Life Beyond the Blogosphere Examining Lovepat Bloggers’ Acculturation Experiences and Self-Presentation Strategies

This Master's thesis offers an insight on a unique group of individuals who are acculturating. This research will examine how expatriate's in international relationships (living in the EU) acculturate and how they portray their self-presentation strategies. This will be done by examining blog posts written by lovepats (expatriate’s in international relationships). Previous research has looked at expatriates who move abroad for work assignments. This research will examine lovepats and their acculturation experience. Blogs are being used in this research as a modern media tool for social science to understand how lovepats acculturate and how they present themselves. Blogs represent a medium of self-representation and give researchers insight to their acculturation experience through the words of a lovepat blogger. To examine this phenomenon, a qualitative (thematic) content analysis was conducted on selected blog posts from the blogs of lovepats. This analysis revealed that lovepat bloggers are portraying their acculturation experience by becoming a hybrid of two cultures: their own and the culture of their partner. Many themes were discovered that contributed towards this conclusion, such as comparing cultures, adapting to local life and the role of the local language. Also, blogs are being used as an online diary where lovepats are storytelling, but also being part of an online and sometimes off-line community where acculturation is also presented. The results of this research offer innovative insight towards exploring individuals in cross-cultural relationships in their acculturation experience and their self-presentation through blogging.