As a hobby that has experienced a recent boom in interest, dark tourism captures the attention of people all over the world with stories that would send chills down anyone’s spine. While it is tempting to believe dark tourism only covers “… the strange and unusual” (Burton, 1988), proper research techniques and information gathering methods could further uncover more common aspects about the hobby.
Some general components of initial researching can be drawn back to an article authored by Sandra Erdelez. Erdelez touches on the information seeker’s actions and reactions, the type of information encountered, information needs, and the ways that the information could be accessed (Erdelez 1999). In each of the four components, there is an element of human emotion and how the information that is discovered is being received. As dark tourism is a subject that harbors raw emotions tied into infamous events, an individual seeking more knowledge about the hobby would produce more results if they were to incorporate this element into their research strategy.
While initial searching would result in a popular Netflix docuseries and travel books, further reading will find that behind the macabre are preserved societal structures (e.g. History, Politics, etc.). An article dissecting what dark tourism is uses the example that a creepy, abandoned amusement park wouldn’t be a dark tourist site while Chernobyl’s radioactive event in 1986 would be. Also including how the term “Dark Tourism” was first used only 27 years ago, the article’s mission on clearing misconceptions connects to the author’s identity of being a self-proclaimed dark tourist (Mckinny, n.d.). As this article is just one of countless public reflections on the subject, the information needs of this community are continuously being discovered and defined because it is still being understood in the academic world.
Finally, there are numerous ways in which information on dark tourism can be accessed. One major access point is found all over the world in the form of museums and preserved sites where disaster occurred. At the core of this hobby, many of these information hubs will have plaques or descriptive pamphlets accurately summarizing the event and the significant impact it left in its wake. Additionally, with how recent the term “Dark Tourism” was coined in relation to the emergence of technology, there are many different mediums of information on the subject that can be accessed online. The accessibility of learning more about this hobby, along with the potential to learn more about it’s impact on the world as we know it, makes dark tourism an information community that can meet the needs of those who are researching it.
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Citations:
Burton, T. (Director). (1988). Beetlejuice [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Erdelez,S. (1999). Information encountering: It’s more than just bumping into information. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 25(3), pp. 25-29. https://csu sjsu.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/public/01CALS_SJO/citation/4520498150002919?auth=SAML
Mckinney, D. (n.d.). Dark tourism: What is it and why is it important? Cultura Obscura. https://www.culturaobscura.com/what-is-dark-tourism
(This post was originally published as “blog #3” for my INfo 200 course on information communities)
The Shadow Route 