Re-branding the Serenissima: The Evolution of Venice Carnival from Local Artistic Festival to Global Digital Commodity

This thesis frames the Venice Carnival not only as a cultural event, but as a paradigm case of overtourism and heritage management in the digital age. It examines how the Carnival's communicative logic has shifted from physical, analogue forms of engagement to digital content explicitly optimized for platform algorithms, reshaping how the event is produced, consumed, and mediated. By situating this transformation within broader debates on tourism, heritage, and digital media, the thesis argues that Venice offers a critical lens for understanding the tensions between cultural preservation and algorithmic visibility.