The coverage achieved on the Web is a positive indication of the potential the medium has as a critically viable resource. The types of sites accessible on the topic certify the diversity and density available. Sites can be broken into the following groups:

• Index
• “Organisational Agent” for the discipline
• Primarily a primary source archive or database
• Electronic version of a text corpus
• “Thick site” of information gathered on a topic
• Playful, exploratory, pedagogical
• Primarily a primary or scholarly site
• Exhibition, collection, documentary
• Textbook or reference work

[Points made by Randy Bass in Culture and History as Electronic Text: A Lexicon of Critical Questions.]

Sites relating to the assassination of the thirty-fifth president of the United States are largely classified as “thick sites”, reference or scholarly sites or primary source archives. The notion of history confined to a single definitive text is preposterous given the new presentation. The web offers a participatory element ignored by the traditional monograph. Narratives are embedded “in the shared networks of communication so that references, connections, and communications grow and change.”

A useful index is the site, Real History Archives Assassinations Collection, which indicates material available electronically and print based.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) hosts The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection a searchable primary source archive. The site states it’s motive on the entry page;

An amazing resource for any serious historian interested in pursuing the publicly available primary sources.

“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. JFK Assassination Materials illustrates the culmination of these sources to create an informative and easily navigated site. The objective of such sites is to allow the public to interpret the information presented as boundless.

Grover B. Proctor Jr.’s The JFK Assassination: Articles is a collaborative site that epitomises the “thick site” with its use of sources and commentary availably electronically and a categorised monograph listing.

The primary source archive for the Warren Commission Reports is dutifully maintained by Ralph Schuster. The primary objective of this site is to maintain the Reports in an impartial way (not rendering the documents hypertextually).

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealy Plaza is an exhibition site for the museum, collecting patronage from the fascination it’s physical site draws. Chronicling the assassination and legacy of JFK the site also provides audiences with the tools to navigate contemporary culture within the context of presidential history.

The Web coverage on this topic assumes that the user has a basic understanding and knowledge of the facts and areas of debate. The assumption is that the public is aware that JFK was assassinated and that the investigation has not been satisfactorily concluded. The clichéd question “Who killed JFK?” is expected to have been asked before accessing the web coverage, these sites are not an introduction to that fact. (There is a site that bills itself as a beginner’s location as an introduction to the massive coverage the JFK assassination receives (both online and in print) and that is The Kennedy Assassination for the Novice.) The areas of debate that are expounded upon are the lone gunman versus conspiracy theories and reasons as to the restriction placed on documents relating to the investigation.

This is a reasonable assumption given that the assassination spans historical, political and cultural limitations. Historian's direct their work towards an educated elite well versed in the lexicon of historical writing. Fiction and amateur historical analysis do not receive the commendation that “straight” history receives. The Web coverage garners the disrepute as these previous forms despite the attempt to embrace a new medium and historiography. Like its electronic counterpart it assumes a level of general knowledge however its intentional inaccessibility (inherent specialised knowledge) is at odds with the objective of the World Wide Web. The democratising medium presents the opportunity to connect with a global audience, to relate to an event of historical importance in a meaningful way and should be taken seriously as a critical instrument to deliver and access history.

[ Introduction I Production I Coverage I Authority I Architecture I Primary Sources I Rhetoric I Fluidity I Overview ]