The Phenomenon of 'Fear of Missing Out' (FOMO) in Tourism: A Sociolinguistic Review of Language Trends in the Travel Vlogger Community

Abstract

The proliferation of digital media has fundamentally transformed tourism, giving rise to the 'Fear of Missing Out' (FOMO) phenomenon among travelers. Travel vloggers play a pivotal role in this dynamic, acting as digital mediators who construct tourist realities through specific linguistic strategies. This article explores the tourism FOMO phenomenon through a sociolinguistic lens, analyzing the language trends and speech acts utilized by the travel vlogger community. Utilizing a qualitative descriptive method, this study analyzes the transcripts of highly viewed travel vlogs across major social media platforms (YouTube and TikTok). The findings reveal that travel vloggers construct FOMO through distinct sociolinguistic features, including the heavy reliance on hyperbolic evaluative adjectives, the strategic use of imperative speech acts to create urgency, and frequent code-mixing to establish an exclusive yet aspirational digital register. The study concludes that the language of travel vloggers is not merely descriptive but highly performative, designed to trigger psychological urgency and shape contemporary travel behaviors.