Place @-branding and European capitals: "City visiting cards" via municipal websites, virtual tours of significant places flying with google earth, and conversational exchanges about city-places experienced/imagined via social networks

This chapter extends the concept of place branding and applies it to the digital world of the Internet (place @-branding). Among the various environments of the complex digital universe of the Internet, the chapter deals in particular with (1) Websites as vehicles of images, representations, evaluations of places, and (2) social networks as spaces for the exchange and sharing of "lived" or "imagined" experiences of places by past-visitors and potential first-visitors. The analysis of place@-branding via Websites and social networks is based on empirical research data that targets various historic European capitals (Rome, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Warsaw, Vienna). The social representations of these cities are investigated by comparing: 1) their institutional Websites; 2) virtual tours made by Google Earth; 3) conversations among the members of two social networks (Facebook and Yahoo! Answers) on elements of interest concerning social representations and the "lived" or "imagined" experiences of these cities as first visitors (past-visitors) or potential ones (future first-visitors). The nature of these conversations is induced or spontaneous according to communicative constraints imposed by the two social networks by means of a series of piloted questions (in the case of Yahoo! Answers) and a selective focus on spontaneous communicative exchanges (in the case of Facebook).