Abstract

The article examines the language and discourse structure of travel blogs by shifting the focus from the blogger’s posts to the blog’s online community interacting through comments. While posts remain a steady area of investigation of the sociolinguistics of travel writing, professional tourism discourse and destination branding, this does not hold true for comments from the online community, once hailed as a sign of participation and co-construction of the travel experience. Considerably decreasing in volume, comment sections on travel blogs are now moderated through gatekeeping or discontinued to collect user feedback on image-centric platforms, where interaction is multiplied but also fragmented. Drawing from scholarly studies that address dialogicity and processes of interaction in blogs, this article engages in discourse-analytic accounts of user comments in four English-language award-winning travel blogs with active comment sections, questioning their current contribution to a deeper understanding of tourism and the travel experience.