Presence of agriculture in photos of Norwegian landscapes uploaded to Flickr

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to assess whether agricultural landscapes play a role in the perception of Norway held by tourists and residents. An additional aim is to analyse whether information accompanying images on social media indicate that the photographers have acknowledged the agricultural landscape. The authors used geotagged images uploaded to the image-sharing platform Flickr in their analyses. They selected photos from within the agricultural landscapes, inspected them, and categorized them according to extent and content. Additionally, they analysed the accompanying hashtags. The findings revealed that a large proportion of the photos contained agricultural landscapes, and thus confirmed the importance of the agricultural landscape for visual perception of and access to Norwegian landscapes. In addition, the lack of agricultural-related hashtags strengthened the authors’ suspicions that this might not have been widely recognized by the photographers. Thus, while agricultural landscapes commonly are considered primarily as landscapes of food production, the authors conclude that these landscapes also fulfil other functions and that their contribution to the perception of Norway is important. Additionally, many of the landscape elements seen and analysed in the sample of photos are elements that play a role in providing cultural ecosystem services.

KEYWORDS:

• agricultural landscape
• cultural ecosystem services
• hashtags
• landscape photographs
• social media

Acknowledgements

The project on which this article is based was funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant IDs 194 051 and 342631/L10), and the Norwegian Agriculture Agency (Landbruksdirektoratet) project ‘VERDIBALANSE - Naturmangfold og kulturverdier i kulturlandskapet - Mot en mer balansert og bærekraftig forvaltning’).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.