This article will examine the changing ways in which the original broadcast news footage of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 has been re-used. The article reflects on evolving types of usage from the immediacy of contemporaneous news coverage through several other stages: as evidence in investigative current affairs documentary films; as documentary history presenting the contexts of this event; in creative memorials commemorating the lives of the victims; as witness testimony recording the reflections in hindsight of those who experienced the disaster; and most recently in scripted dramatisations. The article explores how the re-use of this news footage can be viewed within the conceptual framework of the creative practice of ‘archiveology’ (Russell, 2018) and argues that this archival re-use has built up many interconnected layers of collective memory about what happened over Lockerbie that night.
Alistair Scott (Wed,) studied this question.