6 Comparing Information Orders: Continuity and Change

How do experiences of earthquakes shift between the various historical information orders that I explore in this book? Disaster informatics researchers have considered how social media has impacted events such as the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and pundits gleefully declared that new infrastructures represent a new way of knowing. Yet few have ventured into examining historical disaster information practices that might validate these claims. Throughout this book, some aspects of past information orders might feel totally unfamiliar, while others are relatable. I borrowed the term information order from Bayly to describe the institutions, infrastructures, and practices that shape how information is produced, circulated, shared, and used as a means of surveillance and control. This book looked at Northern California information orders in 1868, 1906, 1989, and today, and asked how the information orders shaped postdisaster knowledge. I introduced the term event epistemology to show that information orders and disasters coconstruct possibilities for knowing. For example, an accurate count of the number of people who died in the 1906 earthquake and fire was not part of the event epistemology. This was in part because accumulating the physical records was challenging, but also because a low number of deceased was politically convenient. The destruction wrought by earthquakes creates intense interest in information about what happened at the very moment the institutions, infrastructures, and practices that create and limit knowledge are challenged. Disasters test information orders and provide interesting moments to understand how information orders shape event epistemologies.