Blog Analysis: An Exploration of French Students’ Perceptions Towards Foreign Cultures During Their Overseas Internships

Abstract

Increasingly, tourism and hospitality university programs in France include internships which add a vocational dimension to the academic aspects of the course. These internships a) provide exposure to real world professional situations, b) add market value to the student experience, and c) offer a foothold for employment. The field of blog research is increasing in an effort to understand the social and economic context and impact of blogs: however, most existing studies only provide insight into English-language content. This paper explores French tourism and hospitality undergraduate student blogs—completed during their 4-6 month internships outside of France—as a manifestation of their knowledge. Qualitative analyses by means of text mining of the students’ posts, was used to assess their experiences and perceptions. Utilizing content analysis, 28 blogs were examined with the aim of understanding blogs and blogging under the theoretical framework of cultural perceptions. Results demonstrated that these internship blogs provide rich and authentic feedback; the blogs facilitate student monitoring while allowing for a wide cross-section of readers to assess different destination-based student internship experiences. The results showed that the “image” students projected of their destinations were chiefly positive, yet tended to conform to their preconceived ideas of these places. This study underscores the importance of empathy and appreciation when working in foreign contexts, because even though student internships were located all over the world, a tendency to believe in stereotypes of peoples and places remained. The findings a) shed light into the process of perception transformation during overseas work placements, and b) have practical and methodological implications for researchers and educators who are see academic blogging as a teaching and learning tool.