Pandemic diaries under the lens

Abstract

Diaries belong to a unique kind of literature—part memoir, part personal memories, and in the long run also part of history. Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl jolted the world by giving an insider perspective of the Holocaust. Conversations With Myself gave humankind a glimpse into apartheid through Nelson Mandela's experience. And Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year dipped many of us into what it was like to live during the 17th century Great Plague in the city of London. Nearly three centuries later, COVID-19 set the stage alike for established and amateur writers on social media platforms and the birth of tonnes of diaries wherein people from around the world shared their lockdown experiences. This is a massive, uncalled for social experiment, for sociologists and those who specialise in modern media like Guobin Yang (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA) now have access to interactive diaries on social networks. This is a treasure trove of data, with the authors’ stories, readers’ comments, rants, fights, and online trolls all giving people like Yang material to explore what made people write pandemic diaries, what came out of it, and what they say about humankind's take on the ongoing pandemic, its politics, and peoples’ opinions on pandemic management by different governments.