itourist?

snippet from lennon and fowley’s ‘dark tourism: the attraction of death and disaster’, (Thomson Learning, London, 2004):

‘the critical features apparent in the phenomena (‘dark tourism’) are, first, that global communications technologies play a major part in creating the initial interest…; second, that the objects of dark tourism themselves appear to introduce anxiety and doubt about the project of modernity (e.g. the use of ‘rational planning’ and technological innovation to undertake the jewish holocaust…); third, the educative elements of sites are accompanied by elements of commodification and a commercial ethic which (whether explicit or implicit) accepts that visitation (whether purposive or incidental) is an opportunity to develop a tourism product.’ pp11

‘if film has offered alternative, revised or more ‘realistic’ accounts of news events (e.g. JFK; apocalypse now; shoah) throughout the twentieth century, then the events themselves have (apparently) come closer to us in space and time. in this sense, experiencing immediate news events, or critical reflection upon recent cataclysmic events, at, or near, home brings populations to the intersection between the local and the global. can it be surprising that, when the opportunity presents itself to validate that global-local connection that so many decide to visit the sites of these deaths and disasters?’ pp9

pursue the point about validation? any thoughts?