Skip to main content

Digital Nomads Beyond the Buzzword: Defining Digital Nomadic Work and Use of Digital Technologies

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Transforming Digital Worlds (iConference 2018)

Abstract

Digital nomadicity has gained popularity in recent years as a fashionable lifestyle and as a way of challenging traditional work contexts, but there has been very little incisive empirical research on the lifestyle’s characteristics, its implications for the future of work, or on the technology, which supports it. This paper describes the four key elements that constitute the work of digital nomads: (1) digital work, (2) gig work, (3) nomadic work, and (4) adventure and global travel. We present digital nomads as a community of workers situated at the confluence of these four elements and define how each of these are enabled by the use of digital technologies. This research serves as a foundation for information studies concerned with the dynamic and changing relationships between future of work, new population of workers (digital natives) and emerging digital platforms.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See the Wikipedia entry for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_nomad.

  2. 2.

    http://www.hackerparadise.org/.

References

  1. Müller, A.: The digital nomad: Buzzword or research category? Transnational Soc. Rev. 6, 344–348 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/01/20/how-to-become-a-digital-nomad-and-travel-the-world/#219d8f781ae4

  3. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/julesschroeder/2016/03/17/what-digital-nomads-know-that-you-dont-yet/#33a0e08f34bd

  4. Dal Fiore, F., Mokhtarian, P.L., Salomon, I., Singer, M.E.: “Nomads at last”? A set of perspectives on how mobile technology may affect travel. J. Transp. Geogr. 41, 97–106 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Spinks, R.: Meet the ‘digital nomads’ who travel the world in search of fast Wi-Fi. Guardian 2017 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Barley, S., Bechky, B., Milliken, F.: The changing nature of work: careers, identities, and work lives in the 21st century. Acad. Manag. Discov. (2017). Published online before print

    Google Scholar 

  7. Sutherland, W., Jarrahi, M.H.: The gig economy and information infrastructure: the case of the digital nomad community. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact 1, Article No. 97 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Durward, D., Blohm, I., Leimeister, J.M.: Crowd work. Bus. Inf. Syst. Eng. 58, 281–286 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. De Stefano, V.: The rise of the ‘just-in-time workforce’: on-demand work, crowd work and labour protection in the ‘gig-economy’. Comp. Labor Law Policy J. 37, 471–503 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Torpey, E., Hogan, A.: Working in a gig economy. Career Outlook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2016

    Google Scholar 

  11. Gandini, A.: The Reputation Economy: Understanding Knowledge Work in Digital Society. Springer, London (2016)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  12. Jarrahi, M.H., Nelson, S.B., Thomson, L.: Personal artifact ecologies in the context of mobile knowledge workers. Comput. Hum. Behav. 75, 469–483 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Pinatti de Carvalho, A.F., Ciolfi, L., Gray, B.: Detailing a spectrum of motivational forces shaping nomadic practices. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2017, pp. 962–977. ACM (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Orlikowski, W.J., Scott, S.: Digital work: a research agenda. In: Czarniawska, B. (ed.) A Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham (2016)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Caleece Nash .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Nash, C., Jarrahi, M.H., Sutherland, W., Phillips, G. (2018). Digital Nomads Beyond the Buzzword: Defining Digital Nomadic Work and Use of Digital Technologies. In: Chowdhury, G., McLeod, J., Gillet, V., Willett, P. (eds) Transforming Digital Worlds. iConference 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10766. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78105-1_25

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78105-1_25

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78104-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78105-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics