To visit a working version of my digital history project please follow this link: https://trackingantisemitism.tumblr.com/ It is password protected. If you would like the password please plan to take me to Gettysburg. After we visit said site, I will give you the password on edible paper. You must memorize the password and then eat the paper. Then you may access my site.
Just kidding…kinda. The password is: makeachange2018
Abstract
As of 2018 there are only two websites that are home to tracking incidents of antisemitism. Anti-Defamation League audits antisemitic incidents over a twelve-month period and publishes it at the beginning of each new year.
The audit published by the ADL includes both criminal and non-criminal incidents acts of harassment and intimidation, including distribution of hate propaganda, threats and slurs. These are compiled by victims, law enforcement and community leaders and then is evaluated by the staff of ADL. The ADL has been tracking antisemitic incidents since 1979.
In the first quarter of 2017 (3 months) there was an 86 percent increase from 2016. In this three-month period there have been 541 antisemitic incidents which include: 380 harassment incidents, an increase of 127 percent; 155 vandalism incidents, an increase of 36 percent.
The second tracker of antisemitism is the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization that documents incidents related to 3 rules: (1) Targeting Jewish students and staff; (2) Antisemitic expression; (3) BDS activity at high schools or institutions of higher learning in the United States. A majority of the criteria has been derived from the U.S. State Department’s definition of antisemitism.
This digital tracker will automatically put information into an excel spreadsheet that counts anything categorized as an “antisemitic” event or incident as pre-determined by the authors of the project. An alert will be set on the host site/server that inputs the information based on what is published on the Internet.
These sites of publication on the Internet can include news alerts from credible news companies: BBC, CNN, Fox, local news companies, etc. Incidents reported on social media sites will also be inputted-these sites can include Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
A major component of this website will be its ability to crowdsource. The most basic form will be google forms embedded into the website that will take the information submitted via the google forms and then put into an excel spreadsheet. The website will have to be monitored through an administrator as the definition of what counts as an antisemitic incident changes based on national level, state level, and personal level. For the purposes of this project, all incidents will be filed under the definition given by Yad Vashem-Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Great to see how the project is coming together. From your abstract it sounds like the overall idea for the site is developing and advancing. You nicely describe the related projects and explain and situate how yours is different and distinct from those. With all of this noted, I continue to not completely see how the project as articulated works as a digital history project. That is, it seems to be entirely focused on tracking contemporary incidents. So continue to think about how the project can include a historical component to it.
I was able to log in to the tumblr to see how it is coming together. It is great to see that you have something functioning as a prototype. With that noted, I couldn’t fully see how it was intended to work. It would be great to get some example posts or tracked incidents up in there so that the overall shape and scope of the project starts to become more clear.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the final product for your project comes together. As we discussed before, it’s fine to not have a fully functional running site, but it would be great to get to a point where you have things like wireframes for it or where you could talk us through some screenshots from the prototype you’ve built that illustrate how it would ultimately work if you kept working toward it.