Discursive Competition in the Tourist Platform Economy of a Large City (Madrid)

Diego A. Barrado-Timón (), Carmen Hidalgo-Giralt and Alfonso Fernández-Arroyo López-Manzanares
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Diego A. Barrado-Timón: Department of Geography, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Carmen Hidalgo-Giralt: Department of Geography, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Alfonso Fernández-Arroyo López-Manzanares: Department of Geography, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain

World, 2025, vol. 6, issue 3, 1-25

Abstract: This research analyzes the discourses and narratives surrounding the platform tourism economy in a highly touristified city, using Madrid as a case study. Rather than focusing on the socio-economic or spatial transformations themselves, the study examines how these processes are discussed, identifying the discursive strategies employed by different actors and ideologies, along with the power relations embedded in these narratives. A corpus of literature was compiled from twelve newspapers with varying ideological orientations and categorized according to political stance, access mode, and ideological radicalism. Using the LancsBox concordancer, a quantitative analysis was conducted to identify key discursive categories and preferred lexical items across ideological positions. These findings informed a subsequent in-depth qualitative analysis aimed at uncovering the rationalities behind each discourse: who speaks, how, and with what intent. The results reveal a dominant left-wing narrative that emphasizes institutional and economic mechanisms underlying platform tourism, highlighting associated social and urban harms. In contrast, conservative and liberal narratives are divided into two strands: a ‘heretic’ discourse that promotes and defends this new economic model, but also its urban results (e.g., gentrification), and a more institutional narrative framing platform tourism as inevitable and benign, thereby concealing the underlying structures of power.

Keywords: platform economy; tourism; touristification; discourse analysis; large cities; Madrid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G17 G18 L21 L22 L25 L26 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 R51 R52 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jworld:v:6:y:2025:i:3:p:95-:d:1695115

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