Sites are produced for reasons as varied as cathartic resolution, broadcasting one’s agenda, the need to contribute to the debate or defining one’s online identity within the virtual landscape. Those that produce work on the web can be differentiated as professionals, academic scholars, enthusiasts, amateurs or freaks. For every sophisticated site that deliberates the great scope of argument available, there are sites devoid of any historic merit. What makes the online dialogue wonderfully distinctive is through the cacophony a new voice is heard. The enthusiasts who do not fall into the category of academic or professional are given the opportunity to contribute.

Traditional literature constructs the historical narrative in a prescribed manner that protects itself from this participatory influence. The Web inherently destabilises the notion of the “grand narrative”. This is demonstrated in the vast reproductions of the Warren Commission Hearings and Testimony (which is twenty six printed volumes) and the commentary that surrounds it. The “closed” truth of the book is threatened by the possibilities of an open medium like the web.

Approaching the information in a new and different way revives the interest in the assassination not only for the public but also for the historian. The theme that best captures the assassination Web coverage is multiplicity. “Multiple sequences, multiple voices, multiple outcomes, multiple implications” are at the very heart of the assassination investigation, interpretation and representation. There are multiple explanations, multiple theories and multiple reasons for publishing one’s work on the Web.

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