Digital Gastrodiplomacy: A Multimodal Semiotic Analysis of How YouTube Food Travel Vlogs Construct Destination Image in Uzbekistan

This study investigates how YouTube food travel vloggers semiotically construct destination images and function as informal gastrodiplomacy agents, using Uzbekistan as a case study of emerging tourism markets. Although digital content creators are increasingly recognised as shaping tourism flows, systematic understanding of the multimodal semiotic mechanisms through which food travel vlogs construct destination meanings remains limited. Using multimodal discourse analysis, this study examines six YouTube food travel videos on Uzbekistan (over 28 million combined views) from two prominent creators, Mark Wiens and Best Ever Food Review Show. The analysis integrates Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar, Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, van Leeuwen’s sound semiotics, and Norris’s multimodal interaction analysis to code a 60-segment corpus. Independent samples t-tests reveal 25 statistically significant differences between the two creators, identifying two distinct semiotic pro-files. Mark Wiens primarily follows a parasocial intimacy model marked by direct gaze (89.2%), frequent second-person address (78.4%), and comparatively minimal editing. In contrast, Best Ever Food Review Show adopts a cinematic documentary model characterised by first-person narration (56.5%), constructed visuals (60.9%), and gastronomic heritage narratives (34.8%). Despite these divergences, shared conventions—centred food composition, upbeat music, positive evaluation, and sharing gestures—indicate a stable semiotic grammar of food travel vlogging. The findings provide evidence that digital content creators may function as informal culinary ambassadors through gastrodiplomacy mechanisms, constructing destination awareness and cultural meaning for international audiences. The study contributes to theory on multi-modal destination image construction and offers implications for how emerging tour-ism destinations can leverage multi-creator strategies to build culturally grounded destination brands.