Unfolding visual characteristics of social media communication: reflections of smart tourism destinations Emel Adamıs  Vocational School of Iznik, Bursa Uluda g University, Bursa, Turkey, and Fatih Pınarbas ı Istanbul Medipol University, Istanbul, Turkey Abstract Purpose – This study aims to explore the visual social media (SM) (Instagram) communication and the visual characteristics of smart tourism destination (STD) communication from destination marketing/ management organizations (DMOs) and user-generated content (UGC) perspectives, which refer to projected image and perceived image, respectively. Design/methodology/approach – Three DMO official accounts of STDs (Helsinki, Gothenburg and Lyon) and corresponding official hashtags were selected for the sample and total 6,000 post data (1,000  6) were retrieved from Instagram. Visual communication content was examined with a netnographic design over a proposed four-level visual content framework using corresponding methodological approaches (thematic analysis, visual analysis, object detection and text mining) for each level. Findings – Among the eight emerging themes dominating the images, communication of smart elements conveys far less than expected textual and visual signals from DMOs despite their smart status, and in turn, from UGC as well. UGC revealed three extra image themes regardless of smartness perception. DMOs tend to project and give voice to their standard metropolitan areas and neighborhoods while UGCs focus on food- related and emotional elements. The findings show a partial overlap between DMOs and UGCs, revealing discrepancies in objects contained in visuals, hashtags and emojis. Additionally, as a rare attempt, the proposed framework for visual content analysis showed the importance of integrated methods to investigate visual content effectively. Research limitations/implications – The number of attributes in visual analysis and focusing on the observed elements in text content (text, hashtags and emojis) are the limitations of the study in terms of methodology. Originality/value – Apart from the multiple integrated methods used over a netnographic design, this study differs from existing SM and smart destinations intersection literature by attempting to fill a gap in focusing on and exploring visual SM communication, which is scarce in tourism context, for the contents generated by DMOs and users. Keywords Smart tourism, Qualitative approach, DMO, Instagram, Social media Paper type Research paper 摘要 展现社交媒体传播的视觉特征：对智慧旅游目的地的思考 研究目的 – 本研究旨在探讨从目的地营销管理组织（DMO）和用户生成的内容（UGC）获取的视觉 社交网站传播（instagram）以及智慧旅游目的地的视觉特征。这两个角度在本文中分别命名为投射 形象和感知形象。 研究设计/方法/途径 – 本文收集了三个智慧旅游目的地（赫尔辛基、哥德堡、里昂）的DMO官方账 号及其对应的官方标签数据, 其中从Instagram获取了一共6000个帖子（1000 x 6）。视觉传播内容是 JHTT 13,1 34 Received 25 December 2020 Revised 4 May 2021 7 July 2021 8 August 2021 Accepted 9 August 2021 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology Vol. 13 No. 1, 2022 pp. 34-61 © Emerald Publishing Limited 1757-9880 DOI 10.1108/JHTT-09-2020-0246 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1757-9880.htm