Tourist in the (K)Now: social Rapportage and the performative rapport of social media

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how tourists, through the use of social and digital media platforms, are able to develop formations and connections that enhance a sense of rapport. The role of tourist is articulated through a new term, the ‘rapporter’, and the activity of the rapporter takes place as ‘rapportage’. Additionally, I suggest that this is achieved through the availability of mobile Apps. I propose that through the process and act of rapportage individuals can disseminate their responses to events and experiences, which provides an opportunity for further rapport. The voices then become part of a collective rapport inspired to understand and connect with others and can provide different examples compared to the divisive and often aggressive reporting frequently articulated as part of the ‘post-truth’ environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Rapport
• Rapportage
• Rapporter
• tourist
• social media
• formations
• social world
• interrelations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Karen Savage is Head of School for Fine & Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln, UK. She is co-convenor for the Intermediality in Theatre and Performance working group as part of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Recent publications include: Savage, K., and Symonds, D. 2018. Economies of Collaboration in Performance: More than the Sum of its Parts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, and Savage, K., and Smith, J. 2018. “Deference, Deferred: Rejourn as Practice in Familial War Commemoration.” In Performance as Commemoration, edited by M. Pinchbeck, and A. Westerside. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

ORCID

Karen Savage http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7060-596X

Notes

1 It is evident from Murphy & Rodriguez-Manzanares's report on the literature of rapport in their view of rappport in distance education (2012) that:

[r]apport is a dyadic phenomenon (Altman, 1990), experienced only in interaction between individuals, and not a personality trait (Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal 1990). It is therefore a mutual phenomenon characterized by mutual attentiveness (Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal 1990), mutual respect (Kyriacou, 2009), mutual openness (Granitz et al., 2009), mutual attention (Hall et al. 2009), and mutual understanding. (Carey et al., 1988, 168)

2 Massey, Thrift and others have suggested that our focus must be on “time-space” or “space-time”. Massey (1992), in particular, has outlined how space and time “are integral to one another”, “distinct” but “co-implicated”, and ‘it is on both of them, necessarily together, that rests the liveliness of the world’’ 47, 55, 56). (Merriman et al. 2012, 4)

Merriman et al's use of the word ‘liveliness’ is interesting, suggesting an energy, engagement and embodiment of action. In this paper, I use the essence of liveliness to refer to a rapport in a dynamic way, considering how, as individuals, we use our own bodies, and extensions of our bodies, such as recording devices, apps and social media platforms to be energized, engaged and embodied. I also discuss how we continue to explore the sense of space and time through our interactions with each other (often through media platforms), and by doing this we engage in rapportage.