EXPLORING THE NEW MEDIA’S EVOLUTIONARY PATH
-THE BIRTH OF THE FLU BLOG -
Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing
Paul Valery
In February of 2003 newspapers, cable news and radio were the interface between the American public and breaking news. It had long been such.
No one set out to destroy the relevancy of these institutions. Like so much change it just happened. Passion and thirst mixed with a witches’ blend of electronic gadgetry created a new paradigm.
A paradigm where power was snatched from the media elite and taken by the citizenry – and no one has ever looked back.
Until now….
MARCH 2003
The world was on the eve of war.
Not the televised war of the First Gulf War, but the first internet war.
Many homes and offices were now wired to the net and the Internet was to become the CB of the 21st century. Far across the immense spectrum of the Internet - discussion nodes filled with speculation and rumor.
A very strange vibe was brewing, a strange vibe indeed. This was March of 2003 - this was to be the time of change.
It began as little more than a few whispers among the cacophony of war talk. A post on the 13th
here, a post on the 14th
here.
The earliest and most followed post was placed
here on the 13th. Within three days, this thread had received a couple of hundred comments, as the severity of the situation became apparent.
The original poster went on to obscurity but one of the responders would not. She would rise from this thread to be one of the guiding forces of the new media.
But her time was yet to come - a story to be told next - for it would be a different virus that propelled her to help shape and mold the world of "Flu Blogging".
It was now the Ides of March, and this story unfolds - for the transformation is about to begin.
In the strangest place.
THE OLD PARADIGM
As the concept of the "Discussion Forum" caught on across the growing Internet, a couple of standard formulas became the norm.
The first was a single poster copying and pasting a news article from the Main Stream Media and then adding comments. This early
Blog form still exists today.
The second formula developed largely during the "Clinton Scandals". Liberals and conservatives separated and started their own discussion forums where they would post an article from the Drudge Report or the New York Times and then proceed to beat it to death with comments.
There were a few science centered Blogs, but they also followed these same two formats. And they were out in the periphery - with few members and very few visitors.
No it was the mega sites where the action was - a huge group of diverse members, lots of visitor traffic and a stable infrastructure.
The elements were now all in place for the perfect storm.
THE TRANSFORMATION
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper
T. S. Eliot
It was the Ides of March, late in the night - on the hottest conservative forum on the Internet - that she appeared.
In an obscure section of that web site she posted a cryptically titled thread, made a comment about Ebola, a comment about God and then posted an advisory about a "worldwide health threat."
In a section that had seen only seven threads in the past seven days, she wove a strange, exotic and haunting thread for two days.
Then on the 17th of March she posted the first of 20 highly technical medical threads,
1
. Precognition
2. Hong Kong Health Secretary calls for calm as SARS cases double, (83 up from 42 on Sunday)
3. LATEST SARS UPDATE - DETAILED MEDICAL INFORMATION
4. BREAKING BIG: POSSIBLE PATHOGEN DETECTED IN SARS CASE
5. Killer Virus (SARS) Identified
6. Seven victims of mystery pneumonia stayed on same floor of Hong Kong hotel
7. Guangdong doctor linked to SARS outbreak
8. President of the American Society of Microbiology on SARS - "Everything says it is airborne."
9. SARS REACHES HONG KONG SCHOOLS - 32 NEW CASES (IS THE BUG OUT OF THE BOX?)
10. CDC increases SARS cases to 22 in U.S.
11. CHINA CONFIRMS CASES AND DEATHS (SARS) - HONG KONG SITUATION DETERIORATING - 22 CASES IN US
12. Causative agent of SARS virus isolated from lung tissue - test is reliably identifying cases
13. SARS cases on the rise in Canada, may be spreading even further, 12 people showing symptoms
14. VIETNAM NEW SARS HOT ZONE, U.S. Warns Citizens in Vietnam To leave
15. SARS cases on the rise in Canada, may be spreading even further, 12 people showing symptoms
16. Singapore - 740 people quarantined, 14 new cases on Monday, Hospitals close, SARS spreads
17. 37 In United States May Have SARS
18. SARS epidemic spreads in Taiwan, three other CDC officials have become ill.
19. WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF SARS? ONE VIRUS, TWO VIRUSES WORKING IN CONCERT, OR A DETERMINANT UNKNOWN
20. Killer-flu a 'white terror': Expert, "It is the worst medical disaster I have ever seen.
21. Preliminary Clinical Description of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- and over the next eleven days guided both lay and professionals, transformed the web site, crushed the paradigm and changed the way we interface with breaking news forever.
Oh, and there is that strange aspect of her name.
Every literate person on the Web new and understood, not only what it meant, but the endless nuances that lay associated with that name, in this context.
She signed on as
Mother Abigail.
THE NEW PARADIGM
Among the hundreds of posters and thousands of viewers on the Mother Abigail threads were; Doctors, Lawyers, Nurses, Pharmacists, Veterinarians and Health Care workers of every stripe.
It became apparent quite early that this was not to be the normal flu talk. This is an early post:
"Doug had an interesting observation in picking a Morbillivirus as a likely agent.
Hendra and Nipah are both zoonotic and it might well be a mutant of the Paramyxoviridae family. Symptoms are right.
Just because I have had tooooo much coffee, I will mention that both Hendra and Nipah have been given their own genus (Henipavirus).
Henipavirus becomes the fourth genus within the Paramyxovirinae subfamily of the Paramyxoviridae family. The other genera within the subfamily are Rubulavirus, Morbillivirus and Respirovirus."
52 posted on 03/17/2003 10:49:23 PM PST by Mother Abigail
And so it began.
Why was this different? Because local MD's discovered ProMed, because an army of netizens began searching every corner of our world for information, because citizens of other countries began translating information that would normally be missed - because the whole was larger than the sum of the parts.
One poster who tried to write about Mother Abigail soon after the incident, and was quickly banned, called it SARS Central.
Sounds right to me.
She hijacked a web site, created a forum for the "in depth" discussion of Virology, Taxonomy and Microbiology. But interactive.
And it is that interactivity that opened the flood gates. Now it was possible to monitor breaking news in a far off land, have experts opine on that news, react to their opinions and post information of your own.
NBC Nightly News was never going to be the same.
The "Flu Blog" was born.
DENOUEMENT
Eleven days. From March the 15th to March the 26 she posted, wrote and guided. Then with the same grace and dignity that marked every word she ever wrote - she said goodby.
It appears I have worked myself out of a job.
Many of you are now posting threads on SARS, and the information seems to be flowing in an accurate and timely manner.
So I will take this opportunity to thank all the posters for their hard work and diligence.
NOTE: I have tried to answer all the e-mails, except of course, the many that asked for personal information. Hope I was of some help
Stay Strong, Come and see me and - bring all your nice friends.......
20 posted on 03/26/2003 8:12:57 PM PST by Mother Abigail
Some help indeed....
Mother Abigail had become, in the wink of an eye, the focal point for much praise and some derision. Then she was gone.
A year or so later she began posting, from time to time, on various web sites - always modest - never speaking of those days again.
She continues to this day.
The story of the birth and development of the "Flu Blog" as an Internet phenomena is really the story of two remarkably similar women. You have met one.
The other, that I alluded to earlier, is a poster named Canada Sue. Where Mother Abigail left off - she began. Her story is a fascinating one that is worth the telling.
And I shall tell it next.
Saturday
January 6th, 2007
James S.
new_media_review@yahoo.com