Abstract
Virtual Hurricane Katrina tours expose underlying strategic efforts of remembering and forgetting. This study examines virtual visits that include documentary, news footage, and application-based platforms that highlight the unique forms of virtual disaster tourism. Through strategic efforts at merging key players of tour companies, using the public’s reluctance for persuasive purposes, and attending to the ensuing struggle over meaning, virtual tours draw attention to the technologies of tourism practices and their role in unsettling patterns of globalization.
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- 1.
Jean Kempf, “News Photographs in the First Weeks After Katrina,” in Hurricane Katrina in Transatlantic Perspective, ed. Romain Huret and Randy J. Sparks (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2014), 56–59.
- 2.
Kristina M. Cordasco, David P. Eisenman, Deborah C. Glik, Joya F. Golden, and Steven M. Asch, “‘They Blew the Levee’: Distrust of Authorities Among Hurricane Katrina Evacuees,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 18, no. 2 (2007): 278.
- 3.
Joseph B. Treaster, “Superdome: Haven Quickly Becomes an Ordeal,” The New York Times, September 1, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/us/nationalspecial/superdome-haven-quicklybecomes-an-ordeal.html (accessed March 7, 2017).
- 4.
U.S. Census Bureau, Quickfacts: Orleans Parish, Louisiana, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/RHI125215/22071 (accessed March 7, 2017).
- 5.
Shannon Kahle, Nan Yu, and Erin Whiteside, “Another Disaster: An Examination of Portrayals of Race in Hurricane Katrina Coverage,” Visual Communication Quarterly 14, no. 2 (2007): 83.
- 6.
Joan Brunkard, Gonza Namulanda, and Raoult Ratard, “Hurricane Katrina Deaths, Louisiana, 2005,” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 2, no. 4 (2008): 218, http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/docs/katrina/deceasedreports/KatrinaDeaths_082008.pdf (accessed March 7, 2017).
- 7.
See Spencer S. Hsu, “2 Million Displaced By Storms,” Washington Post, January 13, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/12/AR2006011201912.html (accessed March 7, 2017) and Diana B. Elliott, “Understanding Changes in Families and Households Pre-and Post-Katrina,” (presentation, Annual Convention of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, CA, August 10, 2009).
- 8.
Jerome E. Morris, “Out of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Researching the Katrina Diaspora,” Urban Education 43, no. 4 (2008): 464.
- 9.
John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860–1880 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973).
- 10.
Cordasco et al., “They Blew the Levee,” 277.
- 11.
See Audrey Singer and William H. Frey, “Katrina and Rita Impacts on Gulf Coast Populations: First Census Findings” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, June 1, 2006) and Kim Koerber, “Migration Patterns and Mover Characteristics from the 2005 ACS Gulf Coast Area Special Products” (presentation, Southern Demographic Association Conference, Durham, NC, November 2–4, 2006).
- 12.
Cordasco et al., “They Blew the Levee,” 279.
- 13.
Phaedra C. Pezzullo, “‘This is the Only Tour That Sells’: Tourism, Disaster, and National Identity in New Orleans,” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 7, no. 2 (2009): 99–114.
- 14.
DeMond Shondell Miller, “Disaster Tourism and Disaster Landscape Attractions after Hurricane Katrina: An Auto-Ethnographic Journey,” International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 2, no. 2 (2008): 115–131.
- 15.
Lynell L. Thomas, “‘Roots Run Deep Here’: The Construction of Black New Orleans in Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives,” American Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2009): 749–768.
- 16.
Lynell L. Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 128.
- 17.
Ibid., 127.
- 18.
Catherine Roberts and Philip R. Stone, “Dark Tourism and Dark Heritage: Emergent Themes, Issues and Consequences,” in Displaced Heritage: Dealing with Disaster and Suffering, ed. Ian Convery, Gerard Corsane, and Peter Davis (Suffolk, GBR: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), 9.
- 19.
Baird Helgeson, “Disaster Tourism Begins to Thrive,” Tampa Tribune (Tampa, FL), December 30, 2005.
- 20.
It should be noted that the popularity of videos (number of online hits), the addition of new videos and comments, and the increasing role of the personalization of online individual experience (based on previous searches and preferences) are among several factors leading to changes in search engine logarithms. The videos used in our research were among the first hits upon our online search, and their relevance to the topic of disaster tourism should not be ignored. We conducted searches separately from different computers as a precaution. The fleeting nature of Internet searches, however, means that by the time this chapter goes to print, new videos may appear on the same search that will continue to add to the tours. We suggest that the clips we analyze are currently representative of the Katrina virtual tourist experience.
- 21.
Public memory studies provide scholars with various theoretical and methodological approaches for conceptualizing ways of commemorating, remembering, and even forgetting the past. For studies on where remembrance occurs, see Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials, ed. Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian Ott (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2010). For theories about the active nature of forgetting, see Bradford Vivian, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
- 22.
Global Memoryscapes, ed. Kendall R. Phillips and G. Mitch Reyes (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2011), 14.
- 23.
Ibid., 15.
- 24.
“New Orleans Katrina Disaster Tours,” YouTube video, 2: 19, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1t-OVMSE0w (accessed June 21, 2017).
- 25.
Isabelle Cossart, “I Was the Face of Disaster Tourism in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” BuzzFeed News, August 24, 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/isabellecossart/i-was-the-face-of-disaster-tourism-in-post-katrina-new-orlea?utm_term=.ju5VydBAD#.xnV3e6z4B (accessed July 17, 2017).
- 26.
“Gray Line New Orleans—Hurricane Katrina Tour,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i4n_Rm01do&t=68s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 27.
“Hurricane Katrina Survivor Gives Tours of Its Destruction,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZg2rWZbfek (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 28.
“About,” New Orleans Historical, http://neworleanshistorical.org/about (accessed March 7, 2017).
- 29.
“Mission and Goals of Levees.org,” Levees.org, http://levees.org/mission-and-goals-of-levees-org (accessed March 7, 2017).
- 30.
“Our Story,” Louisiana State Museum, http://louisianastatemuseum.org/about (accessed March 7, 2017).
- 31.
“PSA for Virtual Levee Breach Tour in New Orleans,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJyAbF02xXA (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 32.
“Hurricane Katrina Survivor Gives Tours of Its Destruction,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZg2rWZbfek (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 33.
“Gray Line New Orleans—Hurricane Katrina Tour,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i4n_Rm01do&t=68s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 34.
“Hurricane Katrina Survivor Gives Tours of Its Destruction,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZg2rWZbfek (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 35.
“Disaster Tours: New Orleans after Katrina,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0CwRogDPsA&t=488s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
“Gray Line New Orleans—Hurricane Katrina Tour,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i4n_Rm01do&t=68s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
“New Orleans Katrina Disaster Tours,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1t-OVMSE0w&t=1s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 40.
“Hurricane Katrina Tour,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9nHG6Pt50M&t=19s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 41.
“Hurricane Katrina Survivor Gives Tours of Its Destruction,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZg2rWZbfek (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 42.
“Gray Line New Orleans—Hurricane Katrina Tour,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i4n_Rm01do&t=68s (accessed July 11, 2017).
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Phillips and Reyes, Global Memoryscapes, 14.
- 46.
Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 9.
- 47.
Phaedra C. Pezzullo , Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 140.
- 48.
Ibid., 140–141.
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Bowen, D.I., Bannon, S. (2018). Hurricane Katrina Goes Digital: Memory, Dark Tours, and YouTube. In: McDaniel, K.N. (eds) Virtual Dark Tourism. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74687-6_10
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