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Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527

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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

Article history:Received 2 December 2013Accepted 7 August 2014Available online

Keywords:AuthenticityTourismCrimeRealityGangsTours

* Tel.: þ34 600558933.E-mail address: konstantina.zerva@udg.edu.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2014.08.0040261-5177/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

a b s t r a c t

Many studies have stated that tourists are searching for authenticity e or what they perceive as such e

within foreign cultural contexts. Accepting forms of culture that reflect day-to-day life as tourist at-tractions, many tourists have developed an interest in the real life of their hosts. Yet, the definition ofauthenticity in tourism has become multifaceted. Divided between experiences and objects, authenticityhas been perceived through either objective, constructive or postmodern approaches. This paper ex-amines the various elements on which a new tourist attraction, namely Los Angeles Gang Tours, bases itscommercialization upon authenticity as communicated through online communication channels. For thispurpose, content analysis was applied to the textual and visual online data available. Finally, the dis-cussion is developed as to what form of authenticity this tour represents, as well as the perception ofauthenticity that tourists share online after experiencing the tour.

© 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, rangingfrom a way of viewing, creating and confirming realities, playingwith variables such as body, space and time (Adler, 1989), or adeeper involvement with society and culture (MacCannell, 1976), toa private, self-perpetuating system of illusions (Cohen, 1988), orsimply, a tension relief activity (Lau, 2010). The need to escape fromday-to-day life and see something different, regardless of its degreeof originality or novelty, is by far the basic motivation for practicingtourism. The intensity of observations and experiences duringtraveling is high, not only due to the change of context but also dueto 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

Self from other perspectives (Neumann, 1992). This is why mostforms of tourism are culturally identified by escape codes (Edensor,2001), practiced in host countries, which are marketed as devoid ofproblems 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 actualexperience or simply something different from their ordinary lives(Sharpley, 1999), in order to overcome the discontinuity ofmodernity (MacCannell, 1976). That is why tourism destinationcommunication strategies focus widely on presenting their productas authentic. So naturally the question of what authenticity rep-resents arises. Undeniably, this is one of the most overused wordsin tourism investigation (Dann, 1996), a polemical concept definedtoomany times (Peterson, 2005; Taylor, 2001) due to its continuallyevolving nature within the various changing social and culturalcontexts.

The purpose of this investigation is not to offer one more defi-nition of authenticity but rather e after gathering and structuringinto a continuum the existing ones e to analyze which theoreticalconceptualizations of it are being used through a) the online

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communication messages of a particular tourist attraction e calledLos Angeles (L.A.) Gang Tours e and b) the online messages touriststhat have taken the tour share with their peers. This less conven-tional tourist attraction was founded in 2009 in the County of LosAngeles in the U.S. state of California e which welcomed a record41.4 million visitors in 2012 (Los Angeles Tourism & ConventionBoard, 2013). This attraction refers to a nonprofit organizationcreated by Alfred Lomas, a former gang member of one of the mostnotorious gangs in Los Angeles, “Florence 13.” Being a veteran of anelite U.S. Marine Corps infantry unit, Alfred was a freelance hiredbodyguard protecting criminal assets and some of L.A.'s top gangleaders. Currently, Alfred presents himself as a community inter-ventionist and a gang abatement consultant with the intention oftraining and professionalizing former gang members. The missionof this organization according to the information available on theirofficial web page is to reduce violence among the gang commu-nities of South Central, to improve employment rates for ex-gangmembers and to create awareness for the wider social contextthat visits them of the existing situation that gang communitieslive in.

2. Literature review

2.1. Day-to-day life or “reality” tourism

Besides great cultural and historical monuments or animatedforms of culture such as festivals and local celebrations, Mathiesonand Wall (1982: 159) distinguish a third form of cultural attractionreflected in the day-to-day life of the visited society. ForMacCannell (1976), tourist attractions represent every visiblepublic 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 thesimplicity or complexity, poverty or wealth of the visited socialcontext can be achieved through social interactionwith locals, whoform the “spirit” of public places (Selwyn, 1996). The quest is tobecome a traveler and not a tourist (Frow, 1991), that is, to becomean active agent in search of adventure, people and experiencesinstead of a passive agent who expects everything to happen to himand for him (Boorstin, 1992). Putting aside counteractive systems ofinsiders versus outsiders and giving emphasis to the basis of thetourist experience, encounters between different stakeholdersproduce meaning-making procedures that allow a redefinition oftruth 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.” Thisterm has been widely used to express the materially oppressed,primitive and exotic, located in particular nonmodern geographicspaces unpolluted by Western civilization, and visited by thematerially privileged, who wish to experience the life of a distantpast in its original state (Bruner, 1991; Frow, 1991; Galani-Moutafi,2000; Silver, 1993). Spivak's term “othering” (1985) e meaningdistancing from Others e was first used in slum tourism bySteinbrink and Pott (2010), and later by Frisch (2012) in favelatourism. These niche markets are looking for new forms of the Self,more authentic ones (Dyson, 2012; MacCannell, 1976), through aninterplay of geography, time and the image of the Other (Galani-Moutafi, 2000).

Access to these particular public spaces is the actual challengefor the tourist who is confronting the destination tourism industry,with its established recommendations and semantic in-terpretations. This quest, for MacCannell (1976), is doomed tofailure since tourists do not see everything they ought to see. Yet,one way of confronting this “touristic shame,” as he names it, is

through guided tours that provide easy access to “ordinary” areasclosed to outsiders, in order to reveal the inner reality of thesespaces. Sometimes, these areas represent disadvantaged zones ofthe tourist destination, usually referred to as “slums,” “favelas” ortownships (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 anddanger hide (Frow,1991; Harper, 2006), for the very reason that thetourism industry has not shown much interest in those areas. Ascould be expected, new forms of tourism specialisms have beencreated representing niche markets, starting from alternativetourism (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 andpleasure appears to be a new tourism product for tours. Many in-vestigations have called these tours “social” or “reality” tours, basedon the authentic day-to-day life of the visited community, with itspositive and negative side, as shown by their operators (Dyson,2012; Frisch, 2012; Rofles, 2010). Here, tourists are asked to visitin person, imagine and share later on what life means in thesecontexts (Isaac, 2009; Meschkank, 2011), while contributing to theimpulse of positive socioeconomic development. Examples of suchtours that promote this negative sightseeing goway back to the endof nineteenth-century Victorian London, when upper-middle-classpeople toured the dangerous and morally dubious East End (Koven,2006), or later to 1967, when The New York Times reported thePenny Sightseeing Company, which inaugurated extensive guidedtours of Harlem (MacCannell, 1976: 40). More contemporary tourexamples are the Katrina Tours in NewOrleans (Pezzullo, 2009), theSlum Tours in Dharani, Mumbai (Dyson, 2012), the pro-Palestiniantours through Bethlehem neighborhoods (Isaac, 2009), and thetownship 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 theymark tourism experiences as “real” (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012). The pro-viders of reality tours have created a niche market, defining itsdemand by using real-not real and authentic-not-authentic dis-tinctions (Meschkank, 2011). Images of the day-to-day life of theOther were first created by “orientalism,”which for Edward Said (inSilver, 1993) refers to the first contacts between Europeans and theArab people and the various distinctions between “West” and“Other.” Later on, the tourism industry marketed these images,usually based onwhatWesterners thought the Other would be like,using exaggerations and an inaccurate representation of their livesand 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 todraw 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 basedon the word-of-mouth effect (Galani-Moutafi, 2000), journals likeNational Geographic, or brochures that portray static and uninflu-enced by Western colonialism traditions (Silver, 1993), to popularmotion pictures with international distribution and success, likeSlumdog Millionaire and City of God (Frisch, 2012), the “poor” areaestheticized, either glamorized or demonized to their respective

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audiences (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012; Miles, 2009). In particular, the pro-duction of films and television in identifiable geographical spaceshas worked as city-goers of these mediatized spaces (Edensor,2001). These “must-sees” that are constructed by the condition-ing elements of themedia provide the signs throughwhich a touristwill perceive and interpret any stimulation according to his/herown 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 touristshave developed a critical attitude towards the mass media, con-trasting their projected reality of a slumwith the reality of the slumthey experience in person and in situ with the guidance of the touroperators (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 amismatch 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 variousnames and definitions as a quality. Focusing on the differentiatedissues of authenticity, Wang (1999) and Lau (2010) make a cleardistinction 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 benamed as authentic. In the first case, the term is addressed to whattourists visit, while in the second it is addressed to the relationshiptourists develop with what they visit.

More particularly, authentic toured objects (Wang, 1999) orobject authenticity (Lau, 2010) refers to the tourist's recognitionthat the toured objects are authentic or real. The original usage ofauthenticity was applied in museum contexts to describe objectsthat are what “they appear to be or are claimed to be” so as toevaluate whether their price is worth paying for (Trilling, 1972: 93).Yet, when applying the qualification of authenticity within theentire tourism industry, it referred to the “noncontentious genu-ineness of an observable thing” (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a), whilethe term “object” expanded and did not correspond to somethingtangible 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 canbe divided in Wang's (1999) threefold categorization: objective,constructive and existential authenticity. In an unsuccessful effortto generate one basic concept, accepted once and for all by allmembers of its community (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a), modern-ists/realists, constructivists and postmodernists conceived eachthese three conceptualizations of authenticity respectively. Formodernists, object authenticity should be underpinned by a fixedand objective reality, while for constructivists the basis ofauthenticity depends on an unfixed and subjective context of in-dividual interpretation. Finally, postmodernists go even further byasserting that authenticity is an irrelevant factor to many touristsfor consumption purposes.

More particularly, the objectivist approach assumes thatauthenticity is a real property or quality measured by objectivecriteria, that is, through an etic perspective of experts and pro-fessionals, not of tourists (Belhassen, Caton, & Stewart, 2008;Reisinger & Steiner, 2006a). Objective authenticity is directlyrelated to issues or marks of tradition, time, host and place, andbasically represents a series of simplistic definitions where toured

objects should be recognized (Adler, 1989; Wang, 1999). Existingdefinitions that come into this category use inflexible terms of thenature 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; TheNew Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993: 150). The absolutenature 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 originalis the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.” So, what does“original” stand for? According to The New Shorter Oxford EnglishDictionary, the original represents something “proceeding directlyfrom its source” or “the origin of source of something from whichanother is copied” or “existing or belonging at or from the begin-ning or earlier age” or “given to or displaying independent exerciseof the mind or imagination” (1993: 2022). That is, original is relatedto the source, meaning to being first, and also to being creative in anunexpected and unrepeated way. Thus, authenticity is the essenceof all that comes from its beginning e the original e including itssubstantive duration in time (Benjamin, 1968).

This particular variable of time has been highly connected toauthenticity. For Rushdie (1991: 67 as cited in Taylor, 2001: 7),“authenticity is the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism. Itdemands that common sources, forms, style, language and symbolsall derive from a supposedly homogenous and unbroken tradition.”The interrelation of tradition and time, expressed as other historicalperiods (MacCannell, 1976), an earlier era (Sharpley, 1999) or sim-ply the past (Cohen, 2007; Sharpley, 1999; Wang, 1999), has alsobeen reported. For Taylor, “the past holds the model of the original”(2001: 9) and authenticity must pay homage to a conception oforigins 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 placeswhere the Other still lives (Culler, 1990; Frisch, 2012; Galani-Moutafi, 2000; Sharpley, 1999).

Going even further, Sharpley (1999) emphasizes the importanceof the host, claiming that “authentic is made, produced or enactedby local people according to custom or tradition, giving emphasis totraditional culture and origin, the genuine, the real or the unique,”while Silver (1993) emphasizes the importance of indigenouspeople remaining undeveloped and primitive so as to attracttourists. Locals' involvement in the tourist space is considered vitalfor tourists' construction of what is real or fake (Mkono, 2012).

A final variable that is attached to authenticity within theobjective approach is place (Belhassen et al., 2008). For Grazian(2003) and Peterson (2005), authentic experiences can bereached 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 thinkinghave been primarily analyzed by Erving Goffman (1959). Albeitcriticized for his limitation to the microcosm of face-to-face situa-tional interactions (Blumer, 1972), his negative focus on society andthe opportunistic side of human nature (Williams, 1986), as well ashis standpoint from rather unsystematic observations that lackedan adequate traditional theory of social action (Smith, 2006;Williams, 1986), he described in detail the underworld, that is,the world beneath the social systemwhere individuality and socialstructure fight for prevalence (Dawe, 1973), creating the metaphorof “all the world's a stage” (Smith, 2006: 42).

This argument that the actual physical environment plays animportant role in the construction of a setting of social meaningsand the human experiences within it has been denied by some(Tuan, 1977) but generally supported by others (Belhassen et al.,

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2008; Wang, 1999). More particularly, Goffman (1959, 1990)showed how individual role playing and identity formation duringsocial interaction is converted into a performance influenced by thesetting. For Belhassen et al. (2008), this is shown in the case oftourism and pilgrimage. The setting is divided into social estab-lishments of front and back regions (Goffman, 1959), or the untruthand 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 regionis transformed into a front region for touristic purposes. The frontrepresents 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 twocategories, the enclavic tourist spaces, designed for tourism andhaving 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), andwhere 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 possiblecombinations of front and backstage has been important in tourismliterature. Arguing that in some cases backstage could be set up todeceive tourists, he formed a continuum of a front-back dichotomy,where stage one represents purely a front region, stage two refersto a front region that creates an atmosphere of a back region, stagethree is a complete copy of a back region, stage four symbolizesaccess to nontouristic back regions, stage five corresponds to aslightly altered back region for visiting purposes, and stage sixstands for the social space that actually attracts tourism. For him, allspaces that are directed to tourism represent staged authenticity,while for Taylor (2001), the reproduction of culture in a stagedsetting reduces the aura of authenticity because it is viewed andexperienced out of its real context and under forced conditions fortouristic goals.

On the other hand, there have been attempts to identify thenature of authenticity focusing on what it should not be. Suchcontradictory 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 OxfordEnglish Dictionary, 1993: 150). For example, MacCannell (1976)and Taylor (2001) argue that the perception of authenticity ispossible when there is perceived inauthenticity; the existence ofreproduction is what makes something original (Culler, 1990).Authentic objects, or generally speaking the “otherness,” are notmade 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 asits unique purpose the satisfaction of mass tourism, which forBoorstin (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 acultural fragmentation and specialization based on tourism that isplaced in authentic settings and this authenticity is important fortourists' experience and for the credibility of the attraction. Masstourism 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 fixedmeasurable 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

allowing more interpretations. The rise of relativism, post-modernism, poststructuralism and constructivism has indicatedthat reality is not perceived the same way by everyone (Reisinger&Steiner, 2006a). Within this framework, Peterson conceptualizedauthenticity as a “moving target” (2005: 1094), referring to “… aclaim that is made by or for someone, thing, or performance andeither accepted or rejected by relevant others” (2005: 1086), ac-cording to the way they perceive reality. The attribution ofauthentic to a toured object does not depend on it being aninherent quality, but on a social construction rising from personalperceptions, beliefs, held stereotypes, expectations, imagination,background and preferences based on various versions of realityinterpretations (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 marketregardless of whether they are originals or not (Cohen, 1988;Markwick, 2001). Therefore authenticity moves from objective tosubjective definitions, or from the etic to the emic. For Wang(1999), this pluralistic context relative to each type of tourist isconstructive authenticity, while for Culler (1994) it is symbolicauthenticity. Furthermore, Wang (2012) developed the term“customized” authenticity, referring to the construction of socialreality through a continuous negotiation between tourists' expec-tations and the destination's effort to look like home, thus adaptingthe 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 ofauthentication, where an authority e either an expert or even endusers 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. Themore contemporary the object, the less formal the role of theauthenticator can be (Peterson, 2005); for example, a simple con-sumer. As long as the creator or representative of that object isinfluenced by its true cultural context, and the members of thesocial group it belongs to remain true to the presentation of Self(Goffman, 1959), authenticity can be granted to the object or thesocial 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 newperformances and identities (Gotham, 2010; Sheller & Urry, 2006).Denying change and accepting as authentic only what is directlyrelated to the past is a simplification that can only lead to culturalloss (Amoamo, 2011). Tourism as a global process of commodifi-cation promotes the serial reproduction of spaces, converting theminto new tourism products, like the example of Disneyficationwhere urban cultural spaces are refashioned based on fake historiesthat are masqueraded as authentic (Gotham, 2010). Yet, theimportance of place is not the same as in objective authenticity. ForPearce and Moscardo (1986) and Sharpley (1999), the distinctionbetween backstage and front stage is irrelevant in definingauthenticity, while the total tourist experience and what it meansto the individual tourist is more significant. Whether the eventsthat take place in a particular space are real or pseudo events, theimportance 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 andplace: in the first, tourists are in the real setting and recognize it assuch; in the second, tourists are in the real setting but believe thatthey are in a staged one; in the third, tourists are in a fake settingbut tourists believe it to be authentic; and in the fourth, tourists arein a fake setting and know it.

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Over time, culture also continually changes, creating dynamicreadjustments and new local cultures (Amoamo, 2011;Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 2007). In time, traditions not only go througha process of recontextualization but also of a stylized inventionaccording to the needs of each time period (Frow, 1991; Silver,1993). Throughout history, dispersed, diasporic groups move tonew lands, where they try on the one hand to hold on to theirinherited tradition and, on the other, to culturally adapt to the newhost societies or the Other (Che, 2004).Within this approach comeswhat Cohen (1988) called “emergent authenticity,” a ratherappropriate term for hybridized diaspora cultures (Che, 2004). Thiscultural 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 andproducing 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 stillhappening 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 approachmake use of the contradictory concepts not allowed in the objectiveapproach. More particularly, a toured object can be considered asauthentic if it is a believable reproduction of a person, object or pastcultural/ethnic performance, which resembles the original andlooks credible (Baudrillard, 1988; Bruner, 1994; Peterson, 2005), ahistorically accurate simulation where creativity related to culturalperformances is allowed (Cohen, 2007).

Finally, Wang (1999) separated the postmodern approach ofauthenticity for toured objects, where inauthenticity basically isnot 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. Apresent-day tourist, with a significant amount of informationavailable to him, is in search of a vanished reality. People from aWesternized world are living in a “society of the spectacle”(Edensor, 2001: 68) surrounded e most of them from the day theywere borne by imitations, fabrications and simulations, circulatingeverywhere to be consumed (Cohen, 1995; Lau, 2010; Peterson,2005; Ritzer & Liska, 1997). So their connection with originsnever really existed. The lack of authenticity has made people moreconnected to the copy and the imitation at such a level that not onlyare they not concerned with the level of its originality but they alsoprefer 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 originalover the copy, simulation is not connected to loss because everyoriginal is a copy itself, divided in its very origin. Postmodernauthenticity refers to the deconstruction of its original definitionand 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, peoplelive in hyperreality, where dreamlike and uncritical states ofhyper-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 andReisinger (2006), a tourist that is looking for existentialauthenticity is uninterested in a tour guide's explanation, interms 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 socialstructures and the personal agency. This is called “performativeauthenticity” (Zhu, 2012), where learning comes through interac-tive experiences. Yet, when an experience is too programmed andstructured, and when the duration of this experience is short e asin the case of tours e then the contact with the host is expected tobe less sincere. This means that in order for an experience to beperceived as authentic, the contact with the host culture has to beas natural and as long as possible (Taylor, 2001). Authenticity isperceived as free self-expression, an engagement in nonordinaryactivities (Wang, 1999), which for Belhassen et al. (2008) dependson the setting in which people experience authenticity. Therefore,the feeling of authenticity is related to the “authentically goodtime” people have (Brown, 1996).

These interactive experiences are referring to the contact withthe “real world” and the “real Self.” In the first case, authenticity isrelated to information and knowledge about the social and culturalcontext of the tourist destination (MacCannell, 1976), learned in situand guided e when possible e by tour operators. This is whatSelwyn (1996) called “cool authenticity,” referring to the authen-ticity of knowledge. In the case of the “real Self,” authenticity isconnected 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 discoverand share the natives' uncommodified true lives (Lau, 2010;MacCannell, 1976; Pearce & Moscardo, 1986). This last point isfurther developed by Selwyn (1996) and Wang (1999), who arguethat a relationship between the authentic Self and the authenticOther is created. The individual is interested in self-discovery(Steiner & Reisinger, 2006), challenging the Self when facing theOther. This is what Selwyn (1996) called “hot authenticity” or whatWang (1999) called “existential authenticity.” Existential authen-ticity means being true to oneself, so as not to lose the Self withinthe public sphere (Berger, 1973).

Observing the evolution of the definitions of authenticity fromobjective to postmodern, with regard to toured objects as well aspersonal experiences, it appears that concepts go from the absoluteobjective black and white distinction to an endless (and stillongoing) subjective categorization of gray color schemes. Recentinvestigation 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 (Leighet 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 themselvestowards the market they belong in. The marketing of areas notcommercialized in the past for tourism purposes makes the use ofauthenticity possible as a competitive advantage of their promo-tion. Therefore, in studying a particular tourist attraction called LosAngeles Gang Tours, which allows access to the gang culture ofSouth Central, Los Angeles, the purpose of this paper is to explainwhat type of authenticity is projected and commercialized online,addressing the niche market of reality tourism. For this reason, thevarious markers that could justify the concept of “authentic” asthey are being used by the online communication strategies of thisorganization 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 theparticularity and ordinariness of the case itself with no intention of

K. Zerva / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 514e527 519

generalizing or of building a theory (Stake,1994,1995). Case studiesrepresent, for Louis Smith, a bounded system that has workingparts (Stake, 1994, 1995), where investigators should identify andunderstand the boundaries of the case and the complexity of thebehavior 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 theauthenticity 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 intentionhere is not to be conclusive, but rather to generate new researchquestions and objectives within the tourism destination researchfield (Yin, 2003).

In order to triangulate and follow a corroborative mode ofinterpretation, both primary and secondary data were used. Firstly,in order to fully understand the scopes and aims of the tour fromthe creator's perspective, I collected primary data through a per-sonal, semi-structured, online telephone interview with thefounder of L.A. Gang Tours, Alfred Lomas, on April 15th 2011, whichlasted 50 min. The use of the real name of this organization'screator has been agreed with him. Open-ended questions wereemployed in order to gain insight into the organization's posi-tioning from a member's perspective. The questions' content wasdivided into three basic categories: a) the existing situation of thegang culture in South Central, b) the tour's organization andstructure, and c) the profile, expectations and reactions of thetourists who take the tour.

Secondary data refers to online information available to pro-spective tourists, nationally and internationally, who access theInternet in order to learn about L.A. Gang Tours. As for the timeframe of this research, I analyzed secondary data that were putonline between January 2009 and January 31st 2012. Due to theorganization's low budget, L.A. Gang Tour's promotion is dependenton online channels, where information is either formed by the or-ganization itself or emerges from public relations, meaning onlinepress releases, international news outlets or consumer-based on-line word-of-mouth communication (see Table 1). Therefore, thesecondary textual data that are being analyzed come from theexisting communicational messages of the organization itself, in-formation intermediaries such as the press and tourists' opinion.The importance of online newspapers and consumer opinions (hereon Facebook) in terms of data credibility and influence whenseeking information, was verified by Johnson and Kaye (2004) andBae and Lee (2011).

For the analysis of the collected secondary data, I used con-ceptual content analysis (Carley, 1990), meaning the scientificdescription of the content of communication, so as to establish theexistence and frequency of concepts related to authenticity, andidentify the content categories that represent the intentions andfocus on the various institutions (Krippendorff, 1980), as expressedbywords or phrases in the textual and video data of Table 1. For thispurpose, emerging content coding was applied by comparing data

Table 1Online information on L.A. Gang Tours, positioning order on Google on the 30/11/2012.

Online information controlledby the organization

Official web page of LA Gang ToursLa Gang Tours Music Video on Youtube

Online information controlledby the organization and tourists

Facebook web page of LA Gang Tours

Online information controlledby the press

20 Online press articles, web pagepositioning order on Google on the30/11/20124 Online press report video availableon the official web page of LA Gang Tours

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 theonline textual and audiovisual data referring to L.A. Gang Tours aimto show the real position from an insider (reformed gangmembers)as well as an outsider perspective (Facebook friends, journalists),marking its distance from preexisting representations of SouthCentral L.A.

4. Results

4.1. Markers of authenticity

In order to analyze the presence of any notion of authenticity inthe communication messages related to L.A. Gang Tours in eachonline source (Table 1), conceptual analysis was applied to theonline textual and video data referring to this organization. Bydoing so, the existence and frequency of concepts regardingauthenticity was investigated, as represented by words or phrasesin the data, emphasizing the stronger presence of positive ornegative words used in the representation of L.A. Gang Tours(Carley, 1990). Table 2 illustrates the emerging codes created bywordse in vivo and synonymse that online channels communicateto prospective tourists about this organization as well as thegeneric categories that enclose these codes, which are related to themarkers of authenticity e divided into the emerging subcategoriesof place, dilapidated conditions, time, hosts and awareness. Thesecategories and subcategories will be subsequently analyzed. Finally,Table 3 shows the frequency of appearance of each category in thetotality of the online communication channels that wereinvestigated.

4.1.1. PlaceLos Angeles is the gang capital of the world (The Advancement

Project, 2007). L.A. Gang Tours offer a 3-h bus tour to the darkside of the city, meaning areas where gangs have taken over, morespecifically Skid Row, South Central (now known as South L.A.) andWatts. According to the official web page of the tour, 13 scheduledstops are made, including 10 that are directly connected to crimeand three that are related to graffiti or masterpiece (referring to theartistic manifestation of graffiti). More particularly, the bus makesstops to a) areas known as birthplaces of old and notorious gangs,like Florencia 13, the Black Panther Party and the Crips; b) state jailsand detention centers, like the Los Angeles County Jail e wheresome of the guides of the tour were imprisoned for more than 20years, along with famous inmates like Al Capone and CharlesManson; c) crime scenes, like the area where the deadly shoot-outin 1974 between the police and the Symbionese Liberation Armyhappened; and d) other stops related to L.A. riots.

For most people, graffiti represents a thorn in the side of civilsociety, a threat to the image of a neighborhood, or, at a moreextreme level, a sign of a possible end of civilization (Phillips, 1999).The failure of the state to cleanup cities from this “urban art,” alongwith the millions of dollars that are spent on this unsuccessfulproject, criminalize even more its expression. The criminal types ofmessages it sometimes communicates along with its illegalexpression on public property such as buildings, subways, bridges,public transport and billboards have allowed the dominant systemto interpret graffiti as a visible sign of urban decay or vandalism,that can economically degrade a neighborhood, by representing aloss of control (Black, 1997). For Easteal and Wilson (1991), whoinvestigate the expression of crime that is observed on transportsystems, graffiti comes within the large taxonomy of crime, as oneof its lowest expressions, while still being identified as a criminalaction. Today graffiti, as Alfred mentions, is a symptom of an

Table 3Category frequency of markers of authenticity.

Categories Frequency of categoryappearance on onlinecommunication channels

Place 170

Dilapidated conditions 364Social situation in gang communities 193Gang activity 131Instruments for gang violence 40

Time 32

Hosts 599Insiders 564Personal contact with hosts/insiders 35

Awareness 102Cognitive 85Emotional 25

Total of frequencies 1263

Table 2Categories and word existence of markers of authenticity: word ordering based onmost frequently repeated.

Markers of authenticity No. ofmarkers

Place Graffiti, South Central Los Angeles, jaile prison e incarcerated e behind barse arrested, hood, forbidden, dark side e

wild side, rough neighborhood, ghetto,gritty mean streets, decayed publichousing e house projects, derelictenvironment, street life, no-go areas,battleground, other LA, behind thescene of Hollywood, our backyard,overgrown buildings, toughest turf

25

Dilapidated conditions 82Social situation

in gangcommunities

Violence, danger e peril, risk, crime,poverty, racism, bad, social injustice e

inequality e social ills, homeless,detention, scary, class division, leavingsafety, corruption, conflict, hatred,funeral, urban strife, cops, frightening,misery, tension, fear, hopeless,underlying disorder, parole, turbulent,brutality, post-traumatic stress, urbancomplexities, wealth not shared,negative situation, crying mothers

36

Gang activity Shoot, killings e murder e death e

homicide, injured e get hurt e beatene harm-stabbed, riot, victim, war,arrest, crime, rebellion, stealing,tagging, felony, crossfire, cover-up,framing, survive, kidnapped, burnt,vandalism, property damage, illegal,pain, bloodshed

30

Instruments forgang violence

Gun e pistol e armed, drug, bullet,trigger, alcohol, knives, laser wire

9

Time Troubled history e history, old, 20years, 1974, Al Capone, Charles Manson

7

HostsInsiders Gang (and gang names), notorious,

tattoo, bank robber, ex-convict,deadliest, wife beater, villain

9

Personal contactwith hosts/insiders

First-hand information, up close,personal, for real

4

Awareness 25Cognitive Awareness e insight, education e

understanding e see the truth e learn,eye-opening experience, informative,inspired, real, break barriers estereotypes, learn, movies not right,enlightened, bring attention,consciousness, positive, deepperspective

19

Emotional Touched, sensitizing people,entertaining, feel respect, worth thelook, human touch

6

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underlying disorder, meaning a particular part of society's life:“Before the killings, before the drug wars, often symptoms of theurban light or mentality will be demonstrated by tagging and otherforms of graffiti.”

L.A. Gang Tours make three graffiti stops. The first one is LosAngeles Riverbed, where the basic attraction is the world's largesttag, 2000 feet long and three stories high, with an estimatedcleanup cost of $3.7 million. The second stop is the Pico Union GraffLab, where various graffiti artists paint and display their work andtourists are encouraged to exchange opinions with former gang

members or gang intervention workers, focusing on the positiveand creative discourse of graffiti as an art form that can distractyoung people from the gang world and orient them into the crea-tive and entrepreneurial world of painting. Finally, the last stop isWatts Arts Gallery, where graffiti and other original artwork exposethe significance of art as a means of healing the “wounds of war.”

The unique offering of this tour in comparison with any othertour in Los Angeles is that it gives tourists the opportunity to visitneighborhoods where the social problem of gang culture lives andwhere they have never beenwelcome before, if they ever wanted tobe. These visited communities represent the real spatial scenerywhere gang life takes place, while the presence of graffiti e

whether gang or artistic graffiti e induces the presence of gangaction. Analyzing the various characterizationse from the analyzedonline communication channels e attributed to the places this touris taken and to elements of these places that are shown during thetour, Table 3 indicates that of all themarkers of authenticity that arementioned 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-ison to the rest of the code categories), presenting on the one handits risky nature, with words like “dark side,” “grittymean streets” or“battleground,” and, on the other, its inaccessibility until now,when characterized as “forbidden” or “no-go areas.” This plethoraof 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 completeimage of this destination while confirming its problematic visualaspect.

4.1.2. Dilapidated conditionsAlmost 75% of youth gang homicide and violence in the state of

California takes place in Los Angeles County (The AdvancementProject, 2007). The city of Los Angeles is estimated to have about400 gangs and more than 40,000 gang members, of which only asmall percentage are engaged in routine violence, while LosAngeles County is home tomore than 6300 gangs and 170,000 gangmembers (Los Angeles Office, 2007). The FBI's annual crimestatistics 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., wheremost

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gang violence takes place, workers are paid the lowest averagewages 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 informedthrough online communication channels about L.A. Gang Tours isthe social conditions that exist in the visited areas of the tour. Thewords used to describe life in gang communities refer entirely todilapidated living conditions. The frequency of markers that depictthe social problems of gang life in South Los Angeles is the secondmost important (364 out of 1263) among all the markers ofauthenticity (see Table 3). Additionally, the frequency of appear-ance of characterizations of the existing social situationwithin gangcommunities represents more than 50% (193 out of 364) of allcharacterizations related to South Central's social problems. Lessrepetition is made of concepts of specific gang activity (131 out of364) and the instruments with which they practice it (40 out of364).

Likewise, the number of differentiated words and phrasesreferring 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 thehighest among all categories (Table 3). Prospective tourists comeacross, at an elevated frequency, words that characterize the tour'slocation, like “violence,” “danger,” “risk,” “frightening” and “mis-ery,” as well as the particular social problems that provoke thatimage such as “crime,” “poverty,” “racism,” “social injustice,” “cor-ruption” and “underlying disorder.” Furthermore, words thatmention the exact activities in which gangs are involved, such as“shoot,” “riots,” “rebellion,” “arrest” and “property damage,” alongwith 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. TimeLos Angeles has been known for its gang culture since World

War II (Greene& Pranis, 2007), converting gang crime not only intoa current but also a generational issue in that territory. The creationof 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 timepasses, gangs are institutionalized on the streets, building theiridentities slowly, undisturbed effectively by the state laws. Thecounty of Los Angeles today is the most multicultural county in theUnited 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 theoutcome 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 contemporarygang culture that has remained alive since its origins. As Alfredstated during the interview, “… if you take a tour of Chicago, they'llgive you a talk about Al Capone in the early 20s; if you take a tour ofBelfast Ireland, they'll talk to you about the bombings that happened inthe 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 ahistorical tour, and they'll talk about decades in the past. Instead thisgang tour, as far as the knowledge the people have that I've been told, isthe 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 incrediblethat … that can take place.” Therefore, tourists are witnesses of theactual life in the “hood,” which faces a gang rivalry that was

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 pastand present, with a frequency of appearance of only 32 timesagainst a total of 1263 times of marker appearance (Table 3) of allthe characterizations used to mark authenticity. This indicates thatmost of the communication made emphasizes today instead of thetime travel it could offer.

4.1.4. HostsFor tourists on L.A. Gang Tours, the concept of hosts is repre-

sented in a twofold way: a) by the people who live in theseneighborhoods 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 gangcommunities, as mentioned in the previous chapter, it is multi-cultural, and ethnic segregation was one of the most fundamentalreasons for separation among gangs. Our content analysis indicatesthat the category whose frequency of appearance exceeds 50% (599out 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 whoparticipate in or simply live with gang activities on a day-to-daybasis. They are the Other, whose lives have become a touristattraction. The subcategory of insiders e albeit it is described onlywith a few distinct characterizations (Table 2) e the frequency ofthese characterizations, and particularly the markers “gang” orspecific 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 thatprospective tourists will see real gang members. According toGreene and Pranis (2007: 27), “a gang is an ongoing organization,association or group of three or more persons, whether formal orinformal, having as one of its primary activities the commission ofone or more specified crimes, having a common name or commonidentified sign or symbol, and whose members individually orcollectively 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 aformer gang member of Florence 13, there are currently five formerleaders of rival gangs who work as guides and describe their per-sonal experiences and lives on the street, the gang culture and howthey were reformed. All of them have been to prison for pastcriminal activities, and each of them explains during the tour thecrimes they committed, their reasons for committing them, theirtime in prison and the reason they have decided to escape from thatgang life. Additionally, tourists are encouraged to exchange opin-ions with various graffiti artists from South Central who paint anddisplay their urban art at some of the graffiti stops of the tour.Specifically, in Watts Arts Gallery, tours can meet Aqeela Sherrills, acampaigner against gang violence, who achieved a significant gangtruce in 1992 between Bloods and Crips.

One of the most important factors that make communicationwith the tour guides intriguing is the personal contact tourists canhave with the insider (in contradiction to favela tours where theguides are outsiders, see Frisch, 2012). The direct flow of questionsand answers between two separate worlds allows unmediatedaccess to information that only locals have. As Alfred said, “Wecreated these problems and reality asks us to solve these problems,”emphasizing the fundamental role he and the rest of the tourguides have played in the past as a negative influence, and in thepresent, but as a positive bias. Even though this subcategory was

Table 4Categories and word existence of staged authenticity: word ordering based on mostfrequently repeated.

Markers of nonauthenticity No. ofmarkers

Misinterpretationof reality

Glorification e romanticism e

glamorization, questionable benefit ecriticism, animal status, can't capturereality, terrible idea, carnival barking,demonize, disrespectful, demeaning forthe people, irresponsible, exhibits

14

Changes of local scenery Cease-fire, safety 2

Commercialization Release form, selling shirts, water gun 3

Tour characterization 36Negative tour

characterizationExploitation, ghettotainment, zoo, ondisplay e marketing e titillation,bullshit (BS), Disneyland, amusementfor tourists

9

Positive tourcharacterization

Awesome, important, interesting,amazing, exciting, great, brave,memorable, fantastic, fascinating cooltour, looking good, non-profit, positive,good work, make a difference, altruism,give back, blessing, redemption, goodcause, charitable, friendly tour, socialservice, heaven, surprise, dream, hotstuff

27

Table 5Category frequency of markers of staged authenticity.

Categories Frequency of categoryappearance on onlinecommunication channels

Misinterpretation of reality 31Changes of local scenery 13Commercialization 19Tour characterization 173Negative tour characterization 63Positive tour characterization 110Total of frequencies 236

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detected online through only four markers (see Table 2) and it has alow frequency of appearance within the wider category of hosts (35out of 599, see Table 3) and the rest of the categories in general,because of the personal social interaction it implies, it has beendemonstrated in various investigations to have a strong influenceon the awareness category (Cohen, 1985; Reisinger & Steiner,2006b).

4.1.5. AwarenessAccording to Sin (2003), the construction of knowledge depends

significantly on encounters and space. Tourists in L.A. Gang Toursvisit the actual territories where gangs with a long history act,while information over the existing conditions of day-to-day lifecomes from personal interaction with insiders from these com-munities. Tourists only interact with the guides of the tour andwithother ex-gang members who collaborate occasionally with thisorganization. They do not have a programmed interaction with theresidents of these communities. Thus, the information received ismainly from insiders who work with the tours and have a preparedlecture on life in South Central. Information about particular eventsis provided at the places they happened. For example, when thetour stops at the Los Angeles County Jail, the guides who have donetime there explain their personal stories, or when the bus passesfrom areas where there is graffiti in a codifiedmanner that explainshostile warnings against gangs, the guides translate these messagesfor the tourists. Great emphasis is also given to the area where thedeadly shoot-out in 1974 took place between the police and theSymbionese Liberation Army. The fact that this tour can provide tothe prospective tourist awareness of this social context withinwhich the Other lives is supported by the use of 25 markers(Table 2), but a low frequency of category appearance (102 out of1263, see Table 3) in comparison to the rest of the categories.

This awareness is indicated by two subcategories. The first one,and the one that most frequently appeared (85 out of 102), is thecognitive effect that the direct communication with insiders hasproduced, expressed by markers like “insight,” “education,” “eye-opening experience” and “real.” As Alfred mentioned during theinterview, “… at the end of the tour they are just delighted to see thateverything that was stereotypical, everything they read or thought orperceived of these communities was false. They find out that we are nodifferent than anyone else.” The second one has a much lowerpresence in the content of online data regarding this tour e withonly four different markers, with a frequency of appearance of 25out of 102 times within the subcategory of awareness, and it refersto the positively emotional impact this tour has had on sometourists who attended, making the process of awareness appear asmore dynamic.

4.2. Markers of staged authenticity

The data available on the analyzed online communicationchannels provide e apart from markers of authenticity e charac-terizations that betray staged commercialized scenery. Table 4shows the categories and particular existing words that formeach category of nonauthenticity, while Table 5 displays the fre-quency of appearance of these categories. Both data are far lessimportant numerically than themarkers of authenticity, in terms ofword existence and frequency of appearance, but they are availableand mentioned at least once in all investigated online communi-cation channels. One of the most important negative critiquesmade against L.A. Gang Tours is that instead of awareness, what isoffered is a misinterpretation of reality, emphasizing an exaggera-tion of reality by using words like “glorification,” “romanticism”

and “glamorization,” on the one hand, and a lack of respect towardsits residents, through the use of characterizations like

“disrespectful,” “demeaning for the people” and “irresponsible,” onthe other. Yet, these 14 different markers used to represent acognitive and moral misuse of reality have appeared 31 out of 236times (see Table 5) among all markers of staged authenticity.

There are two categories that show evidence of staging thesetting of the tour. The first one refers to the changes of localscenery, with only two markers (“ceasefire” and “safety,” seeTable 4) that refer to the fact that when the tour takes place, there isan agreement among the gangs that live in the locality where thetour is conducted to permit a safe passage and not enter intocriminal activities. This means that tourists are witnessing a lessdangerous social context than what they could visit outside thetour. These alterations, which could attract prospective tourists forthis very reason, that is, the safe passage, are poorly repeated (13out of 236, see Table 5) within the online information available onthe analyzed websites. Therefore, tour guides, on the one hand,reassure the tourists of their personal safety, and, on the other, theypresent the contemporary theme of violence and crime. The secondcategory is related to commercial concepts involved in this tour,expressed through three markers (“release form,” “selling shirts”and “water guns,” see Table 4). More particularly, tourists who takethe tour have to sign a release form before the tour, accepting fullresponsibility if anything happens to them during the tour. This is amarketing tool, as Alfred admitted, to attract more interest from

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

Categories of markers of authenticity Frequency of categoryappearance from tourists'comments (Facebook,official web page &videos)

Frequency of categoryappearance on fromthe organization onofficial web page

Frequency of categoryappearance from thepress on online pressarticles and blogs

Place 8 52 110

Dilapidated conditions 6 89 269Social situation in gang communities 6 50 137Gang activity e 27 104Instruments for gang violence e 12 28

Time 2 9 21

Hosts 26 132 441Insiders 13 123 428Personal contact with hosts/insiders 13 9 13

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

Total of frequencies 97 297 881

Categories of markers of staged authenticityMisinterpretation of reality 1 6 24

Changes of local scenery e 3 10

Commercialization 4 3 12

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

Total of frequencies 69 29 138

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prospective tourists and emphasize even more the existence ofdanger in these marginalized areas. Selling shirts with the logo ofthe organization and the use of water guns at a particular momentof the tour are mentioned only once and represent a market-oriented tactic towards commodification and trivialization of thetourist attraction. This category is the second least frequent toappear among the rest of the markers of nonauthenticity (19 out of236).

Finally, the category that has received the most differentiatedcharacterizations (36) and the highest frequency of appearancesamong markers of nonauthenticity (173 out of 236) is the tourcharacterization, mostly by reporters and tourists who haveattended. This characterization is divided into two types, a negativeand a positive one. In the negative tour characterization, mostmarkers referred to exploitation, while naming the tour as “ghet-totainment,” “zoo” and “Disneyland,” at a frequency of 63 out of 173times among all characterizations of the tour. These markers indi-cate a false and exploitative nature of the tour. Nonetheless, a muchhigher 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 importancein terms of social contribution to the gang communities of SouthCentral, 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 noreference to issues of authenticity, but rather to issues of overallexperience evaluation of the tour as well as changes it intends toground in these troubled territories; that is, the tour's effort tochange actual reality.

4.3. Who said what

Until now, what has been analyzed is the markers of staged ornonauthenticity that have been used and repeated in the onlinecommunication 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 thethree different sources that communicate information about L.A.Gang Tours online, the organization itself, the press, who havecovered the topic, and tourists that have taken the tour. Table 6shows the frequency of category appearance of markers ofauthenticity and staged authenticity among tourists (whose state-ments are on the L.A. Gang Tours Facebook page, official web pageand on videos uploaded on the latter), the organization itself(official web page), and intermediaries, like reports on online pressand blogs.

According to Table 6, the distribution of category frequency ofauthenticity markers is proportionally alike between the officialweb page and the online press releases and blogs. That is, thecategory that most emphasis is given to (among all categories) is‘hosts’ (132/297 and 441/881 respectively), followed by ‘dilapidatedconditions’ (89/297 and 269/881 respectively), ‘place’ (52/297 and110/881 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 authenticitymarkers, where the category of tour characterization and moreparticularly negative tour characterization is mostly repeated (10/29 on the official web page and 53/138 in online press articles andblogs). The difference is that on the official web page, the

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organization shows the negative markers so as to answer back,while in the press releases they are mentioned as the expressedcriticism regarding this tour. ‘Positive tour characterization’ follows(7/29 and 39/138 respectively), along with ‘misinterpretation ofreality’ (6/29 and 24/138). ‘Tour characterization’ in both sources ismostly repeated among categories of staged authenticity (17/29and 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 onlinepress (12/138), while it has the same frequency of appearance withchanges of local scenery on the official web page (3/29 in bothcases). Thismeans that basic emphasis from both sources is given tohosts, 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 onemarker of negative tour characterization or changes of local sceneryis mentioned). That is, most emphasis is given to markers of stagedauthenticity. The secondmost repeated category among all, and thefirst among markers of authenticity, is ‘awareness’ (55), wherecognitive 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 emotionalcontribution of the tour, as given by the hosts.

5. Conclusions

In marketing, a good product is generally defined as easilyidentified, distinct and knowable (Taylor, 2001), while simplicity ina world cluttered with messages has turned into one of the keystrategies for product positioning (Wallace, 2006). According toUrry (1990) in Selwyn (1996: 8), tourism professionals have neededto persuade tourists to visit contemporary tourist sites, sometimesmaking them into attractive spectacles. This simplistic communi-cation seems to be confirmed in the case of L.A. Gang Tours, throughthe investigated online channels. The evidence from the analysis ofthe online textual and video data that encourage prospective tour-ists to take the tour illustrates the organization's position in terms ofreality and authenticity. Referring to niche tourism, this organiza-tion directs its communication messages to those few who want tovisit something that the rest avoid, that is, unsafe settings. The on-line promotion of markers that place marketers would consider asnonappealing because they are directly related to violence andcrime e and thus they would not use them e suggests that thisattraction offers access to sites that few have been able to visit. Eventhough the word “authentic” is not mentioned once, many markersrelated to authenticity are being used so as to create interest anddemand for this product. This indirect focus on authenticity is notsurprising, due to the fact that the primary benefit that iscommercialized is the awareness of the reality of gang communitiesand the possibility of contributing as a tourist to a social change ofthat reality. At this point, markers that emphasize the social offeringof the tour (see the positive tour characterization in Table 4)neutralize the negative image of this attraction and focus on itsrepresentation of an authentic tourism setting. Yet, what could besuggested is a directmarketing centering on the type of authenticitythat could be more implemented for commercialization and is nowindirectly present through the online promotion of this tour.

More particularly in this type of authenticity, the overall usedmarkers e coming mostly from official opinion makers, like theorganization itself and the press e focus basically on the nature of

the visited object (according to Lau's (2010) interpretation). There isa description and characterization of what the tour allows touriststo gaze at, but not what they are allowed to feel. Therefore, what ismostly projected is Wang's (1999) and Lau's (2010) object-relatedauthenticity of this tour. In terms of Sharpley's (1999) touristexperience, the limited time that the tour lasts and thus the fewsocial interactions tourists have with the insiders, confirmed by thesignificant number of markers of cognitive experience, indicate thatthe basic product of the tour is Selwyn's (1996) cool authenticity,meaning awareness of the “real world” through a quick view of theexisting conditions of life in South Central.

The used markers of authenticity are related to the issues thatAdler (1989) and Wang (1999) focus on, that is, place, time, hostsand tradition. L.A. Gang Tours offer to a niche market a 3-h bus tourin the marginalized communities of South Central, where localresidents, or else insiders, are in charge of guiding tourists to theparticular spaces where one version of gang culture was born andpreserved over time. The concept of original where the touristexperience is related to the source of gang culture is highly presentthrough the markers of authenticity that exist publicly online. Po-tential tourists know that they will visit the settings where gangswere born, where gang members still live, and receive first-handinformation of the dilapidated conditions of these settings afterpersonal interaction with ex-gang members, that is, with peoplethat had provoked social problems at some level in that precisespace. The lack of implementation of successful policies that couldimprove the living conditions of these communities in South Cen-tral is indicated bymarkers of an undeveloped setting, where crimeis still present. Therefore, concepts such as past, origin, true, sincereand primitive e related to objective authenticity e are mentioneddirectly or indirectly by the markers of authenticity detected in theonline data. Yet, as shown by the data, less emphasis is given to theconcept of “time travel,” since few markers rarely mentioned havebeen published, while more importance is attributed to the actualconditions under which the Others are, and have been, living.

In particular, the great majority of the markers that characterizethe nature of this tour emphasize the exclusive possibility ofaccessing the backstage (Goffman, 1959: MacCannell, 1976), un-discovered spaces that were closed to outsiders, and only insiderscan let you in safely. Thus, the importance of place in definingauthenticity, as supported by Grazian (2003) and Peterson (2005),is present in the transmission of information related to L.A. GangTours. This tour offers a safe access to South Central, under theagreement among gangs not to disturb the bus during the tour.Tourists are not allowed to take pictures of the community, whilethe fact that the 3-h tour basically takes place in a bus indicates thelimited contact they have with insiders, apart from the tour guides.That means, on the one hand, that no chance is given for tourists todevelop a social interaction with the host or “real Self,” a factexpressed by the lack of emotional markers of authenticity relatedto sociability with the local community. Therefore, Selwyn's (1996)“hot authenticity” is not promoted online. On the other hand, theL.A. Gang Tours experience of authenticity is mediated by theguides, keeping a safe distance from those insiders who may notagree with the purpose or effectiveness of this tour. Thus, accordingto 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 ofthe space so as to appear more authentic, but a slight alteration ofthe social conditions under which the visit can take place. Thisindicates that the visitor of this tour is a passive agent who is givenall the necessary information and taken to the backstage by in-siders, that is, there is no personal effort to gather information andvisit the setting. Everything is planned for him and provided to himby others. Thus, according to Boorstin's definition (1992), the visitor

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of L.A. Gang Tours has the qualities of the tourist, but has access tothe setting of a traveler's journey.

On the other hand, looking more closely at the markers of thetourists' 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 ofthe tour in general terms, certifyingwithmarkers like “awesome” or“interesting” that they had an authentically good time, as Brownwould say (1996). Their markers emphasize the evaluation of theentire experience in engaging with the nonordinary activity ofvisiting L.A.'s gang culture from the inside as educative and worth-while, while according to Cohen's (1979) categorization, theyrecognize that theyare in the real setting. This indicates that touristscommunicate messages of what Wang (1999) called “existentialauthenticity,” where interaction with the real world of the Otherproduces Selwyn's (1996) “cool authenticity”. Even though conceptsof time and place are not highlighted, tourists give emphasis to theinformation 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 themedia or film industry, are a basic advantage in the validity of thetransmitted information (Dyson, 2012; Silver, 1993) and in gainingawareness over the existing social conditions of these territories.According to the online statements of tourists, no one that hastaken the tour has expressed disappointment in failing to matchtheir expectations to what they perceived as a gang communitythrough the media. It is indicative that all the markers of positivetour characterization (Tables 4 and 5) are given by tourists whohave taken the tour, while all the markers of negative tour char-acterization are provided by reporters who have not, in the greatmajority, taken the tour, but just cover the news. The face-to-facedescription of gang reality from what Edensor (2001) called “cul-tural intermediaries,” that is, insiders who not only live there butused to be part of the violence problem, creates a unique politics ofrepresentation of their communities and themselves, as happens inmost slum tours (Dürr& Jaffe, 2012; Dyson, 2012; Rofles, 2010) thatcannot be competitively replaced by mass media communication.These reformed gang members are not only passing on details oflife in South L.A. gang communities, but they are also active parts ofthe generational problem of gang life. Within the safety context ofbeing ex-gang members, thus not currently dangerous, and theagreement of all gangmembers not tomolest the tour, guides sharepast experiences to those that want to listen. The information theyshare is not only memories of the long past but also recent facts ofthe gang culture. The fact that the latter remains an existing socialissue in South Central that the authorities have not yet managed tocontrol and eliminate indicates the undeveloped or, to a greaterextent, ‘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 communitiesfor years as a result of industrialization, a varied vocabulary thatdescribes gang activities and their social consequences is used.There is no reference to copy, fake, simulation or reproduction inany of the investigated online sources. The presence of commer-cialization here is, as a concept, rather weak in comparison to therest of the markers of authenticity, while it makes no reference tothe production of Boorstin's (1992) pseudo events for commer-cialized purposes; therefore, it is not presented as the destructivecommodification that Cohen (1988), Greenwood (1989) andSharpley (1999) have described it as, maintaining the day-to-daylife of local people the same as before the tour took place.

This indicates the ‘simplistic’ communication codes that havebeen used by official opinion makers to identify authenticity in thistour, like concepts of real, origins, undeveloped, unchanged,

unique, truth and past, constructing the image of objectiveauthenticity, with the inflexible content it was given (Bruner, 1994;Cohen, 2007; Peterson, 2005; Wang, 1999). L.A. Gang Tours showthe consequences of real poverty and real crime in a marginalizedgang area of Los Angeles, while it communicates the reasons whyone should see that side of the city, constructing a complete imageof it. The type of authenticity that this tour shows is not presentedas the result of individual interpretations of each tourist throughpersonal experiences, but as undeniable facts, which have beenmostly questioned over the moral basis of projecting them insteadof the reality behind them. Yet, tourists' comments focus more onexistential authenticity, evaluating the entire experience they havein 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 thatthe organization and the press choose to emit (description of gangreality). Additionally, due to the fact that this tour is directed at aniche market, tourists' comments online are much less in quanti-tative terms than the information provided by the organizationitself or the press. This means thatmarkers of objective authenticityregarding this tour outnumber markers of existential authenticity.Prospective tourists can either agree or not to take the tour basedon personal moral arguments, for the very reason that it providesaccess to real backstage disadvantaged regions. Therefore, apromising marketing communication strategy in the future wouldbe to focus messages on markers of existential authenticity, insteadof exclusively on objective authenticity.

The results of this exploratory investigation show, on the onehand, that when L.A. Gang Tours, as a group of locals, inform themarket about their product, they emphasize objective and coolauthenticity, that is, mostly who they are and what they have to sayin order to create awareness for the visitor. The power of the localgaze to penetrate tourists' lives can now be exercised. The sameargument is presented by the press. The locals have the opportunityto gaze at the outsider that shows interest in their gang culture andsee the possibilities, if any, of social improvement that this expo-sure can provide. On the other hand, when tourists communicateinformation about L.A. Gang Tours, that is, when tourists reporttheir “tourist gaze,” they focus on existential and cool authenticity,referring to how the entire experience has managed to change theirknowledge and perception of gang culture. This mutual gaze, asMaoz (2006) calls it, coincides in terms of cool authenticity,meaning knowledge of the real world, the outside and the insideworld of gang communities, with the hopeful outcome of socialchange. This indicates the need for social reconstruction, whichinevitably will lead future marketing communication strategiesaway from the absolute objective terms of authenticity and closerto the constructive approach of authenticity. In time, even thoughthe marker of place will remain, if gang communities finally putviolence and crime aside, dilapidated social conditions will becomesomething of the past, locals will be less related to gang activity andawareness will be shared through hosts' collective memory insteadof personal experiences. Future investigation into the communi-cation messages used by nonprofit organizations such as L.A. GangTours is needed so as to show how markers of authenticity arebeing used, and evolve over time, by producers, tourists and anyother intermediary.

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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 Humanitiesfrom the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her recentpublications include “Crime and Tourism: OrganizationalOpportunities 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 thetourism markets, social marketing and theories of socialexchange through the use of qualitative methods of dataanalysis.