New practices of self-presentation: the emerging aesthetics of Zoomie

Tourism is a leisure activity directed through the exercise of the gaze. The gaze actualizes in travel photographies either in destination pictures or in travel selfies, where the gaze is self-directed. Recently, due to the advent of Covid-19 limitations, the practice of travel selfie has expanded into new practices: tourism experiences have been converted in fully digital formats, through the adoption of video-conferencing platforms, as Zoom. Zoom tourism formats, which have been so successful to be experienced even today by smart tourists, have brought about a new modality of self-directed tourist gaze: the Zoomie. This photograph is a self-portray of a smart tourist framed in a Zoom’s canva. Similarly to the travel selfie, the Zoomie involves specific and still unexplored practices of self-presentation. Hence, this study, conducted in the cultural tourism field, reflects on how the emerging aesthetic and stylistic canons of Zoomie self-presentation are configured, compared and contrasted with those of the travel selfie. The aim of this study is to contribute to understand how the practices of self-presentation, and so of self-directed tourist gaze, are evolving in a new virtual context as Zoom.