The travel blogger as digital nomad: (Re-)imagining workplace performances of digital nomadism within travel blogging wo
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The travel blogger as digital nomad: (Re‑)imagining workplace performances of digital nomadism within travel blogging work Nina Willment1 Received: 7 October 2019 / Revised: 28 February 2020 / Accepted: 16 March 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Through analysis of empirical fieldwork conducted with British travel bloggers, this paper details a novel and significant investigation into the nuances of selfpresentation 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 frontstage 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 selfpresentation, authenticity and place. Keywords Digital nomadism · Workplace geographies · Travel bloggers · Dramaturgical performance · Staged authenticity
* Nina Willment [email protected] 1
Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham Hill, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK
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1 Introducing travel bloggers, place and digital nomadism Through communications technology, travellers can now keep in almost constant contact with friends, work and fellow travellers remaining co-present in their social, home and work life (Mascheroni 2007). Technologies such as social networking sites and blogs, are allowing individuals to shift between these multiple networks instantaneously wherever they are in the world (Paris 2012). As a result of these digital technologies and the networked connections they facilitate, new forms of multi-location work are rising. In particular, the affordance of these technologies has facilitated a huge rise in the location-independent workers termed ‘digital nomads’ (Muller 2016). Defined by
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