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COMPETING CONTEXTS: The chronological perspective of our Level 3 site analysis is not the only way these websites construct history. The Washington Post website contains a hypertextually promising area dealing with the mystery of Deep Throat. As was mentioned in the introduction, Watergate history had hypertextual components and the possibility of multiple narratives well before it was presented on the internet. The key to this latent hypertextuality is Watergate's unanswered questions, of which the Deep Throat mystery is an integral part. As the Washington Post section admits, "To this day, no one has produced a satisfactory explanation of what the Watergate burglars hoped to find out" (1). The Post goes on to describe "the identity of Bob Woodward's deep background source [Deep Throat] during the Watergate investigation" as "simply the best-kept secret in American politics and journalism" (2). The conspiratorial nature of this section unlocks a number of hypertextual possibilities. A conspiracy is not a linear narrative, but travels backwards and forwards in time, connects documents previously seen as unrelated, as well as key players and events. By seeing Watergate in a conspiratorial framework of unanswered questions, hidden connections, and continuous reworking of the narrative even to the present day, the historian can create a structure for hypertext links that would otherwise not appear.
CONSPIRACY: The Post website goes someway towards implementing this structure. Embracing the conspiratorial metaphor, the site presents three possible answers to the identity of Deep Throat: either he was from the FBI, the CIA, or the White House (3). Although the actual text within each section is rather small, it does create an alternate layer of context for viewing the primary documents of this site. Previously the Post's article archive and key players sections were tied to the linear chronology. But what this feature provides is an alternate perspective on the conventional players and events, a second level of context which is far more uncertain. Deep Throat provides a far more open example of Janet Murray's interactivity compared to the limited paths of the Chronology section. While that section offered little incentive for immersion, the possibility of 'clues' to Deep Throat and other unanswered questions creates the impetus for users to create their own links. Users might view the 'key players' in a new light, as possible Deep Throat suspects. Using the search function, they could then create their own collections of articles based around one of those individuals, rather than the restrictive linearity of the chronology. Investigation of the archive also reveals a hidden hypertextual link: related articles are linked to eachother in the sidebar, allowing more pathways of investigation (4). The introduction of user defined multiple narratives, both through the article links and the search function, allows the structured interactivity to give way to a controlled immersion in the web of Watergate.
RESURGENT LINEARITY: However, the design of the article archive is flawed. The 'related article' links on the sidebar are related only in the sense that they were written on the same day or consecutive days. And also on this sidebar appears a link to the Chronology section of our initial analysis. Users are now forced to choose between their own, limited, hypertextual options and the guiding hand of the Washington Post, steering them away from immersion in the archive, and back to the linear timeline (5) .
GOING DEEPER: The way primary evidence is linked in our
second site, Watergate.info, offers a possible solution. The body of the
site is composed of different sections which initially seem to be arranged
in a chronological fashion - from the burglary, to Nixon's reaction, to
impeachment, resignation, and Gerald Ford's pardon. But as can be seen
in our final analysis, within each of these Chronological
sections, multilinearity becomes the dominant structure.
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