Playing and Socializing—Adults' Perceptions of the FIFA Digital Game

Gamers' perceptions of using competitive digital games, especially concerning anxiety and socialization, have raised doubts about the benefits of playing such games. Since different studies highlight different results, this research aims to explore these differences by analyzing the perceptions of adults involved in playing a competitive digital game, in this case, FIFA, considering data that were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The main question is ‘How do adults perceive anxiety, stress, and socialization when playing the FIFA digital game?'. The research comprises two studies involving volunteer participants: In the first part, which adopts a qualitative approach, the participants' perceptions of what they think and feel when playing FIFA were analyzed and interpreted using text mining analysis. In the second, a quantitative study, FIFA users' perceptions of the gaming experience were statistically analyzed. The results show that adult users tend to refer to positive perceived stress and socialization. The fact that participants identified manipulations and interference in the game and no longer allowed its use to influence their mood reveals that perceptions of attacks of rage were considered possible reactions to the use of the game, interpreted from the interface, and leading to the creation of knowledge. © 2022 by the authors.

Impact of Social Media Influencers on the Portuguese Tourism and Travel Industry in a Covid-19 Era

The way society communicates with each other has gone through huge changes during the years. This has led to a revolution on the process of gather and exchange information by the consumers regarding brands, products, and services. Nowadays, any person can express their opinion on their social media accounts and share it with whoever he/she wants on a global scale. It is here that Social Media Influencers (SMIs) appear, anyone with a considerably large audience on social media has the ability to influence many others to take an action. Currently, the Tourism and Travel (T&T) industry is facing unprecedented challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic;being one of the biggest sectors worldwide, driving socioeconomic development and job creation is vital for this industry to recover as faster as possible. Many actions are being done to make that happen and one possible great tool is SMI. Shortly, this research aims to understand if SMIs can boost the T&T industry by showing that a destination and its tourism services/products are safe in this time of fear of travelling due to the pandemic. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.