Popular History on the Web

Say what you like about Stephen Ambrose’s ethics what first got him into bad favor with the historical elite was that he wrote popular history. He didn’t write for academic consumption but for general consumption. And he made a pile of money doing so. Only proving that there is an audience among the general populace for history. Combine this audience with the Internet’s ability to allow anyone with the desire to do so to publish and distribute history and you end up with a plethora of web sites, most of them bad, catering to this need. This then raises the questions are any professional historians trying to feed this appetite for popular history and if so are they using new media to do it?

The answer to both questions is maybe and yes. We were given five sites to review for this project. Three of these are from what might be considered “the usual suspects”: The National Geographic, The Smithsonian Institute, and The History Channel. These organizations are already engaged in providing popular history and with the exception of The History Channel have been doing so for over a century. Their web sites then are just an extension of what they are already doing and not something new. Not all museums are engaged in providing popular history. This is one of these highbrow/lowbrow types of differentiations. The Getty Museum has been until recently more of a highbrow enterprise so this portion of its web site showing mechanical wonders is an excursion into the realm of popular history. The Musarium is an Internet magazine that publishes articles and essays on a verity of topics some of which are historical in nature. The one thing all of these have in common is an editor or editors to screen the quality and veracity of what they put on the web.

The specific question at hand is which of these sites makes the most effective use of new media? To answer that I’ll arrange them in order from the least effective use to the most with a short explanation as to why.

1. The History Channel - The whole point is to sell you something. There are lost of flash animations but they advertise up coming programming all of which is brought to you by one sponsor or another. The material available for viewing on the site, JFK stuff, veterans, etc. is all linked to up coming programming. And once you get there it is static text with pictures only. They do have discussion groups but this too seems linked to current and up coming programs. I attempted a search on Pearl Harbor because last year there were several programs on the subject on the air and I could compare it to the National Geographic site. All I got were two short encyclopedia articles and the links to several tapes being sold at their store. A lot of image but little substance and the image was just good layout.

2. (tie) “Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America” – This was a video essay. There was no interaction but the combination of the images with the narration was not something that could have been carried off in print and it was this combination that was the strength of the essay. Then there were the comments, which let viewers respond to the essay. This is something else that would not have been possible in print. The editor would have printed maybe a dozen of what he or she considered the best responses but only with the on-line forum could you see all the responses even the bad ones.

2. HistoryWired: A Few of Our Favorite Things – This is so the Smithsonian. Just like the museum there are over arching categories but within them who knows what’s in the next box. There is a lot of stuff here and the site uses a drill down technique to take you further into something you find interesting. Still it is all very static. The web lets them put all this stuff out there and technology makes their interface work but there is no wow factor.

4. Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen – There is a lot of interaction here to explore each of the devices. Some you can work. Other you can take apart. There are even some movies of some in action. Since I’ve always been fascinated by these sorts of devices I enjoyed the site. Based on the written descriptions I’m guessing the target audience is middle school age. For them I think it works well.

5. National Geographic: Remembering Pearl Harbor – Why I rated this one the highest for use of new media is because of the different types it uses. There is the moving map and time line interface to start with. It has authored descriptions of the events but it also has eyewitness accounts, most of them as audio by the people themselves. There are pictures of the events being described and video clips. Like The History Channel this site is also trying to sell stuff but it doesn’t let the commercial side get in the way of the content. This was also the only one of the five where I wished there was more, pictures, videos, narratives, it didn’t matter the way it was done made you want to “keep turning the pages”.