Authenticity: Understanding Misinformation Through the Study of Heritage Tourism - Paperback

by William Aspray (Author), James W. Cortada (Author)

This book studies authenticity, which is a kind of truth to self, through the study of heritage tourism. When a heritage site is inauthentic, it leads to misinformation. Tourism scholars have been studying authenticity for about 50 years, and this book draws upon the theories and approaches of tourism studies to understand better misinformation, which has become a major topic of study since the US presidential elections in 2016. The book includes a discussion of common-sense and academic notions of authenticity, surveys a half century of scholarship on authenticity, and provides three case studies of heritage tourism sites: Lindsborg, KS (known as Little Sweden, USA), Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.

Author Biography

William Aspray is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He formerly taught at Colorado (Boulder), Harvard, Indiana (Bloomington), Penn, Rutgers (New Brunswick), Texas (Austin), Virginia Tech, and Williams. He has also served in senior management positions at the Charles Babbage Institute, Computing Research Association, and the IEEE History Center. He served as the editor of Information & Culture: A Journal of History and is the author or editor of more than 30 books on the history and use of information in modern societies. Most recently, he co-edited Deciding Where to Live (R&L 2021), edited Information Issues for Older Americans (R&L, 2022), and co-authored with James W. Cortada both Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America (R&L, 2019) and From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking (Springer, 2019).

James W. Cortada is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He formerly worked at IBM Corporation in a variety of sales, consulting, research, management, and executive positions. His research and writing have focused on the business history of information technology and in the role of information in modern societies. He is the author or editor of more than three dozen books and serves on the editorial board of key journals devoted to the history of information and its technologies. Most recently he co-authored with William Aspray, Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America (R&L, 2019) and From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking (Springer, 2019); and authored Building Blocks of Society: History, Information Ecosystems, and Infrastructures (R&L, 2021).