Community

The History Channel’s Cold War Discussion Board is a forum for discussing all aspects of the Cold War Era during which the United States and Soviet Union had an openly adversarial relationship. The discussion group has been active since at least 2000. This is the timeframe when the oldest discussion thread was initiated. (I could find no archive of older material, so I assume it does not exist.) The discussion group is still active. New discussions and posts to old discussions occur daily. However, it appears that there has been a general decline in the number of active posters. Although, given topics excite more interest than others. .

The members of the forum seem to be overwhelmingly the general public. In order to make a post, a person must register. During registration a person can enter biographical data. However, most posters do not provide much, if any, information. Those that do provide biographical information are mostly current and former military personnel and military enthusiasts. These groups probably form the largest, if not near total, segment of the membership. This supposition if borne out by the content of most posts which frequently mention prior and current military service or an enthusiasm for military topics.

Very little evidence exists that academics and university level students make posts to the forum. The only evidence I saw of participation by an academic was a poster’s user name: “Historyprof1.” However, a review of Historyprof1’s posts do not exhibit in-depth scholarly analysis, so it is impossible to determine if Historyprof1 is a professional historian.
The lack of participating by professional historians and students may be a result of the History Channel’s reputation among scholars and serious history students. It has been my experience that these groups view the content of the History Channel, both on its television channel and website, as lacking in scholarly depth because of a need to appeal to a broad audience.

The lack of scholarly analysis is common throughout the Cold War forum’s 318 discussion threads, which have a total of 5,182 posts. Most of the discussions threads center on comparisons of Soviet and American military hardware. This is where most of the value of the Cold War forum lies because of the former and current military personnel who regularly post to the site. Many posts contain valuable first hand technical and tactical information for ships, aircraft, and other military equipment. However, the downside to this emphasis is that the broader social and economic trends that played an integral part in how the Cold War transpired are not discussed in detail.

These shortcomings may be a product of the topic. Because the Cold War was, in essence, a struggle between two opposing societies, its subject matter encompasses a vast range of social, economic, and military specialties. This reasoning does not excuse the lack of scholarly analysis on the forum. Other forums provide this content and their membership contains many professional historians. It may simply be that the Cold War as a topic is not specific enough to generate these types of posts. For instance, a review of three other discussion groups in the same Wars category have much more activity and depth of discussion. Three, Operation Iraqi Freedom, World War II, and the Vietnam War have 2,828, 6,742, and 1,155 discussion threads, respectively. The number of posts for each numbers in the tens of thousands. Tellingly, the Operation Iraqi Freedom site has over 34,000 posts.

This last example, I believe, exemplifies a value of on-line discussion groups that is not readily provided by other media. This value is the sharing of knowledge in a timely manner and the forming of a community in response to a common interest. In this case, the conduct of the war in Iraq and the welfare of American troops and Iraqi civilians are of intense interest to a large number of people around the world. However, there is a limitation to this ability to bring people together and share information. In forums like those hosted by the History Channel that are mostly used by the public, the debate can quickly become a war of opinion that does not serve any useful purpose. Nevertheless, I am still optimistic about on-line historical communities. Those that enjoy widespread participation by professional historians and students do create viable and meaningful communities. While some would argue that these virtual communities are often transitory, the same can be said for real communities. If new historical truths and insights are created by on-line historical communities, it does not matter, in the end, if they eventually become defunct, as long as the information is still maintained. This is no different than journals that are decades old that were written by historians who are now dead. Communities will always fracture, but the information that is produced by them can be preserved.