“America First, the Netherlands Second” on YouTube: “spoofing” destination marketing with political satire

Abstract

This study attempts to provide first tentative insights into the audience reception of intertwining of political satire and destination marketing imagery by analysing the “America First, the Netherlands Second” video and a student sample audience response. In 2017, a series of YouTube videos named “America First” went viral. The video that started the viral phenomenon was “America First, the Netherlands Second”, responding in a satirical manner to the “America First” message of the inaugural speech of U.S. president Donald J. Trump. They reached extreme popularity both in number of views and in number of new memetic videos with similar satirical messages. These videos were a form of political expression and at first sight did not seem to have much in common with communication in tourism. However, the videos included typical destination marketing imagery, intertwined with satirical representations and thus representing a humorous “spoof” on destination marketing. Currently, not much is known on how political satire affects the process of destination image formation. The study analyses participants’ memory recall, eye-tracking movements and focus group responses in order to provide first conclusions on how the audiences respond to intertwining of satirical political expression and destination marketing imagery