The reflexive tourist

This paper examines the role of social media as a conduit for tourist reflexivity. The rationale arises from the realisation that existing research has so far failed to recognise fully, in a sociocultural sense, the tourist as a reflexive agent. Taking a novel 'humanist' netnographic orientation, layered with a semi-autonetnographic voice, the paper mobilises the example of slum tourism, to examine tourist reflexivity as it is evident in social media space. The reflexive (slum) tourist emerges as exhibiting three capabilities: interrogating personal misconceptions and allowing self-transformation; embracing ambivalence, complexity and uncertainty; and, critiquing own and others' tourism behaviours. Interestingly, in this sense, tourists opt to self-review in product review sites.