Defending heritage in the digital age: Polyphonic discourses and the reconfiguration of protest spaces in tourism activism

While previous studies on tourism activism have focused on movements against mass tourism, fewer have explored how actors collectively mobilize for the preservation of threatened sites. This study investigates the social movement that successfully saved Lyon's Textile Museum from closure, mobilizing over 140,000 supporters worldwide. Through a longitudinal discursive analysis, we identify four discursive strategies—educating, demonizing, moralizing, and projecting—that allowed participants to contribute in diverse ways. We show how the polysemic nature of heritage and the digitalization of the movement enabled a diversity of members to join the movement by injecting their own meanings into the collective discourse. This discursive polyphony played a central role in helping the movement reach its goal by enabling a critical mass.