Will we be safe there? Analysing strategies for altering unsafe place images

Many countries, cities and tourist destinations are considered risky or unsafe due to terror attacks, natural disasters, epidemics, crime waves, wars, coups, racial conflicts, social-economic disorders or political unrest. The association of places with danger or bloodshed is a serious obstacle to their attractiveness and is likely to have a negative affect on tourism and investments. The goal of this article is to present three groups of media strategies adopted by places all over the world in order to be perceived as safe: source-focused strategies, message-focused strategies and audience-focused strategies. This paper is based on a variety of qualitative research methods and is the result of careful analysis of dozens of case studies, advertisements, public relations campaigns, press releases, academic articles, news articles, and websites of cities, countries and tourist destinations that were widely considered as unsafe as the result of sudden or ongoing crises.