The narrative on tourism sustainability in Italian news: A text mining approach

Tourism sustainability is a complex and multidimensional construct, for which there is no shared definition in the literature. Consequently, there is no standard method for its measurement, and the adoption of sustainable practices often falls short of reached goals. Therefore, contributing to the definition of the concept of sustainable tourism is essential, both for policymakers and academics. In this vein, news media data can represent a key element through which to understand the debate about tourism sustainability. This research aims to exploit the potential of news texts to explore how sustainable tourism is conceived within specific cultural contexts. Focusing on the case study of Italy, we analysed how the concept of tourism sustainability is represented in Italian newspapers, extracting the topics discussed in relation to this theme. From a methodological point of view, we employed a network-based approach for topic extraction. Our study contributes to the literature on tourism sustainability by proposing an innovative method for extracting information from unstructured data sources, such as textual data, providing policymakers with insights about the narrative around this topic.