The Never-ending Disaster: 9/11 Conspiracy Theory and the Integration of Activist Documentary on Video Websites

The article examines how documentary film is transformed when distributed through video sharing web sites. The conspiracy-theoretical production Loose Change (2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009) is used as a case study of how the mediation process connected with net-based distribution affects the materiality of film and alters our conception of both visual evidence and genre. With a point of departure in the media theory of Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin and their twin concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy it is discussed how the film culture on the internet develops new media institutions and establishes what could be described as “live” archives. A concluding reflection illustrates how this type of film is part of an ongoing media-determined and cultural transformation of the documentary genre, a process that places its historical and political content halfway between fact and fiction