Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Case Study

Visiting authenticity on Los Angeles Gang Tours: Tourists backstage

Konstantina Zerva*
Universitat de Girona, Campus de Montilivi, Girona 17071, Spain

h i g h l i g h t s

Theoretical presentation of the concept of authenticity in tourism.

Case study of a niche tourism market developed in L.A. Gang Tours.

Content analysis of online texts which inform the market over L.A. Gang Tours.

Focus on markers of objective authenticity from the organization and the press.

Focus on markers of existential authenticity from tourists who took this tour.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Many studies have stated that tourists are searching for authenticity e or what they perceive as such e
Received 2 December 2013 within foreign cultural contexts. Accepting forms of culture that reflect day-to-day life as tourist at-
Accepted 7 August 2014 tractions, many tourists have developed an interest in the real life of their hosts. Yet, the definition of
Available online 29 August 2014
authenticity in tourism has become multifaceted. Divided between experiences and objects, authenticity
has been perceived through either objective, constructive or postmodern approaches. This paper ex-
Keywords:
amines the various elements on which a new tourist attraction, namely Los Angeles Gang Tours, bases its
Authenticity
commercialization upon authenticity as communicated through online communication channels. For this
Tourism
Crime
purpose, content analysis was applied to the textual and visual online data available. Finally, the dis-
Reality cussion is developed as to what form of authenticity this tour represents, as well as the perception of
Gangs authenticity that tourists share online after experiencing the tour.
Tours © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
So far, investigations into tourism have provided various con-
ceptual frameworks of what tourism represents for people, ranging
from a way of viewing, creating and confirming realities, playing
with variables such as body, space and time (Adler, 1989), or a
deeper involvement with society and culture (MacCannell, 1976), to
a private, self-perpetuating system of illusions (Cohen, 1988), or
simply, a tension relief activity (Lau, 2010). The need to escape from
day-to-day life and see something different, regardless of its degree
of originality or novelty, is by far the basic motivation for practicing
tourism. The intensity of observations and experiences during
traveling is high, not only due to the change of context but also due
to its short duration and infrequent repetition (Adler, 1989).
Through traveling, people visit different contexts and situations,
witnessing various ways of belonging to the world and seeing the
* Tel.: þ34 600558933.
E-mail address: konstantina.zerva@udg.edu.
Self from other perspectives (Neumann, 1992). This is why most
forms of tourism are culturally identified by escape codes (Edensor,
2001), practiced in host countries, which are marketed as devoid of
problems so as to enhance an image of safety (Silver, 1993),
regardless of whether that is entirely true or not.
Tourists look everywhere for authenticity, whether it's an actual
experience or simply something different from their ordinary lives
(Sharpley, 1999), in order to overcome the discontinuity of
modernity (MacCannell, 1976). That is why tourism destination
communication strategies focus widely on presenting their product
as authentic. So naturally the question of what authenticity rep-
resents arises. Undeniably, this is one of the most overused words
in tourism investigation (Dann, 1996), a polemical concept defined
too many times (Peterson, 2005; Taylor, 2001) due to its continually
evolving nature within the various changing social and cultural
contexts.
The purpose of this investigation is not to offer one more defi-
nition of authenticity but rather e after gathering and structuring
into a continuum the existing ones e to analyze which theoretical
conceptualizations of it are being used through a) the online

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2014.08.004
0261-5177/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
communication messages of a particular tourist attraction e called
Los Angeles (L.A.) Gang Tours e and b) the online messages tourists
that have taken the tour share with their peers. This less conven-
tional tourist attraction was founded in 2009 in the County of Los
Angeles in the U.S. state of California e which welcomed a record
41.4 million visitors in 2012 (Los Angeles Tourism & Convention
Board, 2013). This attraction refers to a nonprofit organization
created by Alfred Lomas, a former gang member of one of the most
notorious gangs in Los Angeles, “Florence 13.” Being a veteran of an
elite U.S. Marine Corps infantry unit, Alfred was a freelance hired
bodyguard protecting criminal assets and some of L.A.'s top gang
leaders. Currently, Alfred presents himself as a community inter-
ventionist and a gang abatement consultant with the intention of
training and professionalizing former gang members. The mission
of this organization according to the information available on their
official web page is to reduce violence among the gang commu-
nities of South Central, to improve employment rates for ex-gang
members and to create awareness for the wider social context
that visits them of the existing situation that gang communities
live in.
2. Literature review
2.1. Day-to-day life or “reality” tourism
Besides great cultural and historical monuments or animated
forms of culture such as festivals and local celebrations, Mathieson
and Wall (1982: 159) distinguish a third form of cultural attraction
reflected in the day-to-day life of the visited society. For
MacCannell (1976), tourist attractions represent every visible
public part of society, including public behaviors of any sort.
Modern man feels the need to distance himself from his “real life”
and learn as well as experience the “real” life of others (MacCannell,
1976; Sharpley, 1999; Taylor, 2001). Getting a small taste of the
simplicity or complexity, poverty or wealth of the visited social
context can be achieved through social interaction with locals, who
form the “spirit” of public places (Selwyn, 1996). The quest is to
become a traveler and not a tourist (Frow, 1991), that is, to become
an active agent in search of adventure, people and experiences
instead of a passive agent who expects everything to happen to him
and for him (Boorstin, 1992). Putting aside counteractive systems of
insiders versus outsiders and giving emphasis to the basis of the
tourist experience, encounters between different stakeholders
produce meaning-making procedures that allow a redefinition of
truth and authenticity (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012; MacCannell, 1976).
Social interaction with the “spirit” of these public places basi-
cally means discovering and making contact with the “Other.” This
term has been widely used to express the materially oppressed,
primitive and exotic, located in particular nonmodern geographic
spaces unpolluted by Western civilization, and visited by the
materially privileged, who wish to experience the life of a distant
past in its original state (Bruner, 1991; Frow, 1991; Galani-Moutafi,
2000; Silver, 1993). Spivak's term “othering” (1985) e meaning
distancing from Others e was first used in slum tourism by
Steinbrink and Pott (2010), and later by Frisch (2012) in favela
tourism. These niche markets are looking for new forms of the Self,
more authentic ones (Dyson, 2012; MacCannell, 1976), through an
interplay of geography, time and the image of the Other (Galani-
Moutafi, 2000).
Access to these particular public spaces is the actual challenge
for the tourist who is confronting the destination tourism industry,
with its established recommendations and semantic in-
terpretations. This quest, for MacCannell (1976), is doomed to
failure since tourists do not see everything they ought to see. Yet,
one way of confronting this “touristic shame,” as he names it, is
515
through guided tours that provide easy access to “ordinary” areas
closed to outsiders, in order to reveal the inner reality of these
spaces. Sometimes, these areas represent disadvantaged zones of
the tourist destination, usually referred to as “slums,” “favelas” or
townships (Butler, 2010; Dyson, 2012; Frisch, 2012; Meschkank,
2011; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a, 2006b; Rofles, 2010), where so-
cial problems, such as poverty, violence or even crime, are dis-
played. Yet, today authenticity is also looked for where risk and
danger hide (Frow, 1991; Harper, 2006), for the very reason that the
tourism industry has not shown much interest in those areas. As
could be expected, new forms of tourism specialisms have been
created representing niche markets, starting from alternative
tourism (Douglas, Douglas, & Derrett, 2001), and specializing in
“dark” tourism (Lennon & Foley, 2002), “slum” tourism (Rofles,
2010), “poverty” tourism (Rofles, 2010), “pro-poor” tourism,
volunteer tourism (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012) or “favela” tourism (Frisch,
2012).
Thus, the transformation of spatially disadvantaged commu-
nities, and the insecurity they are known for, into adventure and
pleasure appears to be a new tourism product for tours. Many in-
vestigations have called these tours “social” or “reality” tours, based
on the authentic day-to-day life of the visited community, with its
positive and negative side, as shown by their operators (Dyson,
2012; Frisch, 2012; Rofles, 2010). Here, tourists are asked to visit
in person, imagine and share later on what life means in these
contexts (Isaac, 2009; Meschkank, 2011), while contributing to the
impulse of positive socioeconomic development. Examples of such
tours that promote this negative sightseeing go way back to the end
of nineteenth-century Victorian London, when upper-middle-class
people toured the dangerous and morally dubious East End (Koven,
2006), or later to 1967, when The New York Times reported the
Penny Sightseeing Company, which inaugurated extensive guided
tours of Harlem (MacCannell, 1976: 40). More contemporary tour
examples are the Katrina Tours in New Orleans (Pezzullo, 2009), the
Slum Tours in Dharani, Mumbai (Dyson, 2012), the pro-Palestinian
tours through Bethlehem neighborhoods (Isaac, 2009), and the
township tours in Cape Town and Johannesburg (Butler, 2010).
According to Greenwood (1989), anything sold can be trans-
formed into a commodity, and although areas of urban deprivation,
concentration camps, slums and battlefields e to name but a few e
have shown some resistance to the forces of commercialization
(Adler, 1989), today we can say that that battle is lost because they
mark tourism experiences as “real” (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012). The pro-
viders of reality tours have created a niche market, defining its
demand by using real-not real and authentic-not-authentic dis-
tinctions (Meschkank, 2011). Images of the day-to-day life of the
Other were first created by “orientalism,” which for Edward Said (in
Silver, 1993) refers to the first contacts between Europeans and the
Arab people and the various distinctions between “West” and
“Other.” Later on, the tourism industry marketed these images,
usually based on what Westerners thought the Other would be like,
using exaggerations and an inaccurate representation of their lives
and cultures in the name of profit (Silver, 1993).
The role of the mass media in this image formation for tourists,
presenting what the Other looks like, has been undeniably funda-
mental. Previous investigations have shown the need for tourists to
draw their conclusions directed by other sources (Adler, 1989;
Bhattacharyya, 1997; Edensor, 2001). Ranging from print mate-
rials, such as literary texts and traveler accounts, which are based
on the word-of-mouth effect (Galani-Moutafi, 2000), journals like
National Geographic, or brochures that portray static and uninflu-
enced by Western colonialism traditions (Silver, 1993), to popular
motion pictures with international distribution and success, like
Slumdog Millionaire and City of God (Frisch, 2012), the “poor” are
aestheticized, either glamorized or demonized to their respective
516 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
audiences (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012; Miles, 2009). In particular, the pro-
duction of films and television in identifiable geographical spaces
has worked as city-goers of these mediatized spaces (Edensor,
2001). These “must-sees” that are constructed by the condition-
ing elements of the media provide the signs through which a tourist
will perceive and interpret any stimulation according to his/her
own value system; that is, they condition Urry's (1992) tourist gaze,
referring to the power tourists activate when they encounter the
“Other” by gazing at it. This has contributed to the creation of ex-
pectations of destination images at such a level that today tourists
have developed a critical attitude towards the mass media, con-
trasting their projected reality of a slum with the reality of the slum
they experience in person and in situ with the guidance of the tour
operators (Dyson, 2012; Edensor, 2001; Meschkank, 2011; Rofles,
2010). In most cases, investigation has shown that tourists e
interested especially in locals' real life rather than in the “reality”
disseminated by the mass media (Dyson, 2012; Meschkank, 2011;
Rofles, 2010) e report no disappointment when there is a
mismatch between media-generated expectations and real expe-
rience, but rather surprise while they focus mostly on the experi-
ential knowledge they gain.
2.2. Defining the “moving target” of authenticity
Within tourism literature, authenticity has been given various
names and definitions as a quality. Focusing on the differentiated
issues of authenticity, Wang (1999) and Lau (2010) make a clear
distinction between a) authentic toured objects or object authen-
ticity, and b) authentic experiences or relationship authentic ex-
periences, constructing a conceptual differentiation of what can be
named as authentic. In the first case, the term is addressed to what
tourists visit, while in the second it is addressed to the relationship
tourists develop with what they visit.
More particularly, authentic toured objects (Wang, 1999) or
object authenticity (Lau, 2010) refers to the tourist's recognition
that the toured objects are authentic or real. The original usage of
authenticity was applied in museum contexts to describe objects
that are what “they appear to be or are claimed to be” so as to
evaluate whether their price is worth paying for (Trilling, 1972: 93).
Yet, when applying the qualification of authenticity within the
entire tourism industry, it referred to the “noncontentious genu-
ineness of an observable thing” (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a), while
the term “object” expanded and did not correspond to something
tangible necessarily, but to everything ranging from life processes,
activities, artifacts (Lau, 2010), or even a complete journey.
Centralized on object authenticity, existing definitions of it can
be divided in Wang's (1999) threefold categorization: objective,
constructive and existential authenticity. In an unsuccessful effort
to generate one basic concept, accepted once and for all by all
members of its community (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a), modern-
ists/realists, constructivists and postmodernists conceived each
these three conceptualizations of authenticity respectively. For
modernists, object authenticity should be underpinned by a fixed
and objective reality, while for constructivists the basis of
authenticity depends on an unfixed and subjective context of in-
dividual interpretation. Finally, postmodernists go even further by
asserting that authenticity is an irrelevant factor to many tourists
for consumption purposes.
More particularly, the objectivist approach assumes that
authenticity is a real property or quality measured by objective
criteria, that is, through an etic perspective of experts and pro-
fessionals, not of tourists (Belhassen, Caton, & Stewart, 2008;
Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a). Objective authenticity is directly
related to issues or marks of tradition, time, host and place, and
basically represents a series of simplistic definitions where toured
objects should be recognized (Adler, 1989; Wang, 1999). Existing
definitions that come into this category use inflexible terms of the
nature of authenticity, such as origin, genuine, real, true, sincere,
unique, primitive, relic and past (Benjamin, 1968; Bruner, 1991;
Cohen, 2007; Peterson, 2005; Sharpley, 1999; Taylor, 2001; The
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993: 150). The absolute
nature of these terms is the reason why tour operators and mar-
keters use them in their texts when they want to refer to authen-
ticity (Timothy & Boyd, 2002).
According to Benjamin (1968: 220), “the presence of the original
is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.” So, what does
“original” stand for? According to The New Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary, the original represents something “proceeding directly
from its source” or “the origin of source of something from which
another is copied” or “existing or belonging at or from the begin-
ning or earlier age” or “given to or displaying independent exercise
of the mind or imagination” (1993: 2022). That is, original is related
to the source, meaning to being first, and also to being creative in an
unexpected and unrepeated way. Thus, authenticity is the essence
of all that comes from its beginning e the original e including its
substantive duration in time (Benjamin, 1968).
This particular variable of time has been highly connected to
authenticity. For Rushdie (1991: 67 as cited in Taylor, 2001: 7),
“authenticity is the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism. It
demands that common sources, forms, style, language and symbols
all derive from a supposedly homogenous and unbroken tradition.”
The interrelation of tradition and time, expressed as other historical
periods (MacCannell, 1976), an earlier era (Sharpley, 1999) or sim-
ply the past (Cohen, 2007; Sharpley, 1999; Wang, 1999), has also
been reported. For Taylor, “the past holds the model of the original”
(2001: 9) and authenticity must pay homage to a conception of
origins through toured objects, ways of life or even people them-
selves. This is a significant variable upon which the tourism in-
dustry focuses its communication strategies, implying the offer of
“time travels,” visiting primitive societies, undiscovered places
where the Other still lives (Culler, 1990; Frisch, 2012; Galani-
Moutafi, 2000; Sharpley, 1999).
Going even further, Sharpley (1999) emphasizes the importance
of the host, claiming that “authentic is made, produced or enacted
by local people according to custom or tradition, giving emphasis to
traditional culture and origin, the genuine, the real or the unique,”
while Silver (1993) emphasizes the importance of indigenous
people remaining undeveloped and primitive so as to attract
tourists. Locals' involvement in the tourist space is considered vital
for tourists' construction of what is real or fake (Mkono, 2012).
A final variable that is attached to authenticity within the
objective approach is place (Belhassen et al., 2008). For Grazian
(2003) and Peterson (2005), authentic experiences can be
reached in places where few go, unchanged by tourists (Arronsson,
1994), considering dilapidated conditions as marks of authenticity.
This variable and more specifically the one of territorial thinking
have been primarily analyzed by Erving Goffman (1959). Albeit
criticized for his limitation to the microcosm of face-to-face situa-
tional interactions (Blumer, 1972), his negative focus on society and
the opportunistic side of human nature (Williams, 1986), as well as
his standpoint from rather unsystematic observations that lacked
an adequate traditional theory of social action (Smith, 2006;
Williams, 1986), he described in detail the underworld, that is,
the world beneath the social system where individuality and social
structure fight for prevalence (Dawe, 1973), creating the metaphor
of “all the world's a stage” (Smith, 2006: 42).
This argument that the actual physical environment plays an
important role in the construction of a setting of social meanings
and the human experiences within it has been denied by some
(Tuan, 1977) but generally supported by others (Belhassen et al.,
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
2008; Wang, 1999). More particularly, Goffman (1959, 1990)
showed how individual role playing and identity formation during
social interaction is converted into a performance influenced by the
setting. For Belhassen et al. (2008), this is shown in the case of
tourism and pilgrimage. The setting is divided into social estab-
lishments of front and back regions (Goffman, 1959), or the untruth
and the truth (Frow, 1991). The authenticity of a performance de-
pends on the level of difference between the front and backstage.
Difficulties in defining which is which appear when the back region
is transformed into a front region for touristic purposes. The front
represents the “scenery,” a managed setting characterized by sur-
face and visibility, where tourists (audience) meet the hosts (per-
formers). This front stage was divided by Edensor (2001) into two
categories, the enclavic tourist spaces, designed for tourism and
having eliminated any disturbing factor for its commercialization,
and the heterogenous tourist spaces, where tourism as an eco-
nomic activity respects and coincides with the identity of the space.
The backstage is the region closed to outsiders (audience), and
where the Other lives comfortably its reality in secrecy and in-
timacy. This is the setting that travelers e and not tourists e visit
(Boorstin, 1992).
MacCannell's (1976) contribution in describing six possible
combinations of front and backstage has been important in tourism
literature. Arguing that in some cases backstage could be set up to
deceive tourists, he formed a continuum of a front-back dichotomy,
where stage one represents purely a front region, stage two refers
to a front region that creates an atmosphere of a back region, stage
three is a complete copy of a back region, stage four symbolizes
access to nontouristic back regions, stage five corresponds to a
slightly altered back region for visiting purposes, and stage six
stands for the social space that actually attracts tourism. For him, all
spaces that are directed to tourism represent staged authenticity,
while for Taylor (2001), the reproduction of culture in a staged
setting reduces the aura of authenticity because it is viewed and
experienced out of its real context and under forced conditions for
touristic goals.
On the other hand, there have been attempts to identify the
nature of authenticity focusing on what it should not be. Such
contradictory concepts in existing definitions are copy, fake,
fraudulent, simulation, simulacrum, reproduction, imitative,
contrived, phony, commercialized or traded (Bruner, 1994; Cohen,
1988; Greenwood, 1989; Sharpley, 1999; The New Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary, 1993: 150). For example, MacCannell (1976)
and Taylor (2001) argue that the perception of authenticity is
possible when there is perceived inauthenticity; the existence of
reproduction is what makes something original (Culler, 1990).
Authentic objects, or generally speaking the “otherness,” are not
made for trade but for the use of local people in their ordinary lives,
which adds significance to these objects (MacCannell, 1976;
Sharpley, 1999). The interference of the tourism industry has as
its unique purpose the satisfaction of mass tourism, which for
Boorstin (1992) and Sharpley (1999) is connected to the inau-
thentic, while niche-market tourism is connected to the authentic.
According to Robinson and Novelli (2005), niche tourism includes a
cultural fragmentation and specialization based on tourism that is
placed in authentic settings and this authenticity is important for
tourists' experience and for the credibility of the attraction. Mass
tourism experiences are connected to commodification and stan-
dardization (Wang, 1999), or what Boorstin called “pseudo events”
(1992: 11), meaning planned events that have an ambiguous rela-
tion with reality, neither informing nor spoofing.
Putting aside these definitions of authenticity as a fixed
measurable quality (Bruner, 1994; Sharpley, 1999), tourism litera-
ture has introduced more negotiable terms, which do not neces-
sarily exclude the objective approach, but rather expand it by
517
allowing more interpretations. The rise of relativism, post-
modernism, poststructuralism and constructivism has indicated
that reality is not perceived the same way by everyone (Reisinger &
Steiner, 2006a). Within this framework, Peterson conceptualized
authenticity as a “moving target” (2005: 1094), referring to “… a
claim that is made by or for someone, thing, or performance and
either accepted or rejected by relevant others” (2005: 1086), ac-
cording to the way they perceive reality. The attribution of
authentic to a toured object does not depend on it being an
inherent quality, but on a social construction rising from personal
perceptions, beliefs, held stereotypes, expectations, imagination,
background and preferences based on various versions of reality
interpretations (Bruner, 1994; Leigh, Peters, & Shelton, 2006;
Mkono, 2012; Pearce & Moscardo, 1986; Reisinger & Steiner,
2006a; Sharpley, 1999; Wang, 1999). It is the perceived authen-
ticity that renders tourism objects attractive to the tourist market
regardless of whether they are originals or not (Cohen, 1988;
Markwick, 2001). Therefore authenticity moves from objective to
subjective definitions, or from the etic to the emic. For Wang
(1999), this pluralistic context relative to each type of tourist is
constructive authenticity, while for Culler (1994) it is symbolic
authenticity. Furthermore, Wang (2012) developed the term
“customized” authenticity, referring to the construction of social
reality through a continuous negotiation between tourists' expec-
tations and the destination's effort to look like home, thus adapting
the authenticity of the toured object to the necessities of the guest
(Self) and the host (Other).
These types of authenticity accept on equal terms the concept of
authentication, where an authority e either an expert or even end
users when they are well informed, i.e. collectors or fans (Peterson,
2005) e can certify and validate the authenticity of an object
(Culler, 1990; The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993:
150), whether to a wider social context or a close personal one. The
more contemporary the object, the less formal the role of the
authenticator can be (Peterson, 2005); for example, a simple con-
sumer. As long as the creator or representative of that object is
influenced by its true cultural context, and the members of the
social group it belongs to remain true to the presentation of Self
(Goffman, 1959), authenticity can be granted to the object or the
social group (Peterson, 2005).
Additionally, places are not fixed and static in time (Cohen,
1988), but they are rather complex networks where hosts, tour-
ists and cultural objects interact and thus automatically create new
performances and identities (Gotham, 2010; Sheller & Urry, 2006).
Denying change and accepting as authentic only what is directly
related to the past is a simplification that can only lead to cultural
loss (Amoamo, 2011). Tourism as a global process of commodifi-
cation promotes the serial reproduction of spaces, converting them
into new tourism products, like the example of Disneyfication
where urban cultural spaces are refashioned based on fake histories
that are masqueraded as authentic (Gotham, 2010). Yet, the
importance of place is not the same as in objective authenticity. For
Pearce and Moscardo (1986) and Sharpley (1999), the distinction
between backstage and front stage is irrelevant in defining
authenticity, while the total tourist experience and what it means
to the individual tourist is more significant. Whether the events
that take place in a particular space are real or pseudo events, the
importance lies in how tourists experience them and what partic-
ular needs they wish to satisfy. Within this context, Cohen (1979)
recommended four categories of perceived authenticity and
place: in the first, tourists are in the real setting and recognize it as
such; in the second, tourists are in the real setting but believe that
they are in a staged one; in the third, tourists are in a fake setting
but tourists believe it to be authentic; and in the fourth, tourists are
in a fake setting and know it.
518 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
Over time, culture also continually changes, creating dynamic
readjustments and new local cultures (Amoamo, 2011;
Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 2007). In time, traditions not only go through
a process of recontextualization but also of a stylized invention
according to the needs of each time period (Frow, 1991; Silver,
1993). Throughout history, dispersed, diasporic groups move to
new lands, where they try on the one hand to hold on to their
inherited tradition and, on the other, to culturally adapt to the new
host societies or the Other (Che, 2004). Within this approach comes
what Cohen (1988) called “emergent authenticity,” a rather
appropriate term for hybridized diaspora cultures (Che, 2004). This
cultural hybridization, based on geographic mobility and an amal-
gamation of historically separate cultures, leads to new configura-
tions of diversity, redefining communities and transforming places,
blurring the boundaries between traditional and contemporary and
producing more than one authenticity in the same tourist sites
(Amoamo, 2011; Che, 2004; Gotham, 2010; Park, 1931; Ryan,
Collins, & Pearce, 2008). Thus, authenticity construction is still
happening and it can be found in any time period because it basi-
cally authenticates the past and the present (Sharpley, 1999).
Definitions of authenticity within the constructive approach
make use of the contradictory concepts not allowed in the objective
approach. More particularly, a toured object can be considered as
authentic if it is a believable reproduction of a person, object or past
cultural/ethnic performance, which resembles the original and
looks credible (Baudrillard, 1988; Bruner, 1994; Peterson, 2005), a
historically accurate simulation where creativity related to cultural
performances is allowed (Cohen, 2007).
Finally, Wang (1999) separated the postmodern approach of
authenticity for toured objects, where inauthenticity basically is
not a problem. This type of authenticity is part of a long philo-
sophical tradition related to the significance of being human
(Steiner & Reisinger, 2006), focusing on deconstruction (Leigh et al.,
2006), where the more “authentic” a representation feelse espe-
cially with the help of new technologies e the more “real” it is. A
present-day tourist, with a significant amount of information
available to him, is in search of a vanished reality. People from a
Westernized world are living in a “society of the spectacle”
(Edensor, 2001: 68) surrounded e most of them from the day they
were born e by imitations, fabrications and simulations, circulating
everywhere to be consumed (Cohen, 1995; Lau, 2010; Peterson,
2005; Ritzer & Liska, 1997). So their connection with origins
never really existed. The lack of authenticity has made people more
connected to the copy and the imitation at such a level that not only
are they not concerned with the level of its originality but they also
prefer the imitation they have always known (Boorstin, 1992).
Ever further, Gilles Deleuze (1968, in Frow, 1991) claimed that,
putting aside the Platonic absolutes of the priority of the original
over the copy, simulation is not connected to loss because every
original is a copy itself, divided in its very origin. Postmodern
authenticity refers to the deconstruction of its original definition
and introduces new constructions, like the scenery in New Zea-
land where Lord of the Rings was filmed, whose reality in abso-
lute terms is irrelevant for the tourist (Wang, 1999). Thus, people
live in hyperreality, where dreamlike and uncritical states of
hyper-creation exist through impressive and simulated experi-
ences so as to indulge consumption (Baudrillard, 1988; Eco,
1986). Cohen (1995) goes even further with his term “sustain-
able authenticity,” underlining that any type of staged authen-
ticity protects original contexts from being damaged by tourism,
while tourists themselves, recognizing or not their authenticity,
are only looking for personal enjoyment. For Steiner and
Reisinger (2006), a tourist that is looking for existential
authenticity is uninterested in a tour guide's explanation, in
terms of opinion about quality and value.
Moving on to the authenticity of tourist experience, for Sharpley
(1999) the latter depends upon the relationship developed be-
tween the tourist and the product/experience, between the social
structures and the personal agency. This is called “performative
authenticity” (Zhu, 2012), where learning comes through interac-
tive experiences. Yet, when an experience is too programmed and
structured, and when the duration of this experience is short e as
in the case of tours e then the contact with the host is expected to
be less sincere. This means that in order for an experience to be
perceived as authentic, the contact with the host culture has to be
as natural and as long as possible (Taylor, 2001). Authenticity is
perceived as free self-expression, an engagement in nonordinary
activities (Wang, 1999), which for Belhassen et al. (2008) depends
on the setting in which people experience authenticity. Therefore,
the feeling of authenticity is related to the “authentically good
time” people have (Brown, 1996).
These interactive experiences are referring to the contact with
the “real world” and the “real Self.” In the first case, authenticity is
related to information and knowledge about the social and cultural
context of the tourist destination (MacCannell, 1976), learned in situ
and guided e when possible e by tour operators. This is what
Selwyn (1996) called “cool authenticity,” referring to the authen-
ticity of knowledge. In the case of the “real Self,” authenticity is
connected to feelings and, more particularly, to sociability and so-
cial interactions, which refer specifically to truthful human re-
lationships between the tourist and the host, in order to discover
and share the natives' uncommodified true lives (Lau, 2010;
MacCannell, 1976; Pearce & Moscardo, 1986). This last point is
further developed by Selwyn (1996) and Wang (1999), who argue
that a relationship between the authentic Self and the authentic
Other is created. The individual is interested in self-discovery
(Steiner & Reisinger, 2006), challenging the Self when facing the
Other. This is what Selwyn (1996) called “hot authenticity” or what
Wang (1999) called “existential authenticity.” Existential authen-
ticity means being true to oneself, so as not to lose the Self within
the public sphere (Berger, 1973).
Observing the evolution of the definitions of authenticity from
objective to postmodern, with regard to toured objects as well as
personal experiences, it appears that concepts go from the absolute
objective black and white distinction to an endless (and still
ongoing) subjective categorization of gray color schemes. Recent
investigation has given evidence of the fact that from consumers'
perspective, all three conceptualizations of authenticity can coin-
cide within a community, according to personal perceptions (Leigh
et al., 2006). Yet, the question remains over the nature of authen-
ticity that is selected and is reflected by the communication mes-
sages emitted by the tourism producers towards their market,
other intermediaries like the press, and even tourists themselves
towards the market they belong in. The marketing of areas not
commercialized in the past for tourism purposes makes the use of
authenticity possible as a competitive advantage of their promo-
tion. Therefore, in studying a particular tourist attraction called Los
Angeles Gang Tours, which allows access to the gang culture of
South Central, Los Angeles, the purpose of this paper is to explain
what type of authenticity is projected and commercialized online,
addressing the niche market of reality tourism. For this reason, the
various markers that could justify the concept of “authentic” as
they are being used by the online communication strategies of this
organization will be shown.
3. Study methods
For the purposes of this paper, an intrinsic case study is devel-
oped, meaning a study undertaken so as to better understand the
particularity and ordinariness of the case itself with no intention of
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
generalizing or of building a theory (Stake, 1994, 1995). Case studies
represent, for Louis Smith, a bounded system that has working
parts (Stake, 1994, 1995), where investigators should identify and
understand the boundaries of the case and the complexity of the
behavior patterns within that system. A single organization, pro-
gram, group or community can be identified as a bounded system.
The goal here is to depict how the properties related to the
authenticity of L.A. Gang Tours as an organization (bounded sys-
tem) are being commercialized and projected in the tourism mar-
ket by insiders of that organization (working parts). The intention
here is not to be conclusive, but rather to generate new research
questions and objectives within the tourism destination research
field (Yin, 2003).
In order to triangulate and follow a corroborative mode of
interpretation, both primary and secondary data were used. Firstly,
in order to fully understand the scopes and aims of the tour from
the creator's perspective, I collected primary data through a per-
sonal, semi-structured, online telephone interview with the
founder of L.A. Gang Tours, Alfred Lomas, on April 15th 2011, which
lasted 50 min. The use of the real name of this organization's
creator has been agreed with him. Open-ended questions were
employed in order to gain insight into the organization's posi-
tioning from a member's perspective. The questions' content was
divided into three basic categories: a) the existing situation of the
gang culture in South Central, b) the tour's organization and
structure, and c) the profile, expectations and reactions of the
tourists who take the tour.
Secondary data refers to online information available to pro-
spective tourists, nationally and internationally, who access the
Internet in order to learn about L.A. Gang Tours. As for the time
frame of this research, I analyzed secondary data that were put
online between January 2009 and January 31st 2012. Due to the
organization's low budget, L.A. Gang Tour's promotion is dependent
on online channels, where information is either formed by the or-
ganization itself or emerges from public relations, meaning online
press releases, international news outlets or consumer-based on-
line word-of-mouth communication (see Table 1). Therefore, the
secondary textual data that are being analyzed come from the
existing communicational messages of the organization itself, in-
formation intermediaries such as the press and tourists' opinion.
The importance of online newspapers and consumer opinions (here
on Facebook) in terms of data credibility and influence when
seeking information, was verified by Johnson and Kaye (2004) and
Bae and Lee (2011).
For the analysis of the collected secondary data, I used con-
ceptual content analysis (Carley, 1990), meaning the scientific
description of the content of communication, so as to establish the
existence and frequency of concepts related to authenticity, and
identify the content categories that represent the intentions and
focus on the various institutions (Krippendorff, 1980), as expressed
by words or phrases in the textual and video data of Table 1. For this
purpose, emerging content coding was applied by comparing data
Table 1
Online information on L.A. Gang Tours, positioning order on Google on the 30/11/
2012.
Online information controlled Official web page of LA Gang Tours
by the organization La Gang Tours Music Video on Youtube
Online information controlled Facebook web page of LA Gang Tours
by the organization and tourists
Online information controlled 20 Online press articles, web page
by the press positioning order on Google on the
30/11/2012
4 Online press report video available
on the official web page of LA Gang Tours
519
in terms of similarities, after creating, re-evaluating and reorgan-
izing categories as they emerged from the data (Charmaz, 2003).
The overall evidence of the interview with its creator and the
online textual and audiovisual data referring to L.A. Gang Tours aim
to show the real position from an insider (reformed gang members)
as well as an outsider perspective (Facebook friends, journalists),
marking its distance from preexisting representations of South
Central L.A.
4. Results
4.1. Markers of authenticity
In order to analyze the presence of any notion of authenticity in
the communication messages related to L.A. Gang Tours in each
online source (Table 1), conceptual analysis was applied to the
online textual and video data referring to this organization. By
doing so, the existence and frequency of concepts regarding
authenticity was investigated, as represented by words or phrases
in the data, emphasizing the stronger presence of positive or
negative words used in the representation of L.A. Gang Tours
(Carley, 1990). Table 2 illustrates the emerging codes created by
words e in vivo and synonyms e that online channels communicate
to prospective tourists about this organization as well as the
generic categories that enclose these codes, which are related to the
markers of authenticity e divided into the emerging subcategories
of place, dilapidated conditions, time, hosts and awareness. These
categories and subcategories will be subsequently analyzed. Finally,
Table 3 shows the frequency of appearance of each category in the
totality of the online communication channels that were
investigated.
4.1.1. Place
Los Angeles is the gang capital of the world (The Advancement
Project, 2007). L.A. Gang Tours offer a 3-h bus tour to the dark
side of the city, meaning areas where gangs have taken over, more
specifically Skid Row, South Central (now known as South L.A.) and
Watts. According to the official web page of the tour, 13 scheduled
stops are made, including 10 that are directly connected to crime
and three that are related to graffiti or masterpiece (referring to the
artistic manifestation of graffiti). More particularly, the bus makes
stops to a) areas known as birthplaces of old and notorious gangs,
like Florencia 13, the Black Panther Party and the Crips; b) state jails
and detention centers, like the Los Angeles County Jail e where
some of the guides of the tour were imprisoned for more than 20
years, along with famous inmates like Al Capone and Charles
Manson; c) crime scenes, like the area where the deadly shoot-out
in 1974 between the police and the Symbionese Liberation Army
happened; and d) other stops related to L.A. riots.
For most people, graffiti represents a thorn in the side of civil
society, a threat to the image of a neighborhood, or, at a more
extreme level, a sign of a possible end of civilization (Phillips, 1999).
The failure of the state to cleanup cities from this “urban art,” along
with the millions of dollars that are spent on this unsuccessful
project, criminalize even more its expression. The criminal types of
messages it sometimes communicates along with its illegal
expression on public property such as buildings, subways, bridges,
public transport and billboards have allowed the dominant system
to interpret graffiti as a visible sign of urban decay or vandalism,
that can economically degrade a neighborhood, by representing a
loss of control (Black, 1997). For Easteal and Wilson (1991), who
investigate the expression of crime that is observed on transport
systems, graffiti comes within the large taxonomy of crime, as one
of its lowest expressions, while still being identified as a criminal
action. Today graffiti, as Alfred mentions, is a symptom of an
520 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
Table 2
Categories and word existence of markers of authenticity: word ordering based on
most frequently repeated.
Markers of authenticity
Place Graffiti, South Central Los Angeles, jail
e prison e incarcerated e behind bars
e arrested, hood, forbidden, dark side e
wild side, rough neighborhood, ghetto,
gritty mean streets, decayed public
housing e house projects, derelict
environment, street life, no-go areas,
battleground, other LA, behind the
scene of Hollywood, our backyard,
overgrown buildings, toughest turf
Dilapidated conditions
Social situation Violence, danger e peril, risk, crime,
in gang poverty, racism, bad, social injustice e
communities inequality e social ills, homeless,
detention, scary, class division, leaving
safety, corruption, conflict, hatred,
funeral, urban strife, cops, frightening,
misery, tension, fear, hopeless,
underlying disorder, parole, turbulent,
brutality, post-traumatic stress, urban
complexities, wealth not shared,
negative situation, crying mothers
Gang activity Shoot, killings e murder e death e
homicide, injured e get hurt e beaten
e harm-stabbed, riot, victim, war,
arrest, crime, rebellion, stealing,
tagging, felony, crossfire, cover-up,
framing, survive, kidnapped, burnt,
vandalism, property damage, illegal,
pain, bloodshed
Instruments for Gun e pistol e armed, drug, bullet,
gang violence trigger, alcohol, knives, laser wire
Time Troubled history e history, old, 20
years, 1974, Al Capone, Charles Manson
Hosts
Insiders Gang (and gang names), notorious,
tattoo, bank robber, ex-convict,
deadliest, wife beater, villain
Personal contact First-hand information, up close,
with hosts/ personal, for real
insiders
Awareness
Cognitive Awareness e insight, education e
understanding e see the truth e learn,
eye-opening experience, informative,
inspired, real, break barriers e
stereotypes, learn, movies not right,
enlightened, bring attention,
consciousness, positive, deep
perspective
Emotional Touched, sensitizing people,
entertaining, feel respect, worth the
look, human touch
underlying disorder, meaning a particular part of society's life:
“Before the killings, before the drug wars, often symptoms of the
urban light or mentality will be demonstrated by tagging and other
forms of graffiti.”
L.A. Gang Tours make three graffiti stops. The first one is Los
Angeles Riverbed, where the basic attraction is the world's largest
tag, 2000 feet long and three stories high, with an estimated
cleanup cost of $3.7 million. The second stop is the Pico Union Graff
Lab, where various graffiti artists paint and display their work and
tourists are encouraged to exchange opinions with former gang
Table 3
Category frequency of markers of authenticity.
Categories Frequency of category
No. of appearance on online
markers communication channels
25 Place 170
Dilapidated conditions 364
Social situation in gang communities 193
Gang activity 131
Instruments for gang violence 40
Time 32
Hosts 599
Insiders 564
82 Personal contact with hosts/insiders 35
36
Awareness 102
Cognitive 85
Emotional 25
Total of frequencies 1263
members or gang intervention workers, focusing on the positive
30 and creative discourse of graffiti as an art form that can distract
young people from the gang world and orient them into the crea-
tive and entrepreneurial world of painting. Finally, the last stop is
Watts Arts Gallery, where graffiti and other original artwork expose
the significance of art as a means of healing the “wounds of war.”
The unique offering of this tour in comparison with any other
tour in Los Angeles is that it gives tourists the opportunity to visit
9 neighborhoods where the social problem of gang culture lives and
where they have never been welcome before, if they ever wanted to
7
be. These visited communities represent the real spatial scenery
where gang life takes place, while the presence of graffiti e
whether gang or artistic graffiti e induces the presence of gang
action. Analyzing the various characterizations e from the analyzed
9 online communication channels e attributed to the places this tour
is taken and to elements of these places that are shown during the
4 tour, Table 3 indicates that of all the markers of authenticity that are
mentioned and repeated (1263), only 170 are related to place.
Nonetheless, Table 2 shows that the number of different charac-
terizations related to place is rather high (25 e a third in compar-
25
ison to the rest of the code categories), presenting on the one hand
19
its risky nature, with words like “dark side,” “gritty mean streets” or
“battleground,” and, on the other, its inaccessibility until now,
when characterized as “forbidden” or “no-go areas.” This plethora
of descriptions for the same concept, meaning the place of visit,
insinuates that the prospective tourist, when looking for informa-
tion on the Internet about these tours, is creating a more complete
6 image of this destination while confirming its problematic visual
aspect.
4.1.2. Dilapidated conditions
Almost 75% of youth gang homicide and violence in the state of
California takes place in Los Angeles County (The Advancement
Project, 2007). The city of Los Angeles is estimated to have about
400 gangs and more than 40,000 gang members, of which only a
small percentage are engaged in routine violence, while Los
Angeles County is home to more than 6300 gangs and 170,000 gang
members (Los Angeles Office, 2007). The FBI's annual crime
statistics in 2011 reported an increase in violent crime in partic-
ular divisions of South California, including South Central.
Furthermore, gang violence and employment are closely related
(The Advancement Project, 2007). In South Central L.A., where most
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
gang violence takes place, workers are paid the lowest average
wages in manufacturing jobs.
This reality, as presented by official reports, is the main attrac-
tion of the organization. One of the most distinctive types of in-
formation that prospective tourists receive when being informed
through online communication channels about L.A. Gang Tours is
the social conditions that exist in the visited areas of the tour. The
words used to describe life in gang communities refer entirely to
dilapidated living conditions. The frequency of markers that depict
the social problems of gang life in South Los Angeles is the second
most important (364 out of 1263) among all the markers of
authenticity (see Table 3). Additionally, the frequency of appear-
ance of characterizations of the existing social situation within gang
communities represents more than 50% (193 out of 364) of all
characterizations related to South Central's social problems. Less
repetition is made of concepts of specific gang activity (131 out of
364) and the instruments with which they practice it (40 out of
364).
Likewise, the number of differentiated words and phrases
referring to the category of the social situation in gang communities
(36) is higher than the categories of gang activity (30) and in-
struments of gang violence (9), but most importantly it's the
highest among all categories (Table 3). Prospective tourists come
across, at an elevated frequency, words that characterize the tour's
location, like “violence,” “danger,” “risk,” “frightening” and “mis-
ery,” as well as the particular social problems that provoke that
image such as “crime,” “poverty,” “racism,” “social injustice,” “cor-
ruption” and “underlying disorder.” Furthermore, words that
mention the exact activities in which gangs are involved, such as
“shoot,” “riots,” “rebellion,” “arrest” and “property damage,” along
with the tools used to produce them, like “guns” and “drugs,”
provide a more concrete image of the type of crime that is devel-
oped in these neighborhoods, whereas characterizations like
“murder,” “death” and “pain” confirm the gravity of their conse-
quences to South L.A.
4.1.3. Time
Los Angeles has been known for its gang culture since World
War II (Greene & Pranis, 2007), converting gang crime not only into
a current but also a generational issue in that territory. The creation
of gangs has been basically the result of urbanization and indus-
trialization, leading people into social exclusion and isolation, who,
for their part, form an underground economy in order to survive,
locating it in the so-called “ghettos” (Hagedorn, 2005). As time
passes, gangs are institutionalized on the streets, building their
identities slowly, undisturbed effectively by the state laws. The
county of Los Angeles today is the most multicultural county in the
United States, with a population divided into whites and blacks,
Hispanic and American Indian, to name the most important ones
(Census, 2011), and thus the most representative example of the
outcome of failed policies to control urbanization and the preser-
vation over time of gang culture.
This indicates that L.A. Gang Tours offer a visit to a contemporary
gang culture that has remained alive since its origins. As Alfred
stated during the interview, “… if you take a tour of Chicago, they'll
give you a talk about Al Capone in the early 20s; if you take a tour of
Belfast Ireland, they'll talk to you about the bombings that happened in
the 70s, in the early 70s, between the Protestants and the Catholics;
and just about anywhere in the world you could take a tour, I mean a
historical tour, and they'll talk about decades in the past. Instead this
gang tour, as far as the knowledge the people have that I've been told, is
the only tour in the world that goes to an active war zone, uninter-
rupted. You actually see history in the making and that's so incredible
that … that can take place.” Therefore, tourists are witnesses of the
actual life in the “hood,” which faces a gang rivalry that was
521
generated many years ago. Yet, this important factor of time syn-
chronism has roughly been communicated as a marker of authen-
ticity, using only seven characterizations (mostly “troubled history”
or just “history,” see Table 2) to define the relation between past
and present, with a frequency of appearance of only 32 times
against a total of 1263 times of marker appearance (Table 3) of all
the characterizations used to mark authenticity. This indicates that
most of the communication made emphasizes today instead of the
time travel it could offer.
4.1.4. Hosts
For tourists on L.A. Gang Tours, the concept of hosts is repre-
sented in a twofold way: a) by the people who live in these
neighborhoods but with whom they do not interact during the tour
(whether they are gang members or not), and b) by the tour guides,
who are residents of South Central and with whom they interact
(ex-gang members). Regarding the local population of these gang
communities, as mentioned in the previous chapter, it is multi-
cultural, and ethnic segregation was one of the most fundamental
reasons for separation among gangs. Our content analysis indicates
that the category whose frequency of appearance exceeds 50% (599
out of 1263, see Table 3) of all category appearances in the inves-
tigated online communication channels is the category of insiders.
They represent the people who live in the visited areas; those who
participate in or simply live with gang activities on a day-to-day
basis. They are the Other, whose lives have become a tourist
attraction. The subcategory of insiders e albeit it is described only
with a few distinct characterizations (Table 2) e the frequency of
these characterizations, and particularly the markers “gang” or
specific gang names such as “Florence 13,” “Black Panther Party”
and “Crips,” dominate all messages from these online channels
(564 out of 599 from the Hosts' category), leaving no doubt that
prospective tourists will see real gang members. According to
Greene and Pranis (2007: 27), “a gang is an ongoing organization,
association or group of three or more persons, whether formal or
informal, having as one of its primary activities the commission of
one or more specified crimes, having a common name or common
identified sign or symbol, and whose members individually or
collectively engage in a pattern of criminal gang activity.”
On the other hand, some of these insiders, ex-members of gangs,
are the tour guides of L.A. Gang Tours, or what Edensor (2001)
called “cultural intermediaries.” Apart from Alfred, who is a
former gang member of Florence 13, there are currently five former
leaders of rival gangs who work as guides and describe their per-
sonal experiences and lives on the street, the gang culture and how
they were reformed. All of them have been to prison for past
criminal activities, and each of them explains during the tour the
crimes they committed, their reasons for committing them, their
time in prison and the reason they have decided to escape from that
gang life. Additionally, tourists are encouraged to exchange opin-
ions with various graffiti artists from South Central who paint and
display their urban art at some of the graffiti stops of the tour.
Specifically, in Watts Arts Gallery, tours can meet Aqeela Sherrills, a
campaigner against gang violence, who achieved a significant gang
truce in 1992 between Bloods and Crips.
One of the most important factors that make communication
with the tour guides intriguing is the personal contact tourists can
have with the insider (in contradiction to favela tours where the
guides are outsiders, see Frisch, 2012). The direct flow of questions
and answers between two separate worlds allows unmediated
access to information that only locals have. As Alfred said, “We
created these problems and reality asks us to solve these problems,”
emphasizing the fundamental role he and the rest of the tour
guides have played in the past as a negative influence, and in the
present, but as a positive bias. Even though this subcategory was
522 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527

detected online through only four markers (see Table 2) and it has a Table 4
low frequency of appearance within the wider category of hosts (35 Categories and word existence of staged authenticity: word ordering based on most
frequently repeated.
out of 599, see Table 3) and the rest of the categories in general,
because of the personal social interaction it implies, it has been Markers of nonauthenticity No. of
demonstrated in various investigations to have a strong influence markers

on the awareness category (Cohen, 1985; Reisinger & Steiner, Misinterpretation Glorification e romanticism e 14
2006b). of reality glamorization, questionable benefit e
criticism, animal status, can't capture
reality, terrible idea, carnival barking,
4.1.5. Awareness demonize, disrespectful, demeaning for
According to Sin (2003), the construction of knowledge depends the people, irresponsible, exhibits
significantly on encounters and space. Tourists in L.A. Gang Tours
visit the actual territories where gangs with a long history act, Changes of local scenery Cease-fire, safety 2
while information over the existing conditions of day-to-day life
Commercialization Release form, selling shirts, water gun 3
comes from personal interaction with insiders from these com-
munities. Tourists only interact with the guides of the tour and with Tour characterization 36
other ex-gang members who collaborate occasionally with this Negative tour Exploitation, ghettotainment, zoo, on 9
organization. They do not have a programmed interaction with the characterization display e marketing e titillation,
residents of these communities. Thus, the information received is bullshit (BS), Disneyland, amusement
for tourists
mainly from insiders who work with the tours and have a prepared
Positive tour Awesome, important, interesting, 27
lecture on life in South Central. Information about particular events characterization amazing, exciting, great, brave,
is provided at the places they happened. For example, when the memorable, fantastic, fascinating cool
tour stops at the Los Angeles County Jail, the guides who have done tour, looking good, non-profit, positive,
time there explain their personal stories, or when the bus passes good work, make a difference, altruism,
give back, blessing, redemption, good
from areas where there is graffiti in a codified manner that explains cause, charitable, friendly tour, social
hostile warnings against gangs, the guides translate these messages service, heaven, surprise, dream, hot
for the tourists. Great emphasis is also given to the area where the stuff
deadly shoot-out in 1974 took place between the police and the
Symbionese Liberation Army. The fact that this tour can provide to
the prospective tourist awareness of this social context within
which the Other lives is supported by the use of 25 markers “disrespectful,” “demeaning for the people” and “irresponsible,” on
(Table 2), but a low frequency of category appearance (102 out of the other. Yet, these 14 different markers used to represent a
1263, see Table 3) in comparison to the rest of the categories. cognitive and moral misuse of reality have appeared 31 out of 236
This awareness is indicated by two subcategories. The first one, times (see Table 5) among all markers of staged authenticity.
and the one that most frequently appeared (85 out of 102), is the There are two categories that show evidence of staging the
cognitive effect that the direct communication with insiders has setting of the tour. The first one refers to the changes of local
produced, expressed by markers like “insight,” “education,” “eye- scenery, with only two markers (“ceasefire” and “safety,” see
opening experience” and “real.” As Alfred mentioned during the Table 4) that refer to the fact that when the tour takes place, there is
interview, “… at the end of the tour they are just delighted to see that an agreement among the gangs that live in the locality where the
everything that was stereotypical, everything they read or thought or tour is conducted to permit a safe passage and not enter into
perceived of these communities was false. They find out that we are no criminal activities. This means that tourists are witnessing a less
different than anyone else.” The second one has a much lower dangerous social context than what they could visit outside the
presence in the content of online data regarding this tour e with tour. These alterations, which could attract prospective tourists for
only four different markers, with a frequency of appearance of 25 this very reason, that is, the safe passage, are poorly repeated (13
out of 102 times within the subcategory of awareness, and it refers out of 236, see Table 5) within the online information available on
to the positively emotional impact this tour has had on some the analyzed websites. Therefore, tour guides, on the one hand,
tourists who attended, making the process of awareness appear as reassure the tourists of their personal safety, and, on the other, they
more dynamic. present the contemporary theme of violence and crime. The second
category is related to commercial concepts involved in this tour,
4.2. Markers of staged authenticity expressed through three markers (“release form,” “selling shirts”
and “water guns,” see Table 4). More particularly, tourists who take
The data available on the analyzed online communication the tour have to sign a release form before the tour, accepting full
channels provide e apart from markers of authenticity e charac- responsibility if anything happens to them during the tour. This is a
terizations that betray staged commercialized scenery. Table 4 marketing tool, as Alfred admitted, to attract more interest from
shows the categories and particular existing words that form
Table 5
each category of nonauthenticity, while Table 5 displays the fre-
Category frequency of markers of staged authenticity.
quency of appearance of these categories. Both data are far less
important numerically than the markers of authenticity, in terms of Categories Frequency of category
appearance on online
word existence and frequency of appearance, but they are available
communication channels
and mentioned at least once in all investigated online communi-
Misinterpretation of reality 31
cation channels. One of the most important negative critiques
Changes of local scenery 13
made against L.A. Gang Tours is that instead of awareness, what is Commercialization 19
offered is a misinterpretation of reality, emphasizing an exaggera- Tour characterization 173
tion of reality by using words like “glorification,” “romanticism” Negative tour characterization 63
and “glamorization,” on the one hand, and a lack of respect towards Positive tour characterization 110
Total of frequencies 236
its residents, through the use of characterizations like
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527 523

Table 6
Frequency of category appearance of authenticity and staged authenticity markers by user.

Categories of markers of authenticity Frequency of category Frequency of category Frequency of category

appearance from tourists' appearance on from appearance from the
comments (Facebook, the organization on press on online press
official web page &videos) official web page articles and blogs

Place 8 52 110

Dilapidated conditions 6 89 269

Social situation in gang communities 6 50 137
Gang activity e 27 104
Instruments for gang violence e 12 28

Time 2 9 21

Hosts 26 132 441

Insiders 13 123 428
Personal contact with hosts/insiders 13 9 13

Awareness 55 15 40
Cognitive 39 11 35
Emotional 16 4 5

Total of frequencies 97 297 881

Categories of markers of staged authenticity

Misinterpretation of reality 1 6 24

Changes of local scenery e 3 10

Commercialization 4 3 12

Tour characterization 64 17 92
Negative tour characterization e 10 53
Positive tour characterization 64 7 39

Total of frequencies 69 29 138

prospective tourists and emphasize even more the existence of
danger in these marginalized areas. Selling shirts with the logo of
the organization and the use of water guns at a particular moment
of the tour are mentioned only once and represent a market-
oriented tactic towards commodification and trivialization of the
tourist attraction. This category is the second least frequent to
appear among the rest of the markers of nonauthenticity (19 out of
236).
Finally, the category that has received the most differentiated
characterizations (36) and the highest frequency of appearances
among markers of nonauthenticity (173 out of 236) is the tour
characterization, mostly by reporters and tourists who have
attended. This characterization is divided into two types, a negative
and a positive one. In the negative tour characterization, most
markers referred to exploitation, while naming the tour as “ghet-
totainment,” “zoo” and “Disneyland,” at a frequency of 63 out of 173
times among all characterizations of the tour. These markers indi-
cate a false and exploitative nature of the tour. Nonetheless, a much
higher number of different markers (27 versus 9, Table 4) charac-
terize the tour in a positive way, such as “awesome,” “important,”
“interesting” and “amazing,” while also focusing on its importance
in terms of social contribution to the gang communities of South
Central, with markers like “nonprofit,” “altruism,” “give back” and
“charitable.” Yet, these markers, albeit they provide a positive im-
age of the tour in terms of personal as well as social gain, make no
reference to issues of authenticity, but rather to issues of overall
experience evaluation of the tour as well as changes it intends to
ground in these troubled territories; that is, the tour's effort to
change actual reality.
4.3. Who said what
Until now, what has been analyzed is the markers of staged or
nonauthenticity that have been used and repeated in the online
communication messages, regardless of the source. In this chapter,
the intention is to see whether there are any similarities and dif-
ferences between the categories of markers that are used by the
three different sources that communicate information about L.A.
Gang Tours online, the organization itself, the press, who have
covered the topic, and tourists that have taken the tour. Table 6
shows the frequency of category appearance of markers of
authenticity and staged authenticity among tourists (whose state-
ments are on the L.A. Gang Tours Facebook page, official web page
and on videos uploaded on the latter), the organization itself
(official web page), and intermediaries, like reports on online press
and blogs.
According to Table 6, the distribution of category frequency of
authenticity markers is proportionally alike between the official
web page and the online press releases and blogs. That is, the
category that most emphasis is given to (among all categories) is
‘hosts’ (132/297 and 441/881 respectively), followed by ‘dilapidated
conditions’ (89/297 and 269/881 respectively), ‘place’ (52/297 and
110/881 respectively) and finally ‘time’ (9/297 and 21/881). Addi-
tionally, the category frequency of appearance of staged authen-
ticity markers plays a much lower role than the authenticity
markers, where the category of tour characterization and more
particularly negative tour characterization is mostly repeated (10/
29 on the official web page and 53/138 in online press articles and
blogs). The difference is that on the official web page, the
524 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
organization shows the negative markers so as to answer back,
while in the press releases they are mentioned as the expressed
criticism regarding this tour. ‘Positive tour characterization’ follows
(7/29 and 39/138 respectively), along with ‘misinterpretation of
reality’ (6/29 and 24/138). ‘Tour characterization’ in both sources is
mostly repeated among categories of staged authenticity (17/29
and 92/138), but among all categories is fourth (17 and 92), pre-
ceded by ‘place’ (52 and 110), ‘dilapidated conditions’ (89 and 269)
and ‘hosts’ (132 and 441). The final difference is found when
‘commercialization’ is the fourth most repeated category for online
press (12/138), while it has the same frequency of appearance with
changes of local scenery on the official web page (3/29 in both
cases). This means that basic emphasis from both sources is given to
hosts, who are those that provide information about the dilapi-
dated conditions of the particular setting that is being visited.
In contrast, the category that is most repeated in tourists'
comments is ‘positive tour characterization’ (64, not even one
marker of negative tour characterization or changes of local scenery
is mentioned). That is, most emphasis is given to markers of staged
authenticity. The second most repeated category among all, and the
first among markers of authenticity, is ‘awareness’ (55), where
cognitive markers surpass negative ones (39 and 16 respectively),
followed by ‘hosts’ (26), ‘place’ (8), ‘dilapidated conditions’ (6),
‘commercialization’ (4), ‘time’ (2) and ‘misinterpretation of reality’
(1). In other words, tourists mostly emphasize the overall experi-
ence evaluation of the tour as well as the social changes the orga-
nization works for, followed by the educational and emotional
contribution of the tour, as given by the hosts.
5. Conclusions
In marketing, a good product is generally defined as easily
identified, distinct and knowable (Taylor, 2001), while simplicity in
a world cluttered with messages has turned into one of the key
strategies for product positioning (Wallace, 2006). According to
Urry (1990) in Selwyn (1996: 8), tourism professionals have needed
to persuade tourists to visit contemporary tourist sites, sometimes
making them into attractive spectacles. This simplistic communi-
cation seems to be confirmed in the case of L.A. Gang Tours, through
the investigated online channels. The evidence from the analysis of
the online textual and video data that encourage prospective tour-
ists to take the tour illustrates the organization's position in terms of
reality and authenticity. Referring to niche tourism, this organiza-
tion directs its communication messages to those few who want to
visit something that the rest avoid, that is, unsafe settings. The on-
line promotion of markers that place marketers would consider as
nonappealing because they are directly related to violence and
crime e and thus they would not use them e suggests that this
attraction offers access to sites that few have been able to visit. Even
though the word “authentic” is not mentioned once, many markers
related to authenticity are being used so as to create interest and
demand for this product. This indirect focus on authenticity is not
surprising, due to the fact that the primary benefit that is
commercialized is the awareness of the reality of gang communities
and the possibility of contributing as a tourist to a social change of
that reality. At this point, markers that emphasize the social offering
of the tour (see the positive tour characterization in Table 4)
neutralize the negative image of this attraction and focus on its
representation of an authentic tourism setting. Yet, what could be
suggested is a direct marketing centering on the type of authenticity
that could be more implemented for commercialization and is now
indirectly present through the online promotion of this tour.
More particularly in this type of authenticity, the overall used
markers e coming mostly from official opinion makers, like the
organization itself and the press e focus basically on the nature of
the visited object (according to Lau's (2010) interpretation). There is
a description and characterization of what the tour allows tourists
to gaze at, but not what they are allowed to feel. Therefore, what is
mostly projected is Wang's (1999) and Lau's (2010) object-related
authenticity of this tour. In terms of Sharpley's (1999) tourist
experience, the limited time that the tour lasts and thus the few
social interactions tourists have with the insiders, confirmed by the
significant number of markers of cognitive experience, indicate that
the basic product of the tour is Selwyn's (1996) cool authenticity,
meaning awareness of the “real world” through a quick view of the
existing conditions of life in South Central.
The used markers of authenticity are related to the issues that
Adler (1989) and Wang (1999) focus on, that is, place, time, hosts
and tradition. L.A. Gang Tours offer to a niche market a 3-h bus tour
in the marginalized communities of South Central, where local
residents, or else insiders, are in charge of guiding tourists to the
particular spaces where one version of gang culture was born and
preserved over time. The concept of original where the tourist
experience is related to the source of gang culture is highly present
through the markers of authenticity that exist publicly online. Po-
tential tourists know that they will visit the settings where gangs
were born, where gang members still live, and receive first-hand
information of the dilapidated conditions of these settings after
personal interaction with ex-gang members, that is, with people
that had provoked social problems at some level in that precise
space. The lack of implementation of successful policies that could
improve the living conditions of these communities in South Cen-
tral is indicated by markers of an undeveloped setting, where crime
is still present. Therefore, concepts such as past, origin, true, sincere
and primitive e related to objective authenticity e are mentioned
directly or indirectly by the markers of authenticity detected in the
online data. Yet, as shown by the data, less emphasis is given to the
concept of “time travel,” since few markers rarely mentioned have
been published, while more importance is attributed to the actual
conditions under which the Others are, and have been, living.
In particular, the great majority of the markers that characterize
the nature of this tour emphasize the exclusive possibility of
accessing the backstage (Goffman, 1959: MacCannell, 1976), un-
discovered spaces that were closed to outsiders, and only insiders
can let you in safely. Thus, the importance of place in defining
authenticity, as supported by Grazian (2003) and Peterson (2005),
is present in the transmission of information related to L.A. Gang
Tours. This tour offers a safe access to South Central, under the
agreement among gangs not to disturb the bus during the tour.
Tourists are not allowed to take pictures of the community, while
the fact that the 3-h tour basically takes place in a bus indicates the
limited contact they have with insiders, apart from the tour guides.
That means, on the one hand, that no chance is given for tourists to
develop a social interaction with the host or “real Self,” a fact
expressed by the lack of emotional markers of authenticity related
to sociability with the local community. Therefore, Selwyn's (1996)
“hot authenticity” is not promoted online. On the other hand, the
L.A. Gang Tours experience of authenticity is mediated by the
guides, keeping a safe distance from those insiders who may not
agree with the purpose or effectiveness of this tour. Thus, according
to MacCannell's (1976) categorization of stages, this tour is pre-
sented as stage five; that is, a slightly altered, meaning more safe,
back region access, without any further physical manipulation of
the space so as to appear more authentic, but a slight alteration of
the social conditions under which the visit can take place. This
indicates that the visitor of this tour is a passive agent who is given
all the necessary information and taken to the backstage by in-
siders, that is, there is no personal effort to gather information and
visit the setting. Everything is planned for him and provided to him
by others. Thus, according to Boorstin's definition (1992), the visitor
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
of L.A. Gang Tours has the qualities of the tourist, but has access to
the setting of a traveler's journey.
On the other hand, looking more closely at the markers of the
tourists' online statements, more emphasis is given to the qualifi-
cation of the relationship the tourist has with the object. The ma-
jority of the markers they use refers to a positive characterization of
the tour in general terms, certifying with markers like “awesome” or
“interesting” that they had an authentically good time, as Brown
would say (1996). Their markers emphasize the evaluation of the
entire experience in engaging with the nonordinary activity of
visiting L.A.'s gang culture from the inside as educative and worth-
while, while according to Cohen's (1979) categorization, they
recognize that they are in the real setting. This indicates that tourists
communicate messages of what Wang (1999) called “existential
authenticity,” where interaction with the real world of the Other
produces Selwyn's (1996) “cool authenticity”. Even though concepts
of time and place are not highlighted, tourists give emphasis to the
information they receive from the hosts and offer a generally posi-
tive evaluation of the experience of becoming aware of gang culture.
Furthermore, interpretations of the local people, instead of the
media or film industry, are a basic advantage in the validity of the
transmitted information (Dyson, 2012; Silver, 1993) and in gaining
awareness over the existing social conditions of these territories.
According to the online statements of tourists, no one that has
taken the tour has expressed disappointment in failing to match
their expectations to what they perceived as a gang community
through the media. It is indicative that all the markers of positive
tour characterization (Tables 4 and 5) are given by tourists who
have taken the tour, while all the markers of negative tour char-
acterization are provided by reporters who have not, in the great
majority, taken the tour, but just cover the news. The face-to-face
description of gang reality from what Edensor (2001) called “cul-
tural intermediaries,” that is, insiders who not only live there but
used to be part of the violence problem, creates a unique politics of
representation of their communities and themselves, as happens in
most slum tours (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012; Dyson, 2012; Rofles, 2010) that
cannot be competitively replaced by mass media communication.
These reformed gang members are not only passing on details of
life in South L.A. gang communities, but they are also active parts of
the generational problem of gang life. Within the safety context of
being ex-gang members, thus not currently dangerous, and the
agreement of all gang members not to molest the tour, guides share
past experiences to those that want to listen. The information they
share is not only memories of the long past but also recent facts of
the gang culture. The fact that the latter remains an existing social
issue in South Central that the authorities have not yet managed to
control and eliminate indicates the undeveloped or, to a greater
extent, ‘primitive’ nature of the host community, which is pre-
sented as part of the attraction of L.A. Gang Tours, following Silver's
(1993) suggestion. In order to give great emphasis to the disad-
vantaged conditions that have prevailed in these gang communities
for years as a result of industrialization, a varied vocabulary that
describes gang activities and their social consequences is used.
There is no reference to copy, fake, simulation or reproduction in
any of the investigated online sources. The presence of commer-
cialization here is, as a concept, rather weak in comparison to the
rest of the markers of authenticity, while it makes no reference to
the production of Boorstin's (1992) pseudo events for commer-
cialized purposes; therefore, it is not presented as the destructive
commodification that Cohen (1988), Greenwood (1989) and
Sharpley (1999) have described it as, maintaining the day-to-day
life of local people the same as before the tour took place.
This indicates the ‘simplistic’ communication codes that have
been used by official opinion makers to identify authenticity in this
tour, like concepts of real, origins, undeveloped, unchanged,
525
unique, truth and past, constructing the image of objective
authenticity, with the inflexible content it was given (Bruner, 1994;
Cohen, 2007; Peterson, 2005; Wang, 1999). L.A. Gang Tours show
the consequences of real poverty and real crime in a marginalized
gang area of Los Angeles, while it communicates the reasons why
one should see that side of the city, constructing a complete image
of it. The type of authenticity that this tour shows is not presented
as the result of individual interpretations of each tourist through
personal experiences, but as undeniable facts, which have been
mostly questioned over the moral basis of projecting them instead
of the reality behind them. Yet, tourists' comments focus more on
existential authenticity, evaluating the entire experience they have
in situ with the locals. Thus, there is a mismatch between the in-
formation that tourists find most interesting and share online
(experience of witnessing gang reality) with the information that
the organization and the press choose to emit (description of gang
reality). Additionally, due to the fact that this tour is directed at a
niche market, tourists' comments online are much less in quanti-
tative terms than the information provided by the organization
itself or the press. This means that markers of objective authenticity
regarding this tour outnumber markers of existential authenticity.
Prospective tourists can either agree or not to take the tour based
on personal moral arguments, for the very reason that it provides
access to real backstage disadvantaged regions. Therefore, a
promising marketing communication strategy in the future would
be to focus messages on markers of existential authenticity, instead
of exclusively on objective authenticity.
The results of this exploratory investigation show, on the one
hand, that when L.A. Gang Tours, as a group of locals, inform the
market about their product, they emphasize objective and cool
authenticity, that is, mostly who they are and what they have to say
in order to create awareness for the visitor. The power of the local
gaze to penetrate tourists' lives can now be exercised. The same
argument is presented by the press. The locals have the opportunity
to gaze at the outsider that shows interest in their gang culture and
see the possibilities, if any, of social improvement that this expo-
sure can provide. On the other hand, when tourists communicate
information about L.A. Gang Tours, that is, when tourists report
their “tourist gaze,” they focus on existential and cool authenticity,
referring to how the entire experience has managed to change their
knowledge and perception of gang culture. This mutual gaze, as
Maoz (2006) calls it, coincides in terms of cool authenticity,
meaning knowledge of the real world, the outside and the inside
world of gang communities, with the hopeful outcome of social
change. This indicates the need for social reconstruction, which
inevitably will lead future marketing communication strategies
away from the absolute objective terms of authenticity and closer
to the constructive approach of authenticity. In time, even though
the marker of place will remain, if gang communities finally put
violence and crime aside, dilapidated social conditions will become
something of the past, locals will be less related to gang activity and
awareness will be shared through hosts' collective memory instead
of personal experiences. Future investigation into the communi-
cation messages used by nonprofit organizations such as L.A. Gang
Tours is needed so as to show how markers of authenticity are
being used, and evolve over time, by producers, tourists and any
other intermediary.
References
Adler, J. (1989). Travel as performed art. American Journal of Sociology, 94(6),
1366e1391.
Amoamo, M. (2011). Tourism and hybridity: re-visiting Bhabha's third space. Annals
of Tourism Research, 38(4), 1254e1273.
Arronsson, L. (1994). Sustainable tourism systems: the example of sustainable rural
tourism in Sweden. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2(1/2), 77e92.
526 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
Bae, S., & Lee, T. (2011). Product type and consumers' perceptions of online con-
sumer review. Electron Markets, 21, 255e266.
Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and simulations. In M. Poster (Ed.), Jean Baudrillard:
Selected writings (pp. 169e187). Cambridge, UK: Blackwell.
Belhassen, Y., Caton, K., & Stewart, W. P. (2008). The search for authenticity in the
pilgrim experience. Annals of Tourism Research, 35(3), 668e689.
Benjamin, W. (1968). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In
H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations: Essays and reflections (pp. 217e252). New York:
Schocken Books.
Berger, P. (1973). Sincerity and authenticity in modern society. The Public Interest, 31,
81e90.
Bhattacharyya, D. (1997). Mediating India: an analysis of a guidebook. Annals of
Tourism Research, 24, 371e389.
Black, T. (1997). The handwriting's on the wall: cities can win graffiti war. American
City & County, 112, 22e26.
Blumer, H. (1972). Action vs. interaction: relations in public e microstudies of the
public order by Erving Goffman. Society, 9, 50e53.
Boorstin, D. J. (1992). The image. First Vintage Books Edition.
Brown, Lesley (Ed.). (1993). The new shorter Oxford English dictionary: On historical
principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brown, D. (1996). Genuine fakes. In T. Selwyn (Ed.), The tourist image: Myths and
myth making in tourism (pp. 33e47). Chichester: Wiley.
Bruner, E. M. (1991). Transformation of self in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research,
18, 238e250.
Bruner, S. R. (1994). Abraham Lincoln as authentic reproduction: a critique of
postmodernism. American Anthropologist, 96, 397e415.
Butler, S. R. (2010). Should I stay or should I go? Negotiating township tours in
post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 8(1e2),
15e29.
Carley, K. (1990). Content analysis. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The encyclopedia of language
and linguistics. Edinburgh: Pergamon Press.
Census. (2011). Census 2011 data show population and diversity trends. Available at
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html, 04.05.12.
Charmaz, K. (2003). Grounded theory. In J. A. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative psychology:
A practical guide to research methods. London: Sage.
Che, D. (2004). Reinventing tulip time: evolving diasporic Dutch heritage celebra-
tion in Holland (Michigan). In T. Coles, & J. T. Dallen (Eds.), Tourism, diasporas
and space. Routledge.
Cohen, E. (1979). A phenomenology of tourist experiences. Sociology, 39, 179e201.
Cohen, E. (1985). The tourist guide: the origins, structure and dynamics of a role.
Annals of Tourism Research, 12(1), 5e29.
Cohen, E. (1995). Contemporary tourismdtrends and challenges: sustainable
authenticity or contrived post-modernity? In R. Butler, & D. Pearce (Eds.),
Change in tourism: People, places, processes (pp. 12e29) London: Routledge.
Cohen, E. (1988). Authenticity and commoditization in tourism. Annals of Tourism
Research, 15(3), 371e386.
Cohen, E. (2007). Authenticity in tourism studies: Apre
s la Lutte. Tourism Recreation
Research, 32(2), 75e82.
Culler, J. (1990). The semiotics of tourism. In Framing the sign: Criticism and its in-
stitutions (pp. 153e167). University of Oklahoma Press.
Culler, J. (1994). The semiotics of tourism. American Journal of Semiotics, 1,
127e140.
Dann, G. M. S. (1996). The language of tourism. Wallingford, Oxon: Cab International.
Dawe, A. (1973). The underworld-view of Erving Goffman. British Journal of Soci-
ology, 24(2), 246e253.
Douglas, N., Douglas, N., & Derrett, R. (2001). Special interest tourism. Sydney: John
Wiley & Sons.
Dürr, E., & Jaffe, R. (2012). Theorizing slum tourism: performing, negotiating and
transforming inequality. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean
Studies, 93, 113e123.
Dyson, P. (2012). Slum tourism: representing and interpreting ‘reality’ in Dharavi,
Mumbai. Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place
and Environment, 14(2), 254e274.
Deleuze, G. (1968). Difference and repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Easteal, P. W., & Wilson, P. R. (1991). Preventing crime on transport: Rail, buses, taxis,
planes. Canberra, ACT: Australian Institute of Criminology.
Eco, U. (1986). Travels in hyperreality. London: Picador.
Edensor, T. (2001). Performing tourism, staging tourism: (re)production tourist
space and practice. Tourist Studies, 1(1), 59e81.
FBI. (2011). Crime in the United States. Available at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/
cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table8statecuts/
table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_california_by_city_2011.xls,
04.05.12.
Frisch, T. (2012). Glimpses of another world: the favela as a tourist attraction.
Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Envi-
ronment, 14(2), 320e338.
Frow, J. (1991). Tourism and the semiotics of Nostalgia. October, 57, 123e151.
Galani-Moutafi, V. (2000). The self and the other: traveler, ethnographer, tourist.
Annals of Tourism Research, 27(1), 203e224.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of everyday life. New York: Anchor Books.
Goffman, E. (1990). The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin.
Gotham, F. K. (2010). Tourism and culture. In R. J. Hall, L. Grindstaff, & M. Lo (Eds.),
Handbook of cultural sociology (pp. 608e616). Routledge.
Grazian, D. (2003). Blue Chicago: The search for authenticity in urban blues clubs.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Greene, J., & Pranis, K. (2007). Gang wars: The failure of enforcement tactics and the
need for effective public safety strategies. Justice Police Institute Study. Available
at http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/07-07_rep_
gangwars_gc-ps-ac-jj.pdf.
Greenwood, J. D. (1989). Culture by the pound. In Valene L. Smith (Ed.), Hosts and
guests: The anthropology of tourism (pp. 171e186). Philadelphia, PA: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Hagedorn, M. J. (2005). The global impact of gangs. Journal of Contemporary Criminal
Justice, 21(2), 153e169.
Harper, D. (2006). The tourist and his criminal: patterns in street robbery. In
Y. Mansfeld, & A. Pizam (Eds.), Tourism, security and safety: From theory to
practice (pp. 125e137). New York: Buttersworth-Heinemann.
Isaac, R. K. (2009). Alternative tourism: new forms of tourism in Bethlehem for the
Palestinian tourism industry. Current Issues in Tourism, 13(1), 21e36.
Johnson, T., & Kaye, J. (2004). Wag the blog: how reliance on traditional media and
the internet influence credibility perceptions of weblogs among blog users.
Journalism and Mass Communication, 81(3), 622e642.
Koven, S. (2006). Slumming: Sexual and social politics in Victorian London. Princeton:
University Press.
Krippendorff, K. (1980). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. New-
bury Park: Sage Publications.
Lau, R. W. K. (2010). Revisiting authenticity: a social realist approach. Annals of
Tourism Research, 37(2), 478e498.
Leigh, W. W., Peters, C., & Shelton, J. (2006). The consumer quest for authenticity:
the multiplicity of meanings within the MG subculture of consumption. Journal
of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34, 481e493.
Lennon, J., & Foley, M. (2002). The attraction of death and disaster. London:
Continuum.
Los Angeles Office. (2007). Changing the paradigm. Southern California Gang Sup-
pression & Intervention Operations Center. Available at http://www.google.es/
url?sa¼t&rct¼j&q¼&esrc¼s&source¼web&cd¼1&ved¼0CFcQFjAA&url¼http%
3A%2F%2Ffile.lacounty.gov%2Fbos%2Fsupdocs%2F32086.
pdf&ei¼cjwQUL2MAoiu0QXN-
YC4Ag&usg¼AFQjCNGZMWWAkuawbT9FaVCQsm12V-iO0g, 04.05.12.
Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board. (2013). Los Angeles tourism breaks record
in 2012 with 41.4 million visitors. Available at http://www.discoverlosangeles.
com/press-releases/los-angeles-tourism-breaks-record-2012-414-million-
visitors, 03.06.13.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. New York:
Schocken Books.
Maoz, D. (2006). The mutual gaze. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(1), 221e239.
Markwick, M. (2001). Tourism and the development of handicraft production in the
Maltese islands. Tourism Geographies, 3(1), 29e51.
Mathieson, A., & Wall, G. (1982). Tourism: Economic, physical and social impacts.
London: Longman.
Meschkank, J. (2011). Investigations into slum tourism in Mumbai: poverty tourism
and the tensions between different constructions of reality. GeoJournal, 76,
47e62.
Miles, A. (Jan. 14, 2009). Shocked by Slumdog's poverty porn: Danny Boyle's film is
sweeping up awards, but it's wrong to revel in the misery of India's children.
The Times. (London). Available at http://kings-winchester.hants.sch.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/Language.pdf, 18.04.13.
Mkono, M. (2012). A netnographic investigation of constructive authenticity in
Victoria Falls tourists (restaurant) experiences. International Journal of Hospi-
tality Management, 31, 387e397.
Neumann, M. (1992). The trail through experience: finding self in the recollection of
travel. In C. Ellis, & M. G. Flaherty (Eds.), Investigating subjectivity: Research on
lived experience (pp. 176e201). Newbury Park: Sage.
Park, R. E. (1931). Mentality of racial hybrids. American Journal of Sociology, 36(4),
534e551.
Pearce, P., & Moscardo, G. (1986). The concept of authenticity in tourist experiences.
ANZJS, 22(10), 121e132.
Peterson, R. A. (2005). In search of authenticity. Journal of Management Studies,
42(5), 1083e1098.
Pezzullo, C. P. (2009). Tourists and/as disasters: rebuilding, remembering, and re-
sponsibility in New Orleans. Tourist Studies, 9(1), 23e41.
Phillips, S. A. (1999). Wallbangin': Graffiti and gangs in L.A. University of Chicago
Press.
Reisinger, Y., & Steiner, C. J. (2006a). Reconceptualizing object authenticity. Annals of
Tourism Research, 33(1), 65e86.
Reisinger, Y., & Steiner, C. J. (2006b). Reconceptualising interpretation: the role of
tour guides in authentic tourism. Current Issues in Tourism, 9(6), 481e498.
Ritzer, G., & Liska, A. (1997). “McDisneyization” and “post-tourism”: complemen-
tary perspectives on contemporary tourism. In C. Rojek, & J. Urry (Eds.), Touring
cultures: Transformations of travel and theory (pp. 96e109). London: Routledge.
Robinson, M., & Novelli, M. (2005). Niche tourism: an introduction. In M. Novelli
(Ed.), Niche tourism: Contemporary issues, trends and cases (pp. 1e14). Oxford:
Elsevier Buterworth-Heinemann.
Rofles, M. (2010). Poverty tourism: theoretical reflections and empirical findings
regarding an extraordinary form of tourism. GeoJournal, 75, 421e442.
Rushdie, S. (Ed.). (1991). Imaginary homelands: Essays and criticism. London: Granta.
Ryan, C., Collins, A. B., & Pearce, P. L. (2008). Entertainment international visitors e the
hybrid nature of tourism shows. Tourism Recreation Research, 33(2), 143e149.
Selwyn, T. (1996). Introduction. In Tom Selwyn (Ed.), The tourist image: Myths and
myth making in tourism (pp. 1e32). Chichester: Wiley.
 K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527
Sharpley, R. (1999). Tourism, tourists and society (2nd ed.). England: ELM Publications.
Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Plan-
ning, 38(2), 207e226.
Silver, I. (1993). Marketing authenticity in third world countries. Annals of Tourism
Research, 20, 302e318.
Sin, C. H. (2003). Interviewing in “place”: the socio-spatial construction of interview
data. Area, 35(3), 305e312.
Smith, G. (2006). Enacted others: specifying Goffman's phenomenological omis-
sions and sociological accomplishments. Human Studies, 28, 397e415.
Spivak, G. C. (1985). The Rani of Sirmur: an essay in reading the archives. History
and Theory, 24(3), 247e272.
Stake, R. (1994). Case studies. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of
qualitative research (pp. 236e247). Sage.
Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Steinbrink, M., & Pott, A. (2010). Global slumming. Zur Genese und Globalisierung des
Armutstourismus. In H. Wo €ume. Zur
€hler, A. Pott, & V. Denzer (Eds.), Tourismusra
soziokulturellen Konstruktion eines globalen Pha €nomens (pp. 247e270). Bielefeld.
Steiner, C. J., & Reisinger, Y. (2006). Understanding existential authenticity. Annals of
Tourism Research, 33(2), 299e318.
Taylor, J. P. (2001). Authenticity and sincerity in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research,
28(1), 7e26.
The Advancement Project. (2007). A call to action: the case for comprehensive
solutions to L.A.'s gang epidemic. Available at http://v3.advancementprojectca.
org/sites/default/files/imce/p3_report.pdf, 13.04.11.
Timothy, D., & Boyd, S. (2002). Heritage tourism. New York: Pearson Education.
Trilling, L. (1972). Sincerity and authenticity. London: Oxford University Press.
Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspectives of experience. St. Paul, MN: Uni-
versity of Minessota Press.
527
Urry, J. (1992). The tourist gaze “revisited”. American Behavioral Scientist, 36(2),
172e186.
Wallace, R. (2006). Be smart, be simple. Design Management Review, 17(2), 19e24.
Wang, N. (1999). Rethinking authenticity in tourism experience. Annals of Tourism
Research, 26(2), 349e370.
Wang, Y. (2012). Customized authenticity begins at home. Annals of Tourism
Research, 34(3), 789e804.
Williams, J. (1986). Appraising goffman. British Journal of Sociology, 37(3), 348e369.
Urry, J. (1990). The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage.
Yin, K. R. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks:
Sage.
Zhu, Y. (2012). Performative heritage: rethinking authenticity in tourism. Annals of
Tourism Research, 39(3), 1495e1513.
Dr. Konstantina Zerva is an Assistant Professor of Mar-
keting and Market Investigation at the University of Ger-
ona in Spain. She received her Doctorate in Humanities
from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her recent
publications include “Crime and Tourism: Organizational
Opportunities and Social Marketing in LA Gang Tours”, and
“Accessing to Recorded Music: Interpreting a Contempo-
rary Social Exchange System”. Her current research in-
terests include the analysis of niche segments within the
tourism markets, social marketing and theories of social
exchange through the use of qualitative methods of data
analysis.