About PlagueWatch
About PlagueWatch
PlagueWatch is a community watchdog blog designed to provide a perspective into the rise of plague in Hawaii and California during the Victorian era. Its structure is fictional, but the events of each post are based on facts and sources.
It is designed to point out the nature of government corruption during this period, and the inability for the traditional forms of media to engage with such issues. There was a huge opportunity for media to help confront the problems of plague through aggressive action, but their decision to pander to big business ultimately held them back.
In modern societies, we see similar actions, but the spread of information has made it impossible for news to stay buried. This blog uses many of these methods, from podcasts to open letters and conversations, to demonstrate how this type of communication could have raised awareness amongst the public as to the importance of this process. If the people are aware, perhaps plague stops sooner – or, perhaps, it simply ignites civil conflict.
The creation of PlagueWatch was overseen by Myles A. McNutt.
About this Project
“Blogging the Plague” is a project designed to ask a series of “What if?” questions about the outbreak of plague in the United States of America, specifically in Honolulu and San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century.
What if the stories of the people close to the plague, be it victims or medical professionals, made it to public at large through mass media sources?
What if the reasons and explanations behind the decisions of J. Kinyoun had been made public, allowing the public to view what was behind his public image as the “Wolf Doctor?”
What if there had been a news source that cut through the pacts of silence to reach a broad worldwide readership, spreading the plague stories worldwide?
If all of these, or one of these, would have happened, how would this have changed the question of how plague spread? Would the government have felt more accountable, providing more resources to Kinyoun and others? Would the residents of these cities accept the treatment, and their efforts, considering this new scenario: or would such a free flow of information have organized them against it more quickly?
This project does not attempt to answer this question, but rather poses it while offering different timelines and perspectives on the arrival and infestation of plague in the Southwest U.S. The hope is that these people that we have inhabited will bring some element of posterity to these events, and provoke further investigation.
Here is a list of the other blogs that are part of this initiative:
Yechunwo’s Diary – http://yechunwo.wordpress.com
A Saving Grace – Kinyoun’s Diary - http://kinyounsdiary.wordpress.com/
Madoka’s Story – http://madokasstory.wordpress.com/
Enjoy!
Myles A. McNutt, B. Alexander Fage, Amandine Clairo, Jennifer Huizen
