Resumo

SANCHEZ JIMENEZ, Miguel Ángel; CORREIA, Marisol B  e  DE MATOS, Nelson. The Image of South American Countries as Tourist Destinations through their Official Facebook Social Network. Estud. perspect. tur. [online]. 2019, vol.28, n.3, pp.612-635. ISSN 1851-1732.

Social networks as a communication channel are established as an ideal and relevant element for tourism promotion since it allows to spread the image of the destination to a globalized market and generate a more interactive communication with users. The objective of this study is to know the image that is projected on the tourist destinations of the South American countries through its official social network of Facebook through a content analysis of the publications through the Nvivo 11 software in which they identify themselves through of categories and subcategories which are the main attributes or characteristics of the destinations. In addition, to know the most used attributes and those that generate more activity or interaction you get the number of publications, as well as the number of "likes" and comments for each category and subcategory. In the results highlight the categories "nature" and "culture" as the most used, however, are those referred to "activities" and "gastronomy" which generate more interaction and interest for users. On the subcategories, the attributes of "natural environment", "aquatic environment", "cultural events", "tradition", "history" and "art" predominate. In the interaction, it is important to highlight aspects of gastronomy such as cuisine and there is great interest on the part of the users of the subcategory "adventures". Aspects related to nature receive good interaction, however, those related to culture as "tradition" and "art" receive a low response.

Palavras-chave : South America; Tourism; Image; Communication; Interaction; Social networks; Facebook.