Micro-campi turistici su Reddit: distinzione simbolica, violenza algoritmica e regole comunitarie = Tourism Micro-fields on Reddit: Symbolic Distinction, Algorithmic Violence, and Community Rules

Abstract

Tourism Micro-fields on Reddit: Symbolic Distinction, Algorithmic Violence, and Community Rules. This paper analyses seven tourism subreddits (r/travel, r/solotravel, r/TravelNoPics, r/TravelHacks, r/TravelAdvice, r/femaletravels, r/LuxuryTravel) as relatively autonomous micro-fields within the digital field of tourism communication, drawing on Bourdieu’s field-capital-habitus framework (Bourdieu 1984, 1986, 1993) in dialogue with Bourdieusian Media Studies (Benson and Neveu 2005; Couldry 2003; Hesmondhalgh 2006) and with the sociology of algorithms (Airoldi 2022). Against the visual hegemony of Instagram and TikTok, Reddit emerges as a theoretically productive anomaly: a semi-anonymous, text-centred platform where symbolic capital is generated through narrative competence and rule compliance. Through netnographic content analysis and platform-specific operationalisation of five capital forms (visibility, interactive, authorial, visual, categorial), the study analyses the 10 most upvoted posts of each subreddit (N = 70) collected between 29 March 2025 and 29 March 2026. Non-parametric tests (Kruskal-Wallis, chi-square with Monte Carlo validation) are consistent with structural differentiation between subreddits. Findings suggest a hierarchically graded field: r/TravelNoPics and r/solotravel emerge as reactive-autonomous poles; r/LuxuryTravel constitutes the heteronomous pole, where 40% of top content is produced by declared marketing agencies. In r/femaletravels, accounts reporting gendered harassment are observed to be banned or deleted after DM-level targeting, a configuration the paper reads as compatible with a second-order algorithmic violence that appears to sanction the very witnesses whose testimony the community legitimises. As an empirical plausibility probe, the paper contributes to Bourdieusian Media Studies by operationalising platform-specific capitals as measurable field properties and by articulating the conceptual distinction between symbolic and algorithmic violence along three axes (agency, intentionality, contestability).