Virtual communities are true communities insofar as their voices take shape beyond their screens. A multitude of computer-linked individuals bring their diverse perspectives to converge in the digital arena at an unprecedented pace. So far, however, online user generated content, with raw data being scarce, has rarely served to enrich local policy agendas. Sorting, decoding, and semantic visualisation are just some preliminary phases toward cutting-edge digital data management. Seeking to explore unforeseen paths, we discuss how to turn these stacks of information into meaningful traces of common experience – in this case, the visit to a popular heritage place – as felt by a broad community and shared online. We undertake sentiment analysis of travellers’ evaluations about the experiential consumption of the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna (2013–20), as posted on one of the most important travel websites, TripAdvisor. Users’ perceptions of authenticity, quality of experience, and cultural awareness of heritage sites are examples of interesting information that can be extracted from online social platforms and evaluated automatically. In bringing forth questions raised in our previous studies, we examine how the perceptions around the visited places can form common ties for renewed communities connected in Gemeinschaft-like relationships.

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Heritage site,Sentiment analysis,User-generated content,Advanced mapping,Bologna