The article concerns travel narratives of Polish video bloggers (or vloggers) who treat a journey through the Americas as a contemporary Grand Tour. Video blogs and their visual storytelling are becoming tools for describing the world in the digital era. In this context, the Americas take on the meaning of a world that is simultaneously close and distant. Traveling on both continents of the other hemisphere is characterized by a double clash of civilizations and a confrontation with one’s imagination created on the basis of encounters with the media and culture of the Americas. It is also a clash with the myth of America and, at the same time, a story about the role of a vlogger as a narrator consolidating their audience and the network community in the act of looking beyond the horizon and behind the scenes of “real America.” The research will use the analysis of the content of audiovisual material from selected YouTube travel channels and elements of netnographic analysis of virtual communities gathered around the best Polish travel vlogs.
English