2021-10-21: 9/11 through the eyes of the Internet Archive

 "Where were you when the planes hit the World Trade Center?" It seems like everyone has an answer to that question. 

On 9/11, my mom was visiting my grandparents in a small town in Wisconsin. My dad was stationed in Korea and called my mom to turn on the news. She was standing in my grandparents' living room, on the phone with my dad, when she watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. 

I was 2 years old, so what I know about 9/11 is from documentaries and stories from my parents and grandparents. The same is true for those in my generation and generations to follow. 

With the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 Attack, I was curious how 9/11 was reflected in the Internet Archive. I looked at the captures for 5 major new networks on September 11, 2001: CNNFox NewsMSNBCWashington Post, and NY Times. The first plane hit at 8:46 am and the earliest capture from those websites came from CNN at 8:03 pm, almost 12 hours later. These captures show the after effects of the attacks. 

Captured on 9/11 at 8:03 pm

Captured on 9/11 at 8:56 pm

Captured on 9/11 at 9:01 pm

Captured on 9/11 at 11:06 pm

Captured on 9/12 7:00 am

Viewing and interacting with these captures helped me understand the aftermath of the 9/11 Attack. Reading the headlines and the news articles linked from these captures gave me an appreciation for what people were thinking and feeling when that tragic day was done. 

When the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, there were numerous theories about what had occurred. What crashed into the World Trade Center? Was it a small plane? Was it a commercial aircraft? Initially, very few people thought it was an intentional attack. As the events unfolded, it became clear what had occurred. Unfortunately, this unfolding is not reflected in the captures from the archives. This is in contrast to our ability to replay the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and watch the details unfold. As opposed to the 9/11 Attack that lasted one day, Hurricane Katrina lasted 8 days. This gave Web crawlers ample time to capture the news and updates related to the hurricane. 

In searching the Internet Archive, I found Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive. It is an incredible resource from the Internet Archive that gives users access to TV news from 20 channels for the week following 9/11. Watching these news broadcasts gave me an immersive understanding of what it was like to go from normal morning news to watching the second plane crash on live TV. That immersive experience is exactly what Web archives strive for, portraying exactly what a user would have seen at the time of capture. 

The Internet Archive is celebrating its 25th anniversary and replaying online news articles from 9/11 made me appreciate the great technological gains that the Internet Archive has made in the last 25 years. In 2001, the Internet Archive's Save Page Now functionality did not exist, so there was no on-demand archiving. At that time, the computational resources to conduct archiving were significantly more expensive than they are now. The gaps where the Internet Archive did not capture the development of events are a result of the news happening faster than the Web crawlers could capture at that time. But now, due to the advances in technology, the cost of storage and network access have significantly decreased and Web crawlers are able to crawl more and faster. The Internet Archive's development of new functionalities like Save Page Now continue to push the bounds of what it means to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge" including the capture of major historical events. 

- Emily Escamilla (@EmilyEscamilla_)