A content analysis of Porto's online perceived and projected city image

Abstract

Cities use branding to communicate their distinctive characteristics to their target audiences. Building a powerful, favourable, and distinctive city image requires creating a positive and noticeable city brand identity (Qu et al., 2011). Social media platforms facilitate the projection of city image on a global scale, as well as enable the sharing of the perceived image visitors and locals have about a city, through the publication of pictures, videos and descriptions. Porto city brand was created in 2014 and it has been considered a successful case recognised internationally. The present research aims to explore the city image associations with Porto on social media, particularly, on Instagram, and understand the connection between the perceived online city image and the image Porto’s Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) intends to project. For that purpose, a qualitative visual and textual content analysis of Instagram pictures and hashtags associated with #Porto was employed. Then, an interview with the person in charge of Visit Porto social media was conducted, in order to present the main results of the analysis and understand more clearly the similarities and divergencies between both projected and perceived online city image. The findings reveal that users associate Porto mainly with its historical attribute. The textual analysis shows that the main hashtags used to describe Porto are related with travelling. In turn, Porto’s DMO currently intends to promote other city attributes which have not been as recognised so far, such as Porto’s parks and gardens, in order to diversify the touristic offer, and enhance value creation for visitors, residents and other stakeholders.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Joana Machado (Supervisor) & Carla Martins (Co-Supervisor)