual analysis programme and was
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displayed out of context. Because of the time spent during participant observation and my knowledge of the forum, I was able to clean this data, thus avoiding use of the data out of context, but there was considerable investment in time for little return as the final data set was similar in content to the qualitative textual analysis. As a result, the Key Word in Context data, an example of which is shown in Figure 4.11, proved more useful as a source of qualitative statements. 9.4.3 Virtual ethnography
Because the data set within this virtual ethnography draws only on the BFC, the research was restricted to danger tourists who were members of the virtual community. While the BFC provided sufficient data to meet the research objectives, it was often difficult to narrow the research down to a particular topic without guiding or influencing the community itself. Doing this might, in turn, compromise the validity of the data by making the participants more reactive. It is possible that a virtual ethnography is best combined with alternative offline data sets. A virtual ethnography relying only on online data, without further research, has no way of knowing about the subjects’ offline behaviour or how their online and offline behaviours mirror each other. While alternative online sources (interviews, blogs, etc.) could be used to verify their behaviour, there is no guarantee that these would be any more authentic and not an elaborately staged online persona. Being able to interview face-to-face might provide information on the subjects’ real lives, and tracing a forum member’s online posts and then physically meeting them might be a way to check that on- and offline behaviour matched, but might be difficult to orchestrate. There is limited acknowledgement, in particular when the methodology was established back in 2007, that this is one of the constraints of undertaking a virtual ethnography. While Kozinets (2010) claims that a virtual ethnography allows the researcher to focus on a particular phenomenon, it became clear that what it actually allows the researcher to focus on is a specific group of people who are participants in the social phenomenon in question. Any data and analysis will only be representative of the people who participate in the online environment being studied; they will not necessarily be representative of the wider population who are not part of the community studied. Kozinets (2010) states that the findings of a virtual ethnography can be generalised to the wider community. In cases such as the BFC, however, where the wider population is unknown and the sample groups used in the research (the BFC members) are self-selecting and not necessarily representative of the wider population (in geographical terms, at least), care should be taken and the findings considered cautiously. This research focused on the
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Black Flag Café and was a virtual ethnography: it did not study the wider community of people who travel to dangerous places. It is easy to think that a virtual ethnography will allow a full exploration of a phenomenon through an online community but in fact it has its limitations. If blended with other offline research methods, a virtual ethnography can conceivably provide a detailed and deep picture of a particular phenomenon. When it is used as the sole data source, there are limits both to the data that can be obtained and to how it can be collected. There are therefore also limits to the conclusions that can be drawn from the research. As mentioned earlier, the e-mail interviews, which were to act as an additional data source, were unsuccessful in providing usable data for this study. Comparing a virtual ethnography to a face-to-face one it is clear that the role of the researcher changes. While a face-to-face ethnographer must write down and then interpret their fieldwork experience, in a forum based virtual ethnography the task of producing the written texts to analyse is less of an issue as the subjects, in the form of posts, write the texts themselves. The role of the researcher is more as interpreter of context, subject and attitude as opposed to noting and annotating subjects’ behaviour within the field. Focus is on the analysis of the arena, the virtual community and the data within its context rather than on the recording of subjects’ behaviour. To summarise: combining several different research techniques within one research framework necessitated adjustments to data-collection methods and the use of a data set during the research process, as individual methods took longer than anticipated (for the content-analysis coding) or failed to produce the expected results (Key Word In Context data). In hindsight, the sample of threads chosen for analysis could have been more selective. During the sample period of six months, some topics were only covered in one or two threads, but at the same time it produced a wide message pool from which much irrelevant data had to be discarded. The study was limited by the fact that all the data came from the Black Flag Café. While technology does not appear to cramp or inhibit communication (Mann and Stewart 2000), the views of the forum participants were written rather than oral and, because of the nature of online forums, many of the quotations that could be used to demonstrate the data findings were very short. In order to avoid leading the participants, it was not possible to ask forum members direct questions or to expand on their posts; the period of participant observation was therefore valuable in understanding the context of the data and forum members’ individual comments and styles. A different approach might have made it possible to expand the research to investigate the links from the forum to other websites or online media. The study was unable to take full advantage of the multimedia data present within the forum. The use of images within the forum was not
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analysed either. It was thought unlikely to have added anything of real value to the current study and research aims but it might be an area for future study if one was to focus on virtual communities. Respondent validation was not wholly successful. Some forum members found it difficult to reflect on the forum as a whole, choosing instead to focus on their own stories and views, which were not necessarily representative of the group. Within a virtual ethnography the role of the virtual ethnographer is somewhat different from that of the researcher of a face-to-face ethnography, especially if the former is not leading the forum members in discussion or through a series of interview questions. While building a picture of the online community is possible, it is not always feasible to narrow this down and/or separate it from the specific phenomenon you are trying to investigate, because you depend on how much (or even whether) the community chooses to discuss it. Primarily, virtual ethnography allows one to study people as opposed to specific phenomena, since the data must always be interpreted within the context of the forum and its members. It therefore becomes an ethnography focused on how the virtual community being studied sets about the particular phenomenon under investigation. 9.5 Conclusion
This chapter established the quality of this research. The reliability of the work was assessed and judged, based on the evidence provided (code books, coding, protocols which limited reactivity for participant observation, the collection of data, the use of a case-study database and involvement of forum members as a form of respondent validation) to be reliable. This chapter demonstrated the validity of the data and the extent to which the findings might be applied to the wider danger tourism community. The second section of the chapter considered the different techniques used within the research framework and their impact on the research. It highlighted the adaptations which had to be made to the research framework while the research was underway and explored why certain methods (for example e-mail interviews) were unsuccessful. The tools used for data collection and analysis were assessed and their limitations and impact on the research explored. The section made recommendations on how particular methods (for example KWIC, sampling) might be improved if used again within the context of an Internet forum. This section also evaluated the choice of the Black Flag Café forum as the local of the research and reflected on its impact on the research.
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10 Conclusion
10.1 Introduction
This final chapter begins by reviewing the study’s aim and objectives. It then demonstrates how the development of the conceptual framework and this research have contributed to knowledge in four ways: study of an empirical topic; contributing to and adding to the existing literature; challenging previous understanding of the topic and showing how established research methods were adapted and used in a new way to add to the growing knowledge of online research methods. The chapter then identifies areas for future study and concludes with a personal reflection on the research process. 10.2 Reviewing the study aims
10.2.1 Aims and objectives
As section 10.4 goes on to explore how the findings of this research contribute to knowledge and understanding, this section will examine how the research has met the aims and objectives identified in Chapter 1. The earlier parts of this thesis identified three gaps within the literature. First, a neglect by the academic community of a tourist market in the “vanguard of dark tourism” (Lennon and Foley 2000, p.9), possibly due to the small numbers of tourists involved, their limited economic value to the tourism sector and difficulties in undertaking face-to-face research owing to the dangerous locations involved. Secondly, continued difficulties in reporting tourist activity in dangerous places which is focused around tourists, pseudo-tourists, journalists, allocentric adventurers and human rights activists all visiting destinations in the “during the war” development phase. Finally, when this group of tourists is explored there is a focus on the sensational and ghoulish aspects of travel, with authors describing them as macabre sensation-seeking risk takers; so far there have been limited efforts to explore their motivations, approach to travel and other influences.
The aim of this study was not to fill all of these gaps within the literature but: To use the Black Flag Café online forum to identify and evaluate the factors that influence tourists to visit dangerous places and to ascertain the perceived benefits for those tourists of travelling to dangerous places
It therefore focuses on the third gap identified from the literature, exploring the possible motivational and influential factors for those tourists who choose to travel to dangerous places. This has been addressed through an investigation into an online community, the
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Black Flag Café, a website focusing on travelling to dangerous places. As a dedicated site frequented by people who travel to dangerous places this online community offered a practical solution to the problem of collecting data about the behaviour and motivations of such people. The analysis and interpretation of the data collected led to the development of a conceptual framework (Figure 8.1) setting out the attitudes, behaviours and motivation of people who travel to dangerous places and a number of typologies (Figure 6.2 and Figure 6.3) of these tourists.
10.2.1.1 Objective 1: To identify, analyse and evaluate the different types of forum members within the community and to consider how these might be indicative of the different types of people who visit dangerous places.
The different forum members were identified during the participant observation and analysis phase and this work was developed into the typology of forum members (Figure 6.2). It became apparent from this typology that the forum attracted people who were interested in both leisure travel and work in dangerous places. This typology was further developed into a framework (Figure 6.3) that displayed a forum member’s danger-tourism career. This showed how, over time, an individual might move from being interested in travel to dangerous places to embarking on increasingly dangerous trips and potentially choosing to work in a dangerous place. The typology of forum members (Figure 6.2) displays the different categorisations of tourists who visit dangerous places. It divides tourists into those who travel regularly for leisure and pleasure and those who travel for the first time or only once to a dangerous place. It also categorises people who chose to work in dangerous places and who, on occasion, use the title tourist to obtain visas, ease travel, etc. Study overseas, journalism and occasionally aid and humanitarian work were used as an excuse for travel and in these cases it was often difficult to differentiate between workers and tourists. These categories can be applied to the wider population of people who choose to visit dangerous places.
10.2.1.2 Objective 2: To explore the community’s social norms and acceptable and anticipated behaviours in the forum and to reflect how these might inform knowledge of the wider danger-tourism community.
The forum members’ social norms and acceptable and anticipated behaviours were explored during the participant-observation phase of the research and also through a descriptive content analysis of the forum (Chapters 5, 6 and 7). Analysis of their behaviour (Chapters 7
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and 8) showed that the group was accepting of violence, aggressive in nature and positively promoted military and alpha males and the view that dangerous places were exciting and glamorous places to visit and work. Topics of particular interest divided into four main subjects (displayed in Figure 5.2 Forum content of the Black Flag Café). The first revolved around the virtual community itself, including the organisation of, and reporting on, face-to- face meetings. The second focused on misadventure and death and included reactions to kidnapping and hostage situations and health-related issues such as vaccines and malaria tablets. The largest topic of conversation was travel related and included requests for information about, and reports on, travelling to both dangerous and non-dangerous destinations and discussions about the equipment to use while travelling. The last category comprised discussions about adventurers, having an adventure and working in dangerous places. The topics of interest to forum members may be indicative of the wider danger tourism community and their values may be similar to other tourists who travel to dangerous places, although possibly slightly exaggerated because the nature of the virtual environment encourages online disinhibition.
10.2.1.3 Objective 3: To explore forum members’ experiences of travel to dangerous places, their engagement with tourism infrastructure and their preferred ways of travel to dangerous places.
The research set out to investigate forum members travel experiences in dangerous places, including their engagement with tourism infrastructure and their preferred ways of travel. This was explored during the content analysis. As mentioned previously the data showed that forum members actively sought out authentic travel experiences by travelling independently and, in their eyes, outside the tourism infrastructure. Backpackers and tourists were viewed with disdain and instead considerable value was placed on being viewed as a traveller as opposed to tourist. Independent travel was valued above organised package tours and excursions and there was great emphasis on meeting local people outside the tourist environment. Balanced against this dislike of “tourism”, the findings showed a willingness to interact with the tourism infrastructure when it works to a person’s advantage for obtaining visas, booking excursions and finding hotels and that this division between independent and authentic and organised infrastructure often exists merely in the travellers’ minds. Official travel advisory and safety information was generally ignored. It is viewed as excessively cautious and written for tourists rather than experienced travellers who are accustomed to, and familiar with, travel in dangerous places. Traditional information sources, for example guidebooks and government travel advice, are also not highly valued. Instead,
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first-hand information on a destination’s visa requirements, accommodation and transportation options are used, sources from people on the ground being viewed as the most reliable and up to date. The data did not provide a rich source of information about the activities of tourists when they reach their dangerous destinations.
10.2.1.4 Objective 4: To identify analyse and evaluate the factors that influence forum members’ decisions to travel to dangerous places and the perceived benefits obtained from travel.
Apparent from the analysis were three factors that appeared to influence the tourists’ decision to travel to dangerous places. These are displayed in the conceptual framework (Figure 8.1). The first influential factor was the search for self-actualisation through “it” and peak experiences. Such “experiences” were viewed as an important component of travelling, considered one of the main reasons to go, and travel was manipulated to actively seek them out. Travel to dangerous places was sometimes approached as an adventurous rite-of- passage experience for tourists of all ages. The second influential factor is status and self-image. Evidence within the BFC showed that the manipulation of an individual’s own online persona was an important part of the community. People enjoyed portraying themselves as different from other tourists, as alpha males, adventurous and experienced travellers and more deviant than others. Travel to dangerous places was used as a method of establishing patina through the relating of travel stories which displayed the individual in a positive light and established their road status. The road-status ideology within the community is more extreme than that observed previously within backpacker communities, encompassing hardships and daredevil behaviour and highlighting the dangers of travel. The search for an authentic travel experience was the third influential factor to be identified during the research. Independent travel was valued above package holidays and backpacking. There was a strong desire to be viewed as other than a tourist, avoiding mainstream tourists wherever possible and deliberately seeking out ways to meet local people and to experience the local way of life. It was clear that one of the push factors leading the search for an authentic experience was the desire to escape increasingly staged tourism products but there was less awareness that the travellers’ own authentic experiences might also be staged.
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The fourth factor which influences the decision to travel was the acceptance of the residual risks involved in travel to dangerous places. This is explored in more detail below in section 10.5.1.5. The strong influence exercised on the tourists within the forum by its owner, Robert Young Pelton, came as no surprise. He emerged as a factor throughout much of the data analysis, acting first as a reason for joining the forum (through his books, media and publicity activities) and then as an innovator and opinion leader, promoting travel to dangerous places to the forum members. While this supports the views of Miniter (2001), Dann (2004) and Adams (2006) that he is a leader within the danger tourism community, it is difficult, because the findings are based on his own forum, to ascertain if his influence goes wider than the forum members themselves. In addition, his influence may have affected the research findings in particular in two areas: image (Robert Young Pelton actively seeks to promote an alpha male, adventurous personal image) and risk (his book promotes the view that dangerous places are not in fact dangerous and the risks of travel are negligible). It should be noted that there were several areas where the data did not support the anticipated findings. Dangerous places are portrayed as glamorous and a sublime of dangerous places was evident but, despite this, there was no evidence to show that tourists were motivated to travel by mass media. It appeared that the romanticising of war and dangerous places through travel literature, biographies and adventurous tales was more of an influencing factor. Other unanticipated findings within the study were the lack of data directly relating to sensation seeking and flow as reasons for travel or of novelty seeking, of which the only indicator within the data (displayed in 7.4.3 Destination novelty value and escape from normality) related to destination choice (cool, neat, unusual destinations). The research has clarified the perceived benefits obtained from travel to dangerous places. Several of these can be linked to the motivational factors identified in Objective 2. The benefits of travel to dangerous places are displayed in the conceptual framework (Figure 8.1). The first benefit of travelling to a dangerous place that was observable within the study was self-actualisation. Tourists described ”it” and peak experiences which might be considered moments of self-actualisation as positive elements of their travels. The second and third benefits were the noticeable use of travel stories about travelling to and within dangerous places to establish and/or improve status with others (in the case of the forum the BFC acted as a peer group) and to improve their own self-image. Tourists enjoyed the notoriety and novelty that travel to dangerous places brings, relishing telling tales of their own daring adventures and, when appropriate, misadventure.
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The fourth benefit was that travel to dangerous places allowed the forum member to gain a greater familiarity with death and awareness of their own mortality. This study did not find any significant evidence that forum members had a death wish, that they travelled to dangerous places to view people dying (Walsh 2002; Lisle 2007) or that they were experiencing Schadenfreude and pleasure from viewing dying people. The final benefit from travelling to dangerous places was flow. This was identified not from the data but instead from the literature relating to high-risk activities. While there was evidence within the data to show that tourists enjoyed balancing their own skills and controlling dangerous situations (which is part of the flow experience), there was no evidence to show they experienced flow itself. In addition to the immediate benefits, there was evidence that forum members travelled to increasingly dangerous destinations, seeking out stronger experiences, obtaining greater status and further boosting their own self-image. This repeat behaviour is shown at the top of the conceptual framework (Figure 8.1), which shows how the benefits of travel feed back into the motivational factors.
10.2.1.5 Objective 5: To Identify, analyse and evaluate attitudes towards risk and danger and forum members’ acceptance of the residual risks involved in travelling to dangerous places and any associated curiosity, sensation-seeking and novelty drivers.
The final objective of the research was to evaluate attitudes towards risk and danger and the acceptance of the residual risks involved in travelling to dangerous places. This fourth influential factor is displayed in the conceptual framework (Figure 8.1). The study has shown that, before travelling, tourists appear to undertake only a superficial evaluation of the risks involved. Full risk assessments are not carried out. Instead, there is a reliance on previous travel experience and peerless decision making. Tourists who travel regularly to dangerous places have built up their experience over a number of repeat trips to increasingly dangerous destinations and new tourists often choose less dangerous destinations or travel in groups for their first trip to a dangerous place. The majority of tourists appeared to be fully aware of the risks involved in travel and they make informed decisions, avoiding locations and activities which they view as uncontrollable and entailing too great a risk. There was no evidence that the high risk involved in travelling to a destination influenced destination choice by preventing travel. A number of different mechanisms were employed to accept the residual risks of travel. These included denying the risks involved, highlighting to self and others the benefits of travel and differentiating between good and bad, controllable and uncontrollable risks. As
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with other high-risk activities (for example sky diving, Celsi et al. 1993) tourists used luck and fate, together with the concept of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and a miscalculation of the risks in comparison to previous travel experience, to account for incidents of misadventure and death. 10.3 Contribution to knowledge
This study’s contribution to knowledge can be divided into two main areas, knowledge of danger tourists and an improved understanding of virtual methodologies and online behaviours. 10.3.1 Knowledge of danger tourists
The topic of travel to dangerous places has not been widely investigated by the academic community and so literature on the subject is limited. While dark and war tourism are topics of growing interest to a small number of academics, the focus of their work is on the post-war phase and so the subject of tourists who deliberately travel to dangerous places has not been widely studied or explored in any depth. This research has explored tourist motivation, an area that others in these associated areas have not yet examined in detail. Therefore empirical work in this research area makes both a contribution to the literature and sets out new information for the first time. The results from this research are new to the tourism community and the findings make a significant contribution to knowledge. The existing literature alluded to the possibilities of tourism to dangerous places (Sharpley 2005; Adams 2001, 2006; Piekarz 2007) but its focus was very much on war zones and not dangerous places more generally (Smith 1996; Seaton 1999). The evidence from this study suggests that the dangerous destination’s unique features and the opportunities it provides for the tourist to gain a particular benefit are the pull factors that make it attractive to tourists. Consequently this work shifts the focus from destinations which can only be classified as war zones to dangerous places, as these destinations share common characteristics and offer tourists the opportunity to experience the sublime of dangerous places. The current findings add substantially to our understanding of tourists who take extreme risks. The evidence from this study suggests that three main motivational push factors influence tourists to travel to dangerous places: a desire to experience self- actualisation through “it” or peak experiences, a desire to improve own self-image, the search for an authentic travel experience and a willingness to offset the dangers and risks of travelling to a dangerous place against the perceived (or actual) benefits. Accordingly, the study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of the motivations of tourists
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who choose to visit dangerous places. The results of this study indicate that the benefits from travelling to a dangerous place include improved self-image and self-esteem, maintaining or, in the case of first-time travellers, obtaining status within a peer group (for example the Black Flag Café), experiencing self-actualisation, gaining familiarity with and deeper understanding of death and potentially having a flow experience (evident from literature but not within data). The motivational factors and benefits of travel, and how they interact, are shown in the conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour (Figure 8.1). These current findings add substantially to our understanding of these areas. Associated with the influencing factors is the role of risk in travel to dangerous places. The findings assist in our understanding of the role risk plays in the tourism decision-making context. The study has shown that people who travel to dangerous places have a good understanding of the risks involved and are willing to accept these in order to draw down the associated benefits of such travel. The current focus in risk and tourism research perceives risk, danger and conflict as barriers to travel (Hall et al. 2003; Tarlow 2009). This research challenges this view by exploring the attitudes of a discrete group of tourists towards voluntary risk taking and the voluntary acceptance of residual risk when travelling. The findings suggest instead that people who travel to dangerous places make informed decisions about their travel plans and take what they believe to be calculated risks, accepting the residual risk involved in their travel plans. An implication of this is the possibility that people who travel to dangerous places have a much greater understanding of the risks involved in travel than previously thought, challenging the view of previous authors (Stone 2006) who highlighted tourists’ desire to dice with death and supposed death-wish tendencies. The alternative possibility presented here is that such tourists are in fact looking to gain familiarity with death. This suggests there may be further links between dark tourism and tourism to dangerous places. The findings therefore inform our knowledge about dark tourism. Robert Young Pelton’s role as a change agent actively encouraging travel to dangerous places as an adventure through his media activities may be a further influential factor, in particular for Black Flag Café forum members. The media in general and Robert Young Pelton in particular promote the concept of the sublime of dangerous places. Those who post on the BFC appear to be swayed by this perspective, viewing dangerous places as romantic, sexy and glamorous. This confirms previous literature about the influential role of Robert Young Pelton (Dann 2004) within the danger-tourism community. However, it is not known how far his influence reaches in terms of the wider danger-tourism population who do not participate in the Black Flag Café or read his books.
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The findings of this research suggest that, contrary to their own views, the forum members of the Black Flag Café who travel to dangerous places do not comprise a discrete tourist type but share many of the qualities found in backpackers, adventurers and dark tourists. Such a tourist can best be described as a niche type of backpacker who seeks an extreme independent travel experience. Indeed, travel to dangerous places appears to extend the dark-tourism spectrum (Stone 2006) by being the ultimate authentic dark-tourism travel experience. The research contributes to the existing knowledge about the war stage and the early recovery post-war stage of post-war tourism development (Weaver 2000) as it provides information on tourists, aid workers and journalists who choose to travel to dangerous destinations (including conflict and post-conflict areas). With this aim, initial results were presented at the International Peace Through Tourism Conference (Lindsay et al. 2008). This piece of research has contributed to the literature in another area not included among its direct aims. In addition to contributing to our knowledge about tourists, the current findings add to a body of literature (Pitts 1996; Piekarz 2007) on people who choose to work in dangerous places; it supports previous findings that, in certain circumstances, tourists and workers are not easily distinguished and that, on some occasions, the titles “aid worker” and “journalist” are used to provide socially acceptable reasons for visiting a dangerous place much as journalists sometimes travel as “tourists” to places where they would not otherwise be admitted. The research has been used to develop a typology of forum members (Figure 6.2) that can be generalised upwards to a typology of people who visit dangerous places. This typology adds to and develops the typology of hot war travellers developed by Piekarz (2007) as it focuses on the tourists’ motivation and behaviour rather than their activities and destinations. The typology also attempts to divide workers and leisure travellers and categorises three types of workers in dangerous places. As this is possibly the first categorisation of this type, the typology of forum members (Figure 6.2) makes a significant contribution to knowledge in this field. The DP travel career (Figure 6.3) identifies how people who might be described as addicted to the benefits they perceive from travel can progress from being one-off to regular travellers to dangerous places. It also demonstrates how they might make the move from being a tourist to working in dangerous places and how, conversely, in some cases, a single trip to a dangerous place is sufficient to satisfy the traveller who believes they have obtained the benefits they sought from just one trip. The study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of why tourists might choose to visit a dangerous place. The conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour (Figure 8.1) displays the factors that influence a person’s decision to travel to
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dangerous places. It also maps the possible outcomes if the balance of skill and risk is judged correctly or incorrectly and shows the possible benefits from travelling to dangerous places. This framework complements other models of high-risk consumer behaviour (Martin and Priest 1986; Celsi et al. 1993; Stranger 1999; Varley 2006) and provides further evidence for backpacker behaviour models which explore risk and backpacking experiences (Richards and Wilson 2004b). It also contributes to the work on edgework (Lyng 2005). In this case, the conceptual framework was developed to display the behaviours of people who travel to dangerous places for pleasure but there is evidence that it might equally be applied to some aid workers, journalists and other workers who deliberately choose to visit and work in dangerous places. This framework brings together the current data findings and previous work to allow readers to trace a danger tourist’s experience before, during and after their trip to a dangerous place. The conceptual framework can be used as a springboard for future research. To summarise, a number of typologies and frameworks have been developed and these contribute to knowledge. The mapping of online behaviour of a closed virtual community (Table 2.3), the typology of avatars (Table 5.7) and the typology of usernames (Table 5.8) extend our understanding of virtual communities. Regarding the phenomena of travel to dangerous places, a typology of danger tourists has been developed (Figure 6.2). This typology takes into consideration tourist motivations and reasons for travel. The typology informed and was developed in to the framework (Figure 6.3), which maps a tourist’s potential travel career. The conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour (Figure 8.1) has been created. This framework demonstrates the push and pull factors which influence a tourist’s decision to travel and also displays how risks are balanced when travelling and the possible outcomes (positive experience, misadventure, death) and benefits of travel. 10.3.2 Virtual methodology, virtual communities and online behaviour
10.3.2.1 Virtual methodology
The research developed, and contributes to, the growing number of methods used to research online forums as the methods used for this study may be applied to similar online forums elsewhere. This research combines a number of different research methods and each has been adapted for use in an online forum. Although the techniques used (participant observation, ethnography, content analysis) are not new in themselves, they have been combined and applied together in the online environment. This combination offers a new way of analysing online data and informs research in this growing area. These tools may be applied to other online forums, or similar virtual environments elsewhere. The lessons learned from their application can be shared across the community of Internet researchers,
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informing and guiding further research and contributing to the emerging methodologies used for research within this area. Virtual research is still very new and much of the previous online forum research methodology has been limited to basic descriptive content analysis (Potter 1999) or analysis which focuses on one particular approach or methodology (Hine 2008). This research has moved beyond basic content analysis and has adapted and then applied a range of traditional methods of content analysis to an online environment. It has successfully adapted existing methodologies and contributes to the existing knowledge of online methodologies. Equally, the use of online textual analysis software to create KWIC data (4.14 Key Word in Context Analysis) was innovative and the lessons learned from the partial success of this method expand the knowledge of how this tool might be used for online research in the future. The methods used for the forum-level analysis, which identified hot threads and forum members, offers a firmer example of how this analysis might be undertaken than that described by Wang et al. (2008). The methods used for data collection, sampling and coding (Chapters 3 and 4) also add to the limited knowledge on how existing research methods might be adapted for the online environment. The research has demonstrated that the sampling methods used by other authors on smaller forums are not scalable to a large forum like the Black Flag Café and that future research involving large forums would benefit from a more selective method of sampling. The method used to validate forum members real lives (tracing them through other less anonymous online media such as Facebook, photos and blogs) is new and may be crucial in the future by providing a mechanism to verify online participants stories. Potentially it offers a solution to critics who are concerned about the reliability of online data when participants can not be properly identified. Whilst several of the online methods used in this case study were partly or wholly successful this research also contributes to knowledge through the reporting of less successful research methods. The attempt to mirror the website demonstrated that significant resources would be required to use this method for a large forum such as the Black Flag Café. Web crawlers were also unsuccessful as a data collection tool and it is now clear that web crawlers can only be used to seek very specific data sets which use unusual terms. Ethical approaches for working online are still in the development stage (Eynon et al. 2008), so the ethical approach developed for this research (Chapter 3) contributes to the growing number of precedents which can be used by other online researchers, providing an established convention for online forums where anonymity has already been established by the use of pseudonyms. The development of this ethical framework required the consideration and adaptation of existing ethical guidelines to an anonymous asynchronous
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forum; these new guidelines can provide other researchers with a starting point when they consider their own ethical issues within the online environment. The research has also demonstrated how access to a closed community can be gained virtually. The online methods used, prolonged participant observation, the development of an online persona and establishing rapport across time zones through posting, lurking and synchronous chatting are not widely disseminated and so this research offers information on new ways of gaining access to online environments. The research has also demonstrated how online communication (by e-mail, private messaging and Skype) can be used to undertake ethical negotiations and to obtain research access and permission. Few researchers have managed to progress their research in this way and so this case study contributes to research methodology by demonstrating how this activity can be successfully managed in a virtual environment. During the participant-observation phase of the research, the mapping of the different levels of communication and behaviours within the forum and its netiquette (Table 2.3) was used to demonstrate the peculiarities of the Black Flag Café forum in comparison to other more traditional forums. This contributes to our knowledge of how closed online communities function. It also offers researchers working in this field a method to map netiquette. The mapping of the forum netiquette demonstrated that not all virtual communities adhere to the same codes of conduct and that some closed communities have very different social norms and accepted online behaviours to those charted by previous authors. The partial success of the respondent validation demonstrated how involved participants are with their online communities and personas and that it is not always possible for forum members to view their own activities objectively. Knowing this is helpful to other researchers who may be designing virtual forum based ethnographies as alternative methods of respondent validation should be sought, possibly from lurkers or occasional, as opposed to regular, forum members. There is currently very limited published research on the use of avatars and usernames on asynchronous forums. The two typologies created from this research are Table 5.7, which identifies the seven discrete genres of usernames on the forum, and Table 5.8, which shows the eight different types of avatars used by regular posters. These contribute to the existing knowledge as the method used to create the typologies and the typologies and categories themselves can be adapted for use on other forums. The research demonstrates how text based forums can be manipulated by the forum members to provide opportunities for online persona management. The analysis of the forum member’s use of titles, signatures and usernames is innovative. Previous work has focused on one particular element of online persona management in synchronous environments but this research
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offers a more holistic way of viewing forum member’s online personas within an asynchronous text based environment. The research has identified what may be an interesting new online trend. As mentioned earlier the Black Flag Café is an example of a hybrid fandom site. Forum members appear to have subverted the original aims of the forum to meet their own needs as it has mutated from a site set up by the celebrity (RYP) into one which meets forum member’s requirements. Regarding consumer behaviour the research demonstrates how the diffusion of innovation and online purchasing behaviours can take place in an online environment. It is possible to clearly identify the hierarchy of forum members and to trace how they encourage purchasing behaviours within other forum members. The research has also shown how forum members use the online environment to enjoy their purchases and to share the experience with other forum members. Within the analysis there is significant evidence of the virtualization of backpacker culture and this research contributes to this new area of research. The study also adds to our knowledge of how forum based research involving virtual ethnographies might be undertaken in the future. It has shown that, if approached correctly, a virtual ethnography is a way of gaining access to closed communities and populations who are hard to access due to the risks involved in visiting particular locations. The research has recognised and documented the possibilities of virtual ethnography, in particular the fact that it offers an opportunity to study participants in depth with limited reactivity. However; the research has also highlighted some of the issues in undertaking a virtual ethnography (narrowing down the topic, sampling and issues around the analysis of data) which inform others working in this field. As a virtual ethnography the research as a whole adds to the small but growing number of specialist studies into virtual communities their behaviours and the way online personas are developed and used through the use of usernames, profiles and avatars. It offers an insight into some of the challenges and difficulties in undertaking an online study that can be used to inform future research. The use of the forum to investigate an offline phenomenon demonstrates how virtual environments can inform our knowledge of tourist behaviours; it also identifies the limitations of virtual methods. To conclude, the research has adapted and applied a number of traditional methods to an online environment in an innovative way; while not always successful, the methods used contribute to the growing knowledge of online research methods. In a similar way, the ethical agreements and guidelines for online participant observation of an asynchronous forum also contribute to knowledge in this growing research area. Possibly one of the greatest contributions that this research can make to online studies centres on the possibilities and
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potential problems of undertaking a virtual ethnography, in particular the realisation that the study of a virtual community does not naturally lead to a study of the research topic and that it can be difficult to narrow the sphere of research down to a particular topic within the online environment without unduly influencing the data.
10.3.2.2 Virtual communities and online behaviour
The thesis confirms, adds to and expands knowledge of how people behave within an online forum. The ethnography of the Black Flag Café offers an in-depth picture of life within an e- tribe or virtual community and specific traits within the Black Flag Café make it particularly interesting to other researchers. For example, the netiquette which has developed within the BFC is unusual (aggressive, masculine and self focused). This provides readers with a different view of forum netiquette and online behaviours from those identified by other researchers (Rinalidi 1998; Mann and Stewart 2000; Shea 2004) and in doing so offers an alternative view of how people behave on the internet. The aggressive nature of the forum is of particular interest. If statistically mapped to the online behaviours identified by Burnett and Buerkle (2004) the collaborative and hostile interactive behaviours of the BFC forum participants would be similarly weighted. Previous research has acknowledged that initiation and access to a community can be difficult (Kendall 2002) but the continued aggression, flaming and trolling within the Black Flag Café is a new characteristic that has not been previously identified within virtual communities. The group is self moderating in its anticipated behaviours and so it provides an example of how a forum with little formal moderation can be successful. Therefore it challenges the findings by Wise and Thorson (2006) that people prefer to participate in a well moderated forum. Unlike other forums the social norms of the BFC are communicated tacitly over time to other forum members and there is no FAQ’s document which outlines acceptable behaviour. Again this contradicts the current trends on how online forums should be developed and run (Adams and Smith 2008). Regarding the development of an online persona through the choice of usernames, avatars and signatures the research findings confirm that previous works which were undertaken on VLE’s, MUD’s and synchronous environments (Bechar-Israeli 2001; Scheidt 2001;; Suler 2004; Rains 2006; Stommel 2007) can also be applied to online text based asynchronous environments like the Black Flag Café forum. In addition the profile analysis undertaken on the BFC demonstrates how an individual can create their online image using a range of text based tools. Considering the forum members’ own behaviour within the virtual environment the research has demonstrated how an online forum can be used for activism (El Pelon), for
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networking (seeking jobs or information about working in dangerous places) and for social interaction. The research also provided evidence that offline friendships can develop from the online environment, and so challenges the view that “electronic groups may never extend their communication beyond the confines of an electronic medium” (Olaniran 2008 p.37). The research also offers a detailed example of the virtualization of backpacker culture (Paris 2009). The study has shown how an online forum can act as a backpacker enclave and how forum members have developed and used their online environment to gain and establish patina and road culture within a virtual world. It appears that this is the first detailed investigation in to the virtualization of backpacker culture. To summarise: The accepted ways of behaviour within the Black Flag Café are unusual within online communities. The netiquette which has developed is very different to that found in the majority of other online forums and so this virtual ethnography offers an insight into a forum which adheres to a different set of social norms and online behaviours. Within the forum the lack of formal moderation, which in turn has resulted in self moderation, challenges existing preconceptions that moderation and clear guidelines are necessary for a forum to flourish. The research also draws together within an asynchronous forum the different methods used by forum members to establish their online personas offering examples of how text and limited graphics can be used to create online profiles. The research also adds considerably to the existing knowledge about the virtualization of backpacker culture. This is a new area of study and by offering evidence of how an online forum can be used to establish and gain road status this ethnography adds significantly to the current knowledge in this area. 10.4 Areas for future research
This research has focused on enhancing understanding of people who travel to dangerous places; it has thrown up many questions in need of further investigation. Areas for further research can be divided into four main topics:
1. An investigation of the danger-tourism community. This might involve establishing the extent of the danger-tourism community, their social and demographic profile and the guest–host relationship.
2. The second area of future work focuses around the motivations and benefits of travel and suggests using the conceptual framework (Figure 8.1) to explore this area.
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3. The third topic is the perception of risk by danger tourists including their methods of assessing risks before departure, the point they decide to travel and the role of risk assessment in destination choice.
4. The final area of research relates to the ways that the access to the Black Flag Café might be exploited for future virtual research.
This section concludes by exploring the methods that might be used for future research. 10.4.1 Danger-tourism community
Future research would benefit significantly from any solution to the problem of defining the target population. This would be difficult to establish, however, without the co-operation of border agencies, and they themselves would not necessarily be in a position to provide a truly accurate picture as tourists cross borders into occupied territories illegally and journalists sometimes describe themselves as tourists to obtain visas and vice versa. If a representative sample could be identified, work could be done to discover more information about the social and demographic characteristics of people who choose to visit dangerous places. This might establish if the majority of danger tourists are traditional risk takers (young males) or if, as it appears, the demographic is wider spread. However it may be a difficult area to investigate as an online survey would be slanted by the fact that the population of the Internet is traditionally young males of western origin. If investigation into tourists who visit dangerous places is to be moved forward, a better understanding of their potential value to the host community is required. Additional work could be carried out within the danger-tourism community to explore the guest–host relationship. This might establish if danger tourists make any substantial contribution to the economy. Currently, the literature is divided on this question: some authors (Pitts 1996; Adams 2001) think that a significant contribution is made while others (Lennon and Foley 2000) view wartime tourism as a sideline activity with limited or no benefit to the host population. Secondary research carried out through tourist and government offices overseas in dangerous places might meet this need. The research findings suggest that the danger tourists on the Black Flag Café view themselves as form of niche tourism and have developed their own form of road status and travel ideology, which is close to that found in backpackers and influenced by adventurers. It would be interesting to map this ideology and to compare and contrast it with that found in backpackers. This could be achieved through further analysis of the BFC. Further offline research might also explore the extent to which this ideology can be applied to the wider population.
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The typology (Figure 6.2) and data shows evidence of a danger tourist “career ladder” (Figure 6.3): danger tourists become repeat tourists who may then deliberately choose to work in dangerous places as a natural progression from their earlier holidays. Offline qualitative interviews could be used for further research to investigate the evidence of repeat trips. Work could be done to embed the typology of danger tourists and detailed case studies of individual tourists’ danger travel and career choices could be developed. While there is some literature on the motivations of altruistic aid workers (Beristain 1999), this research could serve as a basis for future investigations into other types of people who visit dangerous places voluntarily and use such roles as aid worker and journalist as socially acceptable reasons to visit dangerous places. Further research in this field, regarding the role of volunteer and paid aid workers and journalists within dangerous places, would be of great help in establishing why and how many people are visiting dangerous places under the socially acceptable guise of workers. The three typologies of people who work in dangerous places identified in Figure 6.2 Typology of the different types of BFC forum members could be used for this. 10.4.2 Motivation and benefits of travel
The research has identified three main factors that motivate and influence people to travel to dangerous places (self-actualisation, a search for authentic experiences and a desire to improve status and self-image) and incorporated them in the conceptual framework of danger-tourism behaviour (Figure 8.1). The framework could be used as the basis for interviews or a questionnaire to explore the tourists’ attitude to each factor. This might determine if particular motivational factors were more important than others. The research used the data and existing frameworks to identify the benefits of travelling to dangerous places but the study was not specifically designed to evaluate the benefits of travel and was limited by the fact that participants could not be asked directly about such benefits owing to the nature of the forum. A further study focusing more directly on the perceived benefits of travel is therefore suggested. In particular, it would be interesting to assess any mentions in face-to-face interviews of a flow experience, as this was not found in the data set. Qualitative interviews might be the best method of investigating the perceived motivations and benefits of travel, as they would encourage participants to speak freely on the subject and to share their own experiences and views. These two areas would allow for an investigation into the association between the identified motivational factors and the perceived benefits identified in the conceptual framework. The study did not show any links between destination image and destination choice or the role that the media might play. Balanced against this were the findings showing the
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sublime of war and of dangerous places as an influencing factor in destination choice because of the links with self-image. Several other authors (Celsi et al. 1993; Foley and Lennon 1996; Smeesters and Mandel 2006) have found evidence of links between destination choice and the media and they imply that the media is an influencing factor within the danger-tourism community. As this was not evidenced in this research it would be interesting to assess the effects of the role of the media in creating and maintaining destination interest within the danger-tourism community. This could be linked with the work described in Chapter 1 about the media’s influence on risk perception and destination choice. Further work needs to be done to establish whether Robert Young Pelton is as widely influential within the offline danger-tourism community as it appears from this study of the online community. This could be carried out by making contact with danger tourists who are not part of the BFC community and gathering data on their current awareness and knowledge of Robert Young Pelton. 10.4.3 Perception of risk
Further research should be done to investigate the tourists’ perception of risk. As part of this, how danger tourists assess the risks of travelling to dangerous places before departure and if they do in fact undertake a more detailed information search than that evidenced on the forum could be investigated. It would be best to limit this area of future research to tourists who had returned from their trips to dangerous places as it would then be possible to ascertain all of the information sources they have consulted before and during travel. More research is needed to understand more clearly the association between risk assessment and the decision to travel and to establish how much risk influences the decision to travel. Tourists involved in this study were not placed in any risk-perception framework. Further work could be done on the tourists’ individual perception of risk and their understanding of calculated and perceived risks in relation to real risk. Either Wilde’s risk thermostat (Wilde 1976) or the psychometric paradigm (Slovic et al. 1980), which both offer a quantitative classification scheme to assess an individual’s attitude and perception of risk, could be used for this task. This current research has not explored the relationship between risk perception and destination choice. Further research might study the factors that influence a danger tourist’s perception of risk (media, word of mouth, etc.) and how these affect their choice of destination, examining the point of decision to travel and destination choice in greater detail. The current study was not designed to evaluate factors relating to the specific activities undertaken while travelling. Further work is needed to establish whether danger tourists’ activities are in fact dangerous or if the value to the tourist is in the perception of danger as
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viewed by their peer group on their return home. Further work is required to establish the extent to which danger tourists experience danger and misadventure while travelling, as research into this area would gain a firmer understanding of the extent of the actual risk involved in danger-tourist activities. This might be done through statistical analysis of incidents. It might become clearer from these areas of further research if tourists to dangerous places are natural risk/sensation seekers in all areas of their lives or only when travelling. If danger tourists are found to be natural sensation seekers than further investigation into the similarities between tourists who travel to dangerous places and edgeworkers would be a natural progression of the research. 10.4.4 Virtual community
Putting aside the original research aims of investigating danger tourism, the online community of the Black Flag Café is another area inviting further research. It is a discrete closed virtual community and the access to the site established as part of this research offers opportunities for further research into their online behaviour. This research did not consider why forum members selected a particular avatar, instead it categorised the avatars in use and this might be another area of future work. It is an example of where further participant observation and the documenting of their online behaviour might enhance understanding of online communities. Particular areas of interest would include their netiquette, behaviour towards outsiders and the self-governing rules the community adheres to. 10.4.5 Methods and future research
This current study was limited by the use of data from only one data source: the online forum the Black Flag Café. In future investigations it might be possible to use a number of different data sources and, in the main, the suggested areas for future study take the research offline to enlarge the sphere of knowledge about tourists who travel to dangerous places. It should be acknowledged that future studies into the topic of travelling to dangerous places will probably be subject to safety constraints similar to those which influenced this research. Any further studies are therefore likely to be offline in-depth portraits of individual tourists or wider online surveys, both of which may be subject to reliability and validity issues. Investigations could also be carried out through an online survey with respondents required to provide proof of travel to a dangerous place, or face-to-face interviews might be conducted with tourists before or after travel. The research methods used to explore the Black Flag Café might themselves be used as the basis for an investigation into another online forum centred on high-risk activities (for example, ADVrider.com (2009); the adventure motorcycle online forum might show if the
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traits identified within the Black Flag Café forum (use of avatars, usernames, etc.) are typical of other virtual communities that revolve around discussions of dangerous activities. This research has also demonstrated how one individual’s online behaviour can significantly influence the behaviour of the virtual community. This framework could be applied to other high-risk activities that take place, or are discussed within, a peer or community environment, substituting another individual thought to be influential. To summarise, future work within the field of danger tourism can be varied depending on the interests of the researcher and the tools available to undertake the research. Significant benefit might be gained from face-to-face interviews with danger tourists if their credibility could be established. This work on danger tourism is transferable to other high-risk activities and several of the areas of future research, for example exploring other high-risk forums and the socially acceptable use of the aid work and journalism to visit dangerous places, demonstrate how this might be moved forward. 10.5 Conclusion
Taken together, the findings can be said to have added to the existing literature and contributed to the limited existing knowledge about the motivations, activities and influencing factors relating to tourists who visit dangerous places by offering a picture of, and providing information about, the social norms, perspectives and practices of a group of people who are interested in and who travel to dangerous places. The virtual approach has shown how online communities can be exploited to further offline knowledge. The combination of research methods used within this virtual ethnography has developed and informed growing knowledge which explores how existing research methods can be adapted and developed for use online. In addition, it has recognised some of the challenges in undertaking research in a virtual environment. The research has also demonstrated how the Internet might be used in the future to explore locations which are inaccessible to researchers. The audience for this research can be identified as both academic and the general public (Silverman 1993); it will also be of particular interest to the research participants themselves. Using an ethnographic framework and being able to grow close to the research subjects through participant observation allowed the researcher to analyse the online forum in a naturally occurring setting (Silverman 1993). The results of this research have created a structural ethnography (Brewer 2000) which has generated knowledge about the folk structures of a self-selecting group of danger tourists and the online community that they frequent. Through this, the research findings provide a detailed picture of the thoughts and actions of the Black Flag Café danger-tourism community, providing an insight into a closed
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online community: an in-depth view of their world which can be offered back to the community. The research provides the academic tourism community with information on the values of a group of danger tourists. It offers evidence of the factors that influence these tourists to embark on high-risk travel and identifies factors important to those who deliberately choose to visit dangerous places. The research presents to the academic community and general public a more accurate, detailed and in-depth picture of followers of the book The World’s Most Dangerous Places who visit dangerous places than that currently provided by newspaper and magazine articles and in doing so challenges existing views. 10.6 Final reflection
Through this research I have gained an understanding of an online community of people who live and share their lives with each other through a virtual medium. They are intrepid travellers who travel to many of the places where others fear to go. Despite some obvious personality clashes, they sustain each other’s dreams and where possible, or when needed, provide emotional and practical support to each other. On my side, the research has involved a considerable investment in experiencing this world, and I have, over the years, grown fond of many of the forum’s members. Being welcomed into their world has meant that I have lived with them through many life-changing moments, ranging from seminal travel experiences to births, deaths and marriages. Indeed, on occasion I have also shared my own life with them. My own journey into their world began in Kabul in 2003 and could not yet be described as complete as I remain an active member of the forum. There have been times of great attachment to the community, when my monitoring of their posts and behaviour might almost be described as addictive. There has also been a series of memorable moments when characters’ behaviours have confirmed my own views and research findings. In welcoming me into their world, first Robert Young Pelton and later the Black Flag Café took a risk. I hope that I have represented their views, ideologies, personal and collective myths fairly.
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12 Appendix
12.1 Protocol for participant observation
The researcher’s role during the participant-observation stage of the research was agreed with Kurt. The following outlines the agreed guidelines and role within the forum of the researcher:
Take on an active lurker role within the community as opposed to a large posting role Limit postings wherever to those about travel and tourism Be visible to all members of the online community when lurking on both the forum and within the chat room Use the same avatar and username for the duration of the research Avoid making posts which might change the dynamics of the Black Flag Café No flaming, trolling or making inflammatory posts Report any stalking or unsolicited/unwelcome behaviour to RYP and Kurt Answer forum members’ questions about the research Share research findings (publications, conference papers, etc.) with regular forum members.
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12.2 Content analysis: Cohen / Scott
codes H ADV DP DEATH BFC MEET HEALTH KID/HOST REQ T INFO D REP T INFO G REP T INFO D Q KIT DP person 1 8 26 13 6 11 36 52 36 6 person 2 8 27 12 8 10 34 53 37 7
no of agreements 72310682643234
(sum of marginals) 16 53 25 14 21 70 105 73 13 (product of marginals) 64 702 156 48 110 1224 2756 1332 42 joint marg proportions 0.028268551 0.093639576 0.044169611 0.024734982 0.037102473 0.123674912 0.185512367 0.128975265 0.022968198 squared 0.000799111 0.00876837 0.001950955 0.000611819 0.001376594 0.015295484 0.034414838 0.016634619 0.000527538
codes Q VAL R/B CHAT REQ T INFO G SELF P RYP Q RYP VIEW Q DP GEAR OTHER DISS WK DP person 1 6644 843117 person 2 8542 933116
no of agreements 4 5 35 7 3 3 1 14
(sum of marginals) 14 11 86 17 7 6 2 33 (product of marginals) 48 30 1848 72 12 9 1 272
joint marg proportions 0.024734982 0.019434629 0.151943463 0.030035336 0.012367491 0.010600707 0.003533569 0.058303887 squared 0.000611819 0.000377705 0.023086816 0.000902121 0.000152955 0.000112375 1.24861E-05 0.058303887
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total categorisations by person= 283 total categorisations by person= 283
total in agreement = 222 Total number of categories = 21 (Scotts Pa0)= 0.784452297
total no of categorisations= 566 sum of product of marginals= 8726
(Pae for scotts)= 0.163939492
(Pae for cohen)= 0.108953789
scotts pi= 0.742186479 cohens kappa= 0.758095932
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12.3 Wordle data analysis
Need Advice
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Damascus to Beirut by road
Flights out of BIAP (Baghdad International Airport)
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12.4 Respondent validation: comments on the findings from regular forum members.
Robert Young Pelton
Acts as a role model to other forum members
Yes Yes I believe he does. To some of the more novice travellers on the forum Robert is viewed as an inspiration to get out into the world and to interact with who they find there. Seeks to promote/sell idea of travelling to dangerous places as acceptable
Yes Yes. He helps to break down the illusion that travelling to dangerous places is an impossibility RYP provides celebrity endorsement to the product of travelling to dangerous places
This may be true, although perhaps only weakly Yes Seeks to promote himself as an adventurer
Yes I don’t think he necessarily seeks to promote himself as an adventurer but rather his reputation as one precedes him Majority of forum members admire him and seek to emulate him, although since the increase in his fame a small proportion question his motivations and methods
Yes, I see that on occasion. It seems like the kids that have a favorite indy band that then is accused of “selling out” as it becomes more accessible – this bunch has a bit of hankering for exclusivity I would say that the majority admire him but fewer seek to emulate him as they have their own motivations for travelling
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Is one of the main reasons that forum members joined the forum
Not sure of this – I wasn’t that well acquainted with the idea of RYP when I joined the forum I was actually looking for info and hung around for the entertainment value In a manner of speaking yes. They may be drawn in from one of his many articles or from searching his name after watching an appearance on television I joined back in 1998 because of the book and kept coming back because the co‐authors such as Rob Krott and Wink Dulles were making a lot of interesting comments. At this point I’d say that RYP’s presence is almost incidental to me. BFC forum
Flaggers like to portray themselves as deviant, special and different from other travellers
YES – extremely strong value among active members They see themselves as a kind of elite among the traveller. Like an experienced veteran. Importance of being/feeling adventurous
Yes Yes Younger posters seek to travel to establish status or as a rite of passage, being adventure seekers
Yes Yes Learning about self and other is an important part of travel
Yes and No – in general not a soul searching bunch Knowing you can get make it out of a difficult situations definitely aids personal development Posters like to tell each other tales of their travels/adventure and through this seek status within the group
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This forum seems to be somewhat guarded in what the share about themselves personally – unlike Adventure Rider on which people become quite engaged with each other in RL. Finding out someone is a “fake” provokes serious wrath. I’m not sure the same would happen here. I find that a bit lacking on the flag – but that might be a personal bias Yes There are quite a few people like me who don’t regale others with their travels, or even mention them that often Posters on the BFC
There are different types of posters on the BFC
Yes Absolutely. There is the full spectrum of traveller and even non‐travellers on the forum Diagram 1 seeks to show the different types of posters and also their relationship with travelling to dangerous places
The diagram seems to capture pretty completely the various permutations of the posters on the flag. This is an elegant summary. Not sure where or if the political discussions figure, but it does seem to reveal some things about the members. Behaviour when travelling
Focuses around personal growth and fulfilment
Yes and no Yes Some pleasure is gained from risk seeking
Yes Much in the same way as extreme sports Make travel plans to deliberately avoid tourists and touristy areas
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Yes Yes in some ways this could be seen as to not ‘associate’ with tourists / backpackers Want to be viewed as traveller as opposed to tourist or backpacker
YES !!! Snob factor is strongly in evidence Yes Posters seek to escape from rationalised, standardised and organised travel
Yes They want to stray off the beaten track and find experiences that are new or uncommon Flaggers seek to separate themselves from tourists through interaction with local population, seeking out authentic situations to experience
Yes and no – sometimes I think they have disdain for the local population but then if they are there for work and that work is security then the probably is a barrier to being comfortable interacting with local people – abnormal situation. Yes. The don’t want to have pre‐packaged experiences Flaggers also seek to separate themselves from backpackers as they have a more authentic travel experience
Yes Yes There is some use of existing tourist infrastructure (agents, hotels, tours, etc.) when it is convenient to the traveller
Yes Yes Flaggers seek out travel experiences which are interesting and offer excitement and an element of risk
Yes Yes
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Members of the Black Flag Café seek out “it” experiences which might be defined as visiting places known only to locals, participating in local life, eating local food, etc., or which could be defined as similar moments in travel
Yes Yes There is some novelty seeking in destination choice and/or a strong need for variety to go somewhere which is perceived as different
Yes Yes there is a need to see something that hasn’t been seen before, to seek out something new Attitude to risk
Risk taking is calculated and informed
Yes Not always Travellers generally work to their own limits (edgework) as opposed to taking excessive risks. There is a balance between experience and actual risk
Yes Yes While posters are interested in death they are not actually seeking to die or witness other people dying
True Very much so Majority of misadventures (getting kidnapped, injured, etc.) occur because someone has misjudged the balance between their own skill and the actual risk or has done something which might be considered irresponsible/stupid
Not sure I’ve seen many examples of this except for RYP’s Darien Gap Adventure Yes. Although sometime it can just be pure bad luck. Right place, wrong time.
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Some but not all posters carry out research on their destination before travel, information gained from people on the ground is valued over that from books, websites or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office/State Government advice
Yes I would say the vast majority carry out research first When considering destination risk, posters justify the risks in a number of different ways: deny the risk involved, highlight the benefits involved in travel, seek to align the risks involved with those of similar places they have travelled to or everyday risks, or seek to differentiate the risks to themselves as good, bad, likely, unlikely
Yes – for the most part it’s a pragmatic perspective portrayed Women posters
Female posters on the BFC can be divided into the same categories as the men
Yes Broadly speaking. Yes While there are fewer women than men on the board, a significant portion of the women on the board do travel both to dangerous and non-dangerous places
Yes I would say that although there is far less female than male posters, the proportion of female members who travel or have travelled is much higher. Women on the BFC are viewed as different from other women, more adventurous and less demanding
Perhaps – not sure I understand clearly the context of “less demanding”? In the sense of more likely to be single, educated, independent and self sufficient? Yes Most women on the board are middle‐aged housewives who find RYP hot, at least that is what I have come to believe.
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Other comments
The hierarchy of the board I find interesting. Who is “in”; who are the cool kids (Kurt, coldharvest). The rogues and misfits (like mach, shining eye,wbduncan, Herr Volkmer); the bad boys (fansy and james in the world); the law enforcement contingent, the military/security folks. The “out” (like yeahsure and Sparrow – although I like them both well enough – I know Stiv feels they are both useless) and of course the adversaries (penta vs all the boys except maybe rickshaw). I find the characters abit fun to follow – that is probably what keeps me engaged with the forum and also ebecaus I’ve made actual friends. Otherwise they’re interesting observations All in all accurate and interesting comments which pretty much sum up the board.
Draft conceptual map of the different types of BFC forum members
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12.5 Investigating the phenomenon of danger tourism
Lindsay, V., Wilkes, K., and Vaughan, R. D., 2008. Investigating the phenomenon of danger tourism. Paper presented at the International Peace Through Tourism 1st European Conference, 21-24 October, Leewarden, The Netherlands.
An Investigation into the Phenomenon of Danger Tourism
1st IIPT European Conference on Peace through Tourism
V Lindsay, K Wilkes and R D Vaughan [email protected]
With thanks to Robert Young Pelton
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A danger tourist is someone who deliberately chooses to travel to a dangerous place where there is a high level of violence due to civil unrest, conflict or war
Danger Tourists
Academic Evidence War Tourism Thana / Dark Tourism Darkest Tourism Tourism to Perilous Places
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Danger Tourists
Popular Evidence (Independent / Organised) Adventure Tourists Terror / Terrorism Tourism Holidays in Hell
Socially Acceptable Tourism
Journalists / Photojournalists Aid / Humanitarian Workers Military Contractors
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Robert Young Pelton
The Worlds Most Dangerous Places www.comebackalive.com The Black Flag Café
Methodology The Black Flag Cafe Single Revelatory Case Study Participant Observation Quantitative and Qualitative Content Analysis Hot Posts and Posters Emerging Themes Semi Structured e-mail interviews Consultants / Informants
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Escape from Rationalisation
The good news is that there are Almost No Tourists in Pakistan!!!
Tourism in Dagestan is non existent. you wont find any western tourist in Dagestan.
Robert Young Pelton as Role Model Indo is getting a really bad reputation for bad shit of every type. Its almost becoming an RYP paradise
is he a DP'er or a regular sort of folk?
I love adventure! I love danger! Shit I think I am a fanboy…..
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Discouraging the Mad and Crazy
I don't know if we do this around here, but I vote this Post of the Month!!!
Cheers that was hilarious
but there's 'dangerous' and then there's 'fucking stupidly dangerous' and the old sand box is defo in the second category.
I really don't want you interrupting my news in an orange jumpsuit on video at the Al-Zarqawi hotel (it will cost you an arm, a leg and a head).
Having an Adventure
I still entertain the idea of being a journalist, that’s why I take vacations in interesting places
I want to become…. not a journo but someone who travels constantly from international conflict zone to conflict zone
We all can't get sexy jobs where the bombs are falling and bullets flying
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Rite of Passage, Status and Masculinity Seeking I want to immerse myself in violent places and through such a rite of passage cross into manhood
I see the war adventurers RYP and Sir Richard Francis Burton as paragons of alpha masculinity
I guess battle scars aren’t sexy nomore
I want the global experience before I even finish college
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Self Actualization
I feel an uplifting vanity from being bolder than others in going to these places
Traveling to odd places is what truly expands your heart and your ability to SEE…..
I will have learned a bit about myself and the world I live in
Perception of Danger
Any place can be super safe or super dangerous right now and most of the time its safe despite the fear mongers efforts
I’m assuming you got that from our namby pamby ‘you'll poke your eyes out’ state department
How do you assess danger? By how much I'm bleeding? No but the most interesting places are usually dangerous
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Any Questions
www.comebackalive.com
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