John McAdams’ The Kennedy Assassination Home Page is a truly “thick site”. “Thick sites” illustrate the ability of the web to create hypertextual documents that unite primary and secondary sources surrounded by commentary. Fundamentally destabilising the meaning of the text in a way Post-Structuralist and Post-Modernist theory applauds. The objective of such sites is to allow the public to interpret the information presented as boundless.

McAdams is an explorer, deftly charting the vast and varied links to interesting Kennedy assassination material. Occasionally playful in contextualising evidence, McAdams provides an informative and entertaining site.

The extent to McAdams pedagogy is open to interpretation. Questions are raised that engage the audience to consider the possible outcomes, to choose their own conclusion. I find McAdams approach innovative, for the many questions, his site raises there are exponentially more alternative questions and answers. McAdams endeavours to counter these inquiries within his site both internally and externally.

McAdams site is scholarly in nature references many articles, dynamic sites, forums, images (both still and motion) and sound.

The privileging factor of The Kennedy Assassination Home Page is its dedicated pursuit of “debunking the mass of misinformation and disinformation surrounding the murder of JFK.” Thus, contextualising the evidence presented is essential in achieving this aim.

The skeleton of a hierarchical structure when entering McAdams’ site is striking. The order of content on the front page is as follows: McAdams declares his intent for his site; there are then links to recommended websites and books on the assassination. Following this introduction there are internal inks to fifteen categories of evidence:

• Dealey Plaza
• The Single Bullet Theory
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Jim Garrison and New Orleans
• Medical Evidence
• Bogus Evidence
• Jack Ruby
• Oliver Stone's Movie "JFK"
• John Kennedy: Liberal Martyr?
• Assassination Logic
• Assassination Witnesses
• Did Oswald Really Talk?
• The Assassination Context
• Release the Documents!
• Hear History Happen

There is a newsgroup, a number of featured articles, the ability to email McAdams, search McAdams' site and newsgroup archives, visit the photo gallery or McAdams' links to the best Kennedy assassination resources on the web.

Once inside these subsets, one is presented with a myriad of possibilities. Hypertext is prevalent to the majority of pages hosted by McAdams; though many remain internal, they offer the opinion of distinctly foreign arguments. Links that do exceed the boundaries of McAdams’ server are deliberately chosen as they further the travel of the interested student. I say student, as one has to be receptive to the ideas presented and the manner in which they serve to educate one’s own theories regarding the Kennedy assassination. These external links are to sites that offer more to the argument cited or in a different context.

[ Introduction I Type of Site I Coverage I Authority I Organisation I Design I Orientation I Mobility I Primary I Knowledge Construct I Rhetorical I Writable I Overview ]