Understanding the crafting tactics: Using online writing to deal with negative travel experiences

Abstract

This article investigates how tourists use online writing to cope with their negative travel experiences. We use a constructivist paradigm and hermeneutic phenomenology to analyze the writing of Chinese outbound tourists’ travel blogs to Japan. The research identifies three interconnected modes: framing, reinterpreting, and virtual editing. The framing mode shows differences in the expression styles tourists use to construct their negative travel experiences. These differences stem from variations in tourists’ attention to themselves and to their presumed readers. The reinterpreting mode reflects the reconstructive process in making sense of tourists’ negativity. The virtual editing mode involves reshaping the reality in the narrative layer. Based on these results, we propose the concept, Crafting Tactics. Our findings extend the insights of coping by emphasizing online writing’s proactive and creative qualities, as well as highlighting its constructive capacity.