‘Audiencing’ the travel blog: Examining how practices of audiencing influence the affective labour of travel bloggers online

Abstract

This article demonstrates how applying the concept of audiencing allows us to better understand how the presence of different audiences online mediates the affective labour practices of content creators. The article focuses on one distinctive example of online content creators: British travel bloggers. First, the article argues that audiencing provides an important lens to witness the diversity of affective labour practices being undertaken by travel bloggers, contributing to the wider literature around affective work. Second, the article also demonstrates how travel bloggers are an important focus of study, as they utilise visual and narrative experiences of place as the key foci through which they tailor their affective work to different relationships of audiencing. This finding contributes to the labour on audiencing, by demonstrating how creative labourers use a stimulus (such as discussions of place) as a mechanism through which to tailor their affective work.