PhD Student

Nora Winsky

 

nora.winsky@geographie.uni-freiburg.de
ORCID: 0000-0002-9006-5347


Project Results

Tourism Worlds On- and Offline: On the Mediatisation of Tourist Practices in Freiburg and the Black Forest Region

Digitalisation impacts not only the way travel is represented, but also influences how travel itself is undergoing dynamic changes through mediatisation. Freiburg and the Black Forest region served as exemplary spaces of inquiry in this cumulative dissertation to explore how new media are transforming travel in the digital age and produce tourism worlds, both on- and offline. Based on the theoretical model of spatiotemporal assemblages (DeLanda 2016, 2006; Mattissek & Wiertz 2014; Deleuze & Guattari 1992), the project focused on the collaboration between the material and symbolic dimensions of the social aspects of traveling. Various media-based touristic scenarios were explored, such as app-based tours in Freiburg’s city centre, long-distance hikes in the Black Forest, and represented hiking experiences on Instagram. The results of the analysis show that tourism practices do not change fundamentally under the influence of new media. Indeed, the credo ‘old media – old travel’ and ‘new media – new travel’ does not apply here, but, rather, the analyses revealed that ‘old’ and ‘new’ interact with each other. An app-based city tour, for example, consists of traditional elements of knowledge presentation which are then presented anew in a multimedia manner via applications. Furthermore, the dissertation yielded insights into how the transfer of media-urban practices into rural areas produces a so-called New Rural Tourism. Importantly, this new form of rural tourism moves away from classic hiking routes and sights. Various apps seize on users’ interests in outdoor activities by simplifying the tourist appropriation of rural areas (e.g., route searches and planning via app or staging of micro-adventures on social media). New rural tourism may lead to conflicts and can result in environmental challenges, for example when tourists enter nature reserves that are off-limits or leave waste behind.Another result is that the relationship between the worlds of tourism and work is being reorganized. The immense increase in leisure- and work-related mobility as well as the digitalisation of the vocational world contribute significantly to the fact that the boundaries between these spheres are becoming increasingly blurred and new combinations are emerging. ‘Workations’ and a digital nomadism, practiced especially in the context of postmodern societies, are expressions of these overlaps.


Research Interests

  • Tourism Research
  • Human Geography
  • Freiburg and Black Forest
  • Qualitative Methods of Social Research

CV

In May 2022 Nora Winsky finished her doctoral thesis entitled “Tourism Worlds On- and Offline: On the Mediatisation of Tourist Practices in Freiburg and the Black Forest Region” at the University of Freiburg. She did her thesis as part of the graduate group “New Travel – New Media” (10/2018 – 09/2022), which was funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. Between 2019 and 2020, she completed her practical training and transdisciplinary project at the Freiburg Wirtschaft Touristik und Messe (FWTM), which is responsible for the management and marketing for the city of Freiburg. Her thesis, “Touristic Experiences Made by Berlin Visitors in Travel Blogs”, was written in 2018. Nora Winsky completed her teaching training for secondary school education in Geography and in German studies in 2017 and 2018, respectively. She worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, and at SFB 1015 ‘Otium. Boundaries, Chronotopes, Practices’ between 2017 and 2018. Nora Winsky graduated from the University of Freiburg with a degree in Geography and German in 2018.

Publications

  • Winsky, Nora (2022): Die Zukunft der Innenstadt. Perspektiven von Akteur*innen aus Tourismus und Einzelhandel auf das urbane Zentrum von Freiburg. Berichte. Geographie und Landeskunde, 95(2); 140-163. https://doi.org/10.25162/bgl-2022-0007
  • Freytag, Tim; Korff, Cornelia; Winsky, Nora (2022): Reassembling spatio-temporalities of tourism in the Upper Black Forest. In: Condevaux, A.; Gravari-Barbas, M.; Guinand, S. (Eds.): Tourism Dynamics in Everyday Places. London: Routledge, 181–199.
  • Winsky, Nora; Dickow, Julia (2021): Blogging as a complex phenomenon between personal staging and commercial alignment – a conceptual framework for analyzing travel blogs. Via Tourism Review, 20. https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.7415
  • Winsky, Nora; Zimmermann, Gisela (2020): Insta-Research zum #westweg im Schwarzwald – wie digital repräsentierte Wandererfahrungen auf Instagram mittels quantitativer und qualitativer Methoden untersucht werden können. Zeitschrift für Tourismuswissenschaft (ZfTW), 12(3); 317–342. https://doi.org/10.1515/tw-2020-0022
  • Winsky, Nora (2020): Digitale Informationsflut und touristische Angebote – Marketingstrategien von Stadtführungsunternehmen. In: Vaih-Baur, C.; Pietzcker, D. (Hrsg.): Ökonomische und soziologische Tourismustrends. Strategien und Konzepte im globalen Destinationsmarketing. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien; 433–453.
  • Winsky, Nora (2019): Reiseblogs und New Urban Tourism – Stadttouristische Praktiken in Blogposts über Berlin. In: Reif, J.; Eisenstein, B. (eds.): Tourismus und Gesellschaft: Kontakte, Konflikte, Konzepte. Schriften zu Freizeit und Tourismus, 24, 217–233.
  • Kramer, Clara Sofie; Winsky, Nora; Freytag, Tim (2019): Places of Muße as Part of New Urban Tourism in Paris. In: Frisch, T; Sommer, C.; Stoltenberg, L.; Stors, N. (eds.): Tourism and Everyday Life in the Contemporary City. Routledge, 188–210.

Papers

  • Europa-Park, Rust (20.11.2021): Leben mit dem Tourismus im Schwarzwald. Presentation with A. Ballstaedt, A. Fischer, Prof. Dr. T. Freytag, Dr. C. Korff & C. Schlomann at the 24th annual meeting of the German Society of Tourism Research.
  • Berlin (28.10.2021): „Komm, ich nehme Dich mit auf eine Wanderung“ – Bloglesen als Möglichkeit von virtuell-leiblichen Wandererfahrungen. Presentation with Clara Sofie Kramer at the annual meeting of the German Society of Tourism Research „Tourism in Turbulent Times“ (AKTF/DITF).
  • Online, Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (26.02.2021): Die Höhen und Tiefen entlang des #westweg – eine digital ethnography zu Leiblichkeitsphänomenen bei Fernwanderungen. (Video presentation with Christiane Meyer-Habighorst at the IfL research workshop #7 „Ich mach das jetzt online“ – Virtuelle Methoden als (neue) Praxis der raumbezogenen Forschung?)
  • Online (24.7.2020): Tourismus als Potential für den innerstädtischen Einzelhandel in Freiburg – ein transdisziplinäres Forschungsprojekt. (Video presentation at the Touristic symposium for doctoral candidates (AKTF/DGT))
  • University of Bonn (31.1.2020): Mit dem Smartphone die Stadt neu entdecken – multimediale, appbasierte Touren zwischen Selbst- und Fremdsteuerung. (Conference ‘Technocultures & Technoscapes’ NKG 17)
  • Deggendorf Institute of Technology (16.11.2019): Insta-Research zum #westweg im Schwarzwald – Wie digital repräsentierte Wandererfahrungen quantitativ und qualitativ erfasst werden können. (Presentation with Gisela Zimmermann at the 23rd annual meeting of the German Society of Tourism Research)
  • Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig (18.10.2019): ‘Alle reden von neuen Medien, doch was bedeutet eigentlich neu? – Die digitale Durchdringung touristischer Assemblages. (Touristic cymposium for doctoral candidates)
  • University of Freiburg (23.5.2019): Stadtführungen zwischen Innovation und Tradition – Trends und Transformationen touristischer Angebote in Freiburg. (Conference ‘Touristifications of Urban Spaces’)
  • University of Freiburg (23.5.2019): ‘Virtual Togetherness’ through Travel Blogs. (Poster presentation at the conference ‘Touristifications of Urban Spaces’).
  • FH Westküste, Heide/St. Peter Ording (9.11.2018): Reiseblogs und New Urban Tourism – Touristische Erfahrungen von Blogger/-innen in Berlin. (22nd annual meeting of the German Society of Tourism Research)
  • Deutsche Sporthochschule, Cologne (8.10.2018): Stadt & Berge – Touristische Praktiken und deren mediale Repräsentationen im Kontext von Freiburg und der Schwarzwaldregion. (Touristic symposium for doctoral candidates)

Teaching

  • Bachelor Seminar at the University of Freiburg, Department for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography; Course: “Methods in Human Geography” with Dr. Thilo Wiertz; Summer Term 2022
  • Bachelor Field Trip at the University of Freiburg, Department for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography; “Strasbourg” with Prof. Dr. Tim Freytag and Dr. Carola Fricke; Summer Term 2022
  • Master Seminar at the University of Freiburg, Department for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography; Course: “Tourism Research in Human Geography: Conflicts in Tourism” with Clara Sofie Kramer; Winter Term 2021/22
  • Master Seminar at the University of Freiburg, Department for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography; Project Study: “Black Forest Tourism” with Prof. Dr. Tim Freytag and Dr. Cornelia Korf, Summer Term 2021
  • Bachelor Seminar at the University of Freiburg, Department for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography; Course: “Tourism Research in Human Geography”, Summer Term 2021 https://www.huge.geographie.uni-freiburg.de/projektstudien/schwarzwald2021/
  • Teaching Fellowship at the University College Freiburg; Course: “Travel in the Digital Age: Socio-cultural and Environemntal Implications of Tourism”, Winter term 2020/21
  • Bachelor seminar at the University of Education in Freiburg, Institute of Geography and for Didactics; Course: “Human-geographical research: Tourism research”, Summer term 2020

Media Reports

Memberships

  • Member of the Working Group ‘Tourism Research’ in the German Society for Geography (DGfG)
  • Member of the Working Group ‘Qualitative Methods in Geography and Social and Cultural Research’ in the German Society for Geography (DGfG)