The travel blogger as digital nomad: (Re-)imagining workplace performances of digital nomadism within travel blogging work

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.