Original primary texts such as audio of police interviews, interviews with witnesses, video footage of the Zapruder film (and frame by frame photographic stills), images of JFK’s autopsy, transcripts of the Warren Commission Report and House Select Committee for Assassinations findings have all been reproduced electronically. Information is not privileged as it is in manuscripts; if information can be linked or searched, the facility is made available. J. W. Masland’s The Nook of Eclectic Inquiry offers a fully searchable version of the Warren Commission’s findings. This function creates a participatory vehicle rather than an additive one, where there would simply be a reproduction of the original. Text is the most readily convertible form of historical evidence, easily converted to the electronic mode. The extent to which electronic texts have been rendered hypertext is encouraging. This immersion of information in this form does not reduce the original integrity of the documents but rather facilities the critical examination of the texts available.

Primary texts are used to support the arguments the electronic text site purports. This is comparable to the way historians create text for the established publication. The boundaries of the primary text have the potential to be porous given the fluidity of the web. However, the documentation of primary sources relating to JFK’s assassination on the web generally adheres to the perfunctory rules of historical engagement as opposed to allowing hypertext to transform the source. Primary texts are distinguished by how easily they can be coded. Text is searchable whereas images, and scanned images of texts cannot be utilised in the same way. In this respect, the image is privileged over plain text as it resistant to change. The capacity to modify a source so that is transformed into a dynamic new means of historical interpretation is thrilling to behold.

The coverage of the JFK assassination expands upon primary and secondary sources to cerate a unique narrative. Not limited to a style of documentary history, the multivocal community houses a metanarrative. The web of sites interacts with each other, not simply additive as a journal hosted forum would be, but interactive and kaleidoscopic. There is a feeling that a faction of he community serves as interpreters on the subject and its delivery. Hosts’ interests, the agenda they feel compelled to publish, influence the electronic corpus on an individual level. However, the collective assemble to further the interest and critical approval of their narrative. This agenda is self conscious but not entirely self serving. Their interest lies in discovering the truth by exposing the information that remains private.

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