Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the interweaving of corporal travel and platform labor among travel vloggers. While simultaneously engaging in corporal travel and digital togetherness with their online following, travel vloggers are actively involved in the creation of new forms of mobile sociability.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the interweaving of corporal travel and platform labor among travel vloggers. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in tourist places frequented by travel vloggers, I seek to trace the triangular interplay between their career aspirations, mobility, and platform practices. While travel vloggers often lead a nomadic life style to accumulate visits of tourist attractions, they simultaneously engage in perpetual co-presence practices to entertain online audiences. The influencer is an emergent profession, benefitting from new monetization mechanisms on popular digital platforms (Hopkins 2019). By continuously posting content on fashion, lifestyles, food, health or travel, ever-growing numbers of platform users wish to establish themselves as influential microcelebrities (Marwick 2015). In the increasingly digitized global tourism industry, travel vloggers aspire to become travel influencers by strategically creating profiles and self-presentations. This investigation takes into account the double mobility inherent in travel vlogging. On the one hand, human bodies circulate around the globe, chasing picture-perfect travel destinations. On the other hand, travel vlogs can be studied as digital artefacts circulating through the platform figurations of present-day tourism. Striving to secure successful freelancer careers, many travel vloggers provide their followers with numerous opportunities for audience participation. For instance, followers can engage in playful online Q&A sessions, photo contests, and raffles on Instagram and YouTube. Such platform practices engender a sense of digital togetherness between travel influencers and their following. While simultaneously engaging in corporal travel and digital togetherness, travel vloggers play a substantial role in establishing new forms of mobile sociability.