ACM WSDM WebTour 2021, March 12th, 2021 Jerusalem, Israel 19 Tourist Recommendations With a Touch of SPICE: A TRS With Deep Cultural Understanding Tsvi Kuflik † Paul Mullholland Alan J. Wecker † Department of Information Faculty of Science, Technology, Department of Information Systems Engineering & Mathematics Systems The University of Haifa The Open University The University of Haifa Haifa, Israel United Kingdom Haifa, Israel tsvikak@gmail.com paul.mulholland@open.ac.uk ajwecker@gmail.com ABSTRACT social cohesion. This paper is the outline of an idea how such technologies could be expanded to create a different type of TRS. Even though tourist recommendation systems (TRS) try to This methodology is of extreme importance when it comes to maximize user satisfaction by providing recommendations which areas where conflicts existed or still exist. In fact, the association will be rated highly by the user; there is room for trying to provide of an area with conflict (past or present) can actually lead to new recommendations which normally do not rate highly, but during the forms of tourism. Dark Tourism, originally identified by Lennon experience provide content which will be thought-provoking. This and Foley (1996), is used to describe an area that can be connected will be beneficial both to the visitor and the host country. with conflict, tragedy, disaster, suffering or death becoming a site of tourism, visitation or pilgrimage. Sharpley (2009) discusses how an area of Dark Tourism can become a site used to convey CCS CONCEPTS (possibly conflicting) political messages and ideologies. Sharpley • Information systems->Information systems applications->Mobile (2009) provides as an example The Troubles in Northern Ireland. information processing systems •Human-centered computing- He notes that numerous sites related to the Troubles, in particular >Collaborative and social computing->Collaborative and social in Belfast, have an associated tourist industry presenting computing theory, concepts and paradigms->Social content sharing alternative, conflicting perspectives on historical events. Dark Tourism in North Ireland has attracted recent media attention of local tourist initiatives such as walking tours, each telling their own KEYWORDS stories, which the providers of the tours may consider unheard in, diversity tourist recommender systems, community model or contrary to, official narratives (BBC, 2018). Another example is Jerusalem is a city considered to be holy for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Hence, over the years, it attracted 1 Goals all three religions attention, but not always in a peaceful manner. The city was conquered over and over again and currently is a place In the SPICE 1 project, we aim to promote social cohesion by of dispute between Palestinians and Israelis where every side researching and developing tools and methods, validated by claims to own it due to various reasons. Visiting the city and getting implementation in five case studies, to support citizen curation the diverse points of view may lead visitors to understand better with groups at risk of exclusion from participating in shared culture the complexity and possibly, get to know both sides of the issue. and interacting with other groups. Tourism is a domain that offers By providing diverse content in the form of material generated by a variety of opportunities for achieving this goal. When citizens can lead to authenticity and acceptance. This can even be considering tourism and specifically providing information to important for the host country, e.g., Israel, in that it allows her to tourists about cultural heritage attractions, usually we can easily present the conflict and address issues in a manner that adds to trust find multiple points of views regarding places and events that took and understanding but at the same time not dismissive of the place there over time. Different people from different origins visitor's intellect. and/or with different cultural background may feel differently about places and events. Enabling visitors to explore diversity of opinions and points of view may help them understand other groups and cultures, be more tolerant and empathetic and this, in 2 Methods turn may contribute to a better social cohesion. A TRS which while In areas associated with conflicting political ideologies, there can not only focused on recommending POIs, but also focus on be prejudice and a lack of social cohesion among both the introducing diversity of explanation and information representing inhabitants and visitors who subscribe to alternative political diversity of opinions of local groups about the place and events viewpoints. Allport (1954), in his influential work that become may help tourists and locals alike to better understand the place and known as contact theory, proposed that prejudice and conflict culture and by the use of technology support the goal of enhancing between groups can be lessened by bringing people together, allowing them to recognize each other’s common humanity. Zaki 1 https://spice-h2020.eu/ Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). ACM WSDM WebTour 2021, March 12th, 2021 Jerusalem, Israel 20 WebTour’21, March, 2021, Jerusalem, Israel T. Kuflik et al. (2019) describes how contact theory become operationalized as an 2 Challenges and Pitfalls approach in which groups were brought together in a context that gave them each equal status (even if one group had more power The quest to bring different viewpoints has many challenges and outside the intervention) in order to learn about each other and pitfalls. On one hand one may choose items that are a bit bland in build cooperation. order not to upset the appearance of social cohesion, this may prove However, Zaki (2019) reports on examples where the to be uninteresting and not reflect realty and thus be of less use to intervention did not work as anticipated. A three-week contact- the visitor. On the other hand, material that is inflammatory may based programme between Catholic and Protestant boys in cause people to ignore the material completely or cause further Northern Ireland, descended into a fight. Although elements of distancing in distinct opposition stated goals. Thus, the need to contact could be effective, such as sharing your point of view and search for material that states opposing views but still either listening to the views of others, full contact may not necessarily invokes empathy or discusses the issue alongside a shared value. work. In another example described by Zaki (2019), Israelis felt better about Palestinians after hearing their stories but Palestinians felt better about Israelis after telling them their stories. The 2 Conclusions assumption of contact theory that all should participate equally, While the SPICE project was intended to promote social cohesion both giving and getting perspectives did not hold. Recent work has within the different communities which make up the society broken down contact into more specific empathetic processes such surrounding a museum or cultural heritage organization; we see the as perspective giving and perspective taking (Bazalgette 2017, advantages in using the methodology to introduce “outsiders” to Zaki 2019). These processes can be effective in reducing prejudice the complexity surrounding a culture that they may be visiting and but participants need agency over how they engage with them. For promote a new type of tourism which encourages diversity as example, a person who perceives their group as having less power opposed to popular “more of the same” recommender systems. may benefit from perspective giving (telling their story) but not perspective taking (receiving the stories of others). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This suggests ways in which TRSs could be enhanced to This project has received funding from the European Research promote understanding in tourist areas associated with alternative, Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research conflicting political viewpoints. The TRS could be used as a and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 870811). platform for the members of different groups to share their stories. Contributors could potentially receive feedback on the number of people who have engaged with their stories, in order the receive REFERENCES [1] Allport, G W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, Mass.: Addison- affirmation that their voice is being heard. The TRS could provide Wesley. a diversity of viewpoints associated, for example, with locations, [2] Bazalgette, P. (2017). The empathy instinct: How to create a more civil society. monuments and buildings. 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Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).