St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty during the American Influenza epidemic. 1918. mask-wearing ... [+]
Eighteen months ago the Spanish Flu, also known as the 1918 (H1N1 virus), was barely remembered in the collective conscious. While it was one of the world's deadliest outbreaks since the bubonic plague (the "Black Death") of the Middle Ages, just 100 years after the fact it might as well have been ancient history. And yet, just in the past month dozens of videos about the Spanish Flu have popped up on YouTube.
According to the CDC, about 500 million people or one-third of the global population became infected with the virus, and the number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide. Yet when the CDC released a short video on the key points of the 1918 Pandemic in July 2018 few apparently were enticed to watch it. Even now it has just around 68,000 views – but there could be a key factor why.
The CDC opted for the politically correct description "1918 Pandemic," which is fair in the modern context because there still isn't a universal consensus regarding where it originated. It spread worldwide during 1918-1919 and was first identified in military personnel in the spring of 1918 – leading to speculation that it originated at Fort Riley, Kansas as U.S. Army soldiers trained to go to France to fight in the First World War.
"It is pretty well certain now that (the Spanish Flu) didn't start at Fort Riley/Camp Funston, but that the large training camp there served as a vehicle for spreading it," Doran Cart, senior curator of the National World War I Museum and Memorial, told ClearanceJobs.com last month.
What's In A Name?
A quick search on YouTube on the term Spanish Flu will yield no shortage of results. One video "1918 Spanish Flu historical documentary" has been seen 7.5million times, despite the fact that its producer Chromosome8 has just 46,500 subscribers.
Compare that to the just 244,157 views that the CDC video has – despite having 427,000 subscribers or roughly 10 times that of Chromosome8. That means that only slightly more than half of the subscribers of the CDC have watched the videos.
Clearly, the "Spanish Flu" is a term people are looking for and watching related videos a lot!
"This phenomenon has more to do with where people turn for information and guidance than the specific topic," said technology industry analyst Josh Crandall of Netpop Research. "It doesn't matter whether it is how to install a doorknob or learn about a moment in time, YouTube is the source many turn to for reference."
Theories, Information, Misinformation
The question is then whether the information can be trusted. This is true of almost all the historical content on YouTube, but in the case of the 1918 pandemic, checking for multiple sources is recommended.
"Whether the channel of information is a social media outlet, video channel, or news source, people, it doesn't absolve a person from double checking the factual nature of the content. It's more important than ever to check your sources," suggested Crandall.
"The speed and fragmentation of information sources today increases dramatically the challenge to communicate truth and to counter untruths in a crisis," said John Born, Executive-in-Residence at Ohio University's Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs. "Resulting actions of the majority of people to key messages, such as effective social distancing, shows that the truth can break through."
Yet it is fascinating to see the speed in which these videos are being released. One of the first to arrive in recent weeks was "Why Spanish Flu Killed Over 50 Million People - Deadliest Plague in Modern History," by The Infographics Show and it has had nearly a million views since it debuted on March 21. The nearly 12 minute long video is filled with animations and the usual facts this channel offers.
A well polished video from The New Yorker, titled "How the Coronavirus Pandemic Compares to the Spanish Flu | The New Yorker" features a conversation between magazine editor David Remnick and The Great Influenza author John Barry. It is a talking head video where the parallels between the 1918 flu pandemic and coronavirus in 2020 – and it is about as compelling as it sounds.
"The coverage around the pandemic is ongoing, constantly changing, and overwhelming," said Sanket Shah, clinical assistant professor for biomedical and health information sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
"I would say most individuals are still not highly familiar with the reach of the virus, medical impacts, and are struggling to determine its staying power," added Shah. "These videos are quite popular because they often provide an anecdote and appeal to emotion. Individuals should always consider credible health organization sources as their primary source of content to prevent consuming misinformation."
More recent videos have also proven popular with the newly released "The Spanish Flu of 1918: the history of a deadly pandemic and lessons for coronavirus," from Channel 4 News from April 9; and "Coronavirus outbreak: Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic," from Global News from April 12, already each being viewed tens of thousands of times.
"What's interesting to me is how quickly video has displaced text based reference sources as the 'go-to' source for info," explained Crandall. "At first, people turned to newspapers, books and libraries. That shifted to Wikipedia and other online text based outlets in the first generation of the internet. But, people don't particularly like to read and now that video is available, people are shifting their habits quickly to search for videos on virtually any topic."
