Abstract
Through analysis of empirical fieldwork conducted with British travel bloggers, this paper details a novel and significant investigation into the nuances of self-presentation and performances inherent in travel blogging work, through the lens of digital nomadism. Working with Goffman’s (The presentation of self in everyday life. Penguin, London, 1959) ideas of front and back regionalisation, the paper explores the distinct ways in which digital nomadism is performed by the travel blogger. Firstly, the paper highlights how performances of digital nomadism are integral to the successful self-presentation of the travel blogger as an aspirational worker. Next, it showcases how travel bloggers use performances of digital nomadism in the strategic complication of the front and back-stage of their work, in order to demonstrate authenticity to their audience. The paper then considers how travel bloggers undertake performances of digital nomadism, explicitly within the front-stage to aid in their overall impression management of being a travel blogger. Subsequently, the paper turns to discussions of how technology becomes utilised in performances of digital nomadism which flow across the travel blogger’s front and back-stage. Finally, the paper reviews how, through performances of digital nomadism, the travel blogger appropriates their own back-stage leading to issues of overwork and precarity. The paper’s original contribution lies in its use of the lens of digital nomadism to enable us to explore and reimagine the workplace performances of travel bloggers. In doing so, the paper is able to speculate on the nuances and motivations implicit in these performances, digging deeper into issues of online self-presentation, authenticity and place.
Highlights
Through communications technology, travellers can keep in almost constant contact with friends, work and fellow travellers remaining co-present in their social, home and work life (Mascheroni 2007)
The paper moves to the analytical section which builds on empirical data to explore how performances of digital nomadism are enacted in the self-presentation of travel bloggers
This paper examines the role of digital nomadism within the self-presentational performances of travel bloggers, in which they attempt to reconcile this search for an existential authenticity with a working narrative which functions, in part, as a mechanism of self-branding
Summary
Within the years since 1995, we have witnessed a rapid transformation in the journalism industry among Western societies (Hanusch 2015). Hanusch (2015) worked with Australian journalists to try to understand how these workers experienced the cultural, economic and technological changes facing their industry. He found that new technologies ( social media) were shifting traditional definitions of journalism. The evolution of the social media era, have facilitated an environment which has forced travel writers in particular, to construct new meanings and purposes for their work (Blaer et al 2020). In the context of employment and jobs, Rosenkranz (2019) notes how a reduction in the demand for print travel writing has resulted in a shift in contracting, from assignment-contracts to speculative short-term, project-based contracts. The paper makes a contribution by highlighting how themes of industrial precarity and audience engagement influence and mould the specific performances of digital nomadism travel bloggers undertake (Blaer et al 2020; Rosenkranz 2016)
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