VISUAL MEDIUMS: PORTRAYING INDIAN CITIES' GLOBAL IDENTITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65009/feqw8045Keywords:
Visual Communication; Visual Semiotics; City Branding; Architectural Heritage; Tourist Gaze; Destination Image; Jaipur; Jodhpur; Rajasthan Tourism; Indian Cities,,Abstract
The city's reputation and image are increasingly influenced by visual communication, making it a place to be remembered and remembered. This study aims to investigate how the visual mediums create the global identity of Indian heritage cities, using the tourist-gaze framework of (Urry, 2002), the Social Learning Theory of Bandura, and the Social semiotics of (Kress & Leeuwen, 2020). The architectural and historical heritage is considered the main visual means through which these cities communicate their uniqueness to the world and tourism is considered the main means through which the city's visual identity is circulated. The study is of a descriptive type, including a structured questionnaire to 320 respondents, and a thematic review of the literature concerning heritage visualisation, city branding and destination image. The findings reveal that social networking websites and news portals have become the most important source of exposure to Jaipur and Jodhpur, architectural and historical value is the most influential factor in choosing a destination, and visual and architectural experience is given a very high subjective importance (mean rating > 4.2 on the five-point scale). However, a supplementary visual-recognition exercise using photographs of four well-known landmarks found that actual identification accuracy (mean 44.5 per cent, ranging from 25 per cent for Mehrangarh Fort to 56.2 per cent for the Jodhpur cityscape) fell well short of respondents' stated appreciation of visual and architectural cues, revealing a gap between attitudinal valuation of heritage imagery and precise, place-specific visual literacy. The paper argues that this gap carries direct implications for how Indian tourism boards, heritage authorities, and destination marketers design visual content for global audiences, and it closes with recommendations for landmark-specific, platform-differentiated visual communication strategy and directions for future research with larger, stratified samples.
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