Vol.:(0123456789) Information Technology & Tourism https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-020-00185-z 1 3 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Exploring the relation between festivals and host cities on Twitter: a study on the impacts of Lucca Comics & Games Yesim Tonga Uriarte 1  · Marinella Petrocchi 2  · Maria Luisa Catoni 1  · Stefano Cresci 2  · Rocco De Nicola 1  · Maurizio Tesconi 2  · Rafael Brundo Uriarte 3 Received: 14 May 2019 / Revised: 18 June 2020 / Accepted: 29 June 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract This article investigates the relation between festivals and their destination cities. We examine what festival attendees think about the festival experience and the host city, and how the online image of the host city is shaped through the dissemina- tion of these opinions on Twitter. We conduct a case study and analyze the opin- ions about a big scale event, Lucca Comics & Games and its host city, Lucca. Our results indicate that the festival significantly reinforces the online image of the host city on social media and not only promotes the existing strong characteristics of the city, such as historic monuments and architectural elements, but also enriches the portrayal of the city by relating the existing legacy to the fantasy culture with the festival experience. This study sheds light on the social aspects of emergent digital information practices and platforms within the context of festivals. Furthermore, our methodological framework serves as a model for prospective research on the rela- tionship between events and cities and contributes to the development of a common methodological framework for the empirical assessment of this relation. Keywords Twitter · Social media · Festivals · Online destination image · Digital identity · Comic-con · Lucca Comics & Games Yesim Tonga Uriarte and Marinella Petrocchi contributed equally to this manuscript. * Yesim Tonga Uriarte yesim.tonga@imtlucca.it 1 IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Piazza San Francesco 19, 55100 Lucca, Italy 2 Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT), National Research Council, Via Giuseppe Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy 3 Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut, Via Giuseppe Giusti, 44, 50121 Firenze, Italy