#Instadolls on staycation: doll dramas narrating popular culture tourism and regional development

Abstract

The study combines popular culture tourism and regional development with contemporary toy and play research through "toyrism", i.e. toy tourism. We focus on a specific form of popular culture and storytelling, the #instadoll phenomenon, involving fictional characters, namely fashion dolls, with personalised appearances and personalities narrated by their owners as players. Through netnography, we examine adult toy players' participation in the #travelingdollpants online project to understand the co-creation process and meaning-making in the physical destination and digital play environment. Further, we examine how the #instadolls function as leisurely play (play for hedonic purposes) and playbor (play as productive work) and elaborate on whether "toyrism" can benefit destination development. By vicariously experiencing staycations in other players' environments through #instadolls stories, relationships are formed between the Instagram followers and the destinations the dolls visit in the socially shared photoplay, or toy photography. The activity combines toys, physical destination environments, corporeal and imaginative mobilities, and socially shared performances, resulting in visual and serial storytelling. Through playification, the dolls as "toyrists" play a part in destination branding and may also become a strategic tool for tourism destination development.