Where is Holocaust /Shoah Education Going online? Part II

Before the Holiday season, some rather disturbing figures were offered regarding the status of Holocaust Education online. In 2006, "The Sedition Act" looked at the status of websites vying for attention online, which dealt with Holocaust Education or Shoah Education, and the stats were rather surprising: for all the money, funding, Museums, etc, the major efforts at Holocaust Education online, at least in a peripheral view, appeared to be running not far ahead of 'fringe' perspectives and holocaust denial sites , but neck to neck with anti-Semitic sites, which according to the numbers are far from being fringe in the United States. It must be noted that while persons espousing views of Holocaust Denial or Anti-Semitism may seem a small minority at large in the population, those showing interest in their sites online is disproportionate to what one would expect.

I promised a further exposition of some of the data looked at between 2006 and the week just before Christmas week in the blog dated December 16, 2008, so I am including the data which I mentioned.

Please remember that this is not a raw count comparison! In other words, I am not comparing raw number of visits to the sites, and then looking at comparisons of averages between groups or between two different sites, but rather the variable under comparison is the number of references, direct references to the sites by other sites on the internet. The reasoning for this is that raw counts can be seditioned by anything but disinterested parties, and do not alway in any way yield a real count of how many people visit a site, how often, or for what reason or degree. However, when a site, such as my own, shoaheducation.com is reported by Google figures or Altavista or Hotbot or Ask to be directly mentioned '2090' times, for example, it means that the site has been listed on another site or forum, almost always by link, back into the site, meaning the site is referenced that many times and the referencing represents both eminence and usage by real persons or processes, not link farms, or kids visiting over and over to run up counts, etc. As mentioned before there are no perfect comparisons, all have some flaws, but # references for now gives a reasonable overview of which sites are being seen and used and not just 'hit'. The statistics from December 16,2008 may be found in the blog of that date regarding the raw # of references (essentially backlinks but not really), and how they have changed since 2006. In this blog, I am including the stats on the DEGREE of change, or percent change, with a comparison between traditional and well-mentioned Shoah education or Holocaust Education sites, and widely known Anti-Semitic sites which eminently teach Holocaust denial. The former sites observed are USHMM, NIZKOR, Jewish Virtual Library, Yad Vashem, WIESENTHAL, REMEMBER.org, FCIT and SHOAHEDUCATION.com, while the Denial sites observed are STORMFRONT.ORG, JEWWATCH.COM, KKK.COM, NAZI.ORG, RESIST.COM, RADIO ISLAM, AND NSM88.

A note of caution, though, there is a difference in mention between the NAME of an organization and the DOMAIN NAME of the site: e.g. 'KKK' will yield 16,600,000 mentions, but KKK.com, the standard for comparison lists 39,600, which is not a pejorative use but more accurate, for everyone who mentions KKK can be on both sides or neutral, but actual mentions and use of the site, more accurately reflects its eminence in delivering Holocaust DENIAL education. While Anti-Semitic sites do not point ONLY to holocaust issues, neither do most Traditonal shoah education sites, which often include other issues such as Anti-Semitism, Tolerance, Genocide, Civil Rights etc.

Percent of Change From 2006 to 2008

ORGANIZATION	RAW CHANGE	PERCENT CHANGE
USHMM	-140,000	-42.68%
NIZKOR	n/a	n/a
J.VIRTUAL LIBR	-107,600	-42.67%
YAD VASHEM	+800	+1.13%
WIESENTHAL	-52500	-40.87%
REMEMBER.org	-42700	-36.17%
FCIT	n/a	n/a
SHOAHEDUCATION.com	+1110	+ 148%

Holocaust Denial Sites are listed below:

ORGANIZATION	RAW CHANGE	PERCENT CHANGE
STORMFRONT.ORG	+81000	+19.05%
JEWWATCH.COM	N/A	n/a
KKK	+12800	+52.67%
NAZI.ORG	0	0%
RESIST.COM(W.A.R.)	--21800	-51%
RADIOISLAM.COM	-45900	-72.4%
NSM88	n/a	n/a

Traditional Holocaust Education Sites Mentioned Less Frequently

Now, among Traditional Holocaust Education sites, although they vary in content and format, if all data is included, the overall % change is 13.35%, with an average change of -2.225 Note however, that shoaheducation.com, while far fewer mentions, has a geometric growth over those years, painting it as an 'outlier' which skews the data based on the least mentioned site. Removing the stats for shoaheducation.com, it is a more depressing figure of an overall change of -161.35% with an average change of -32.27%, which is unfortunately a more realistic picture of how well known holcaust education sites have fared.

Holocaust Denial Sites

Among Anti-Semitic sites (that is their avowed position), the overall decension is -51.68 with an average of -10.33. It should be noted that two major sites in this category showed an upward trend: Stormfront.org, with an active forum, and KKK.com. The others lost ground witht the exception of nazi.org which stayed the same.

Compare:



CONCLUSION

The most equitable comparison, would be to leave out the statistics for the smallest but fastest rising Shoah Education Project (shoaheducation.com) although statistics from both are represented. Doing this we find that most sites which represent holocaust topics have actually decreased in eminence on the net although they are far from disappearing altogether, which may indicate a general decline in interest in Holocaust topics, pro or con overall. It must be noted though, that HOLOCAUST DENIAL sites declined far less. Below is a Student's t comparison of percent change between Denial sites and Traditional sites leaving out the outlier.

P value and statistical significance:
The two-tailed P value equals 0.0587
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not quite statistically significant.

Confidence interval:
The mean of DENIAL SITES minus TRADITIONAL SITES equals 50.8940
95% confidence interval of this difference: From -2.3659 to 104.1539

Intermediate values used in calculations:
t = 2.2036
df = 8
standard error of difference = 23.096

Learn more:

GraphPad's web site includes portions of the manual for GraphPad Prism that can help you learn statistics. First, review the meaning of P values and confidence intervals. Next check whether you chose an appropriate test. Then learn how to interpret results from an unpaired or paired t test. These links include GraphPad's popular analysis checklists.

Review your data:

Group	DENIAL SITES	TRADITIONAL SITES
Mean	18.6240	-32.2700
SD	48.0768	18.8623
SEM	21.5006	8.4355
N	5	5

While the above test is for all intent significant although missing the the mark by a little, a check of a 90% Confidence Interval does indeed show the difference to be STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT

DISCUSSION


What this data really points to has nothing to do with the quality or correctness/veracity of the sites online on either side. What the data does show is that

a. There is a statistically significant difference between Denial Sites and Traditional Sites, where the decline in mention for Traditional sites is greater.

b. There is an overall decline in mention to both kinds of sites.

c. Anti-Semitic sites, overall, are both by percentage and by raw # of mentions on the net faring far better than traditional Holocaust sites.

While one may argue that these are not the figures from ALL the sites by any means on either side, they are the most recognizable: some sites under the key term "Holocaust Education" or "Holocaust" for example may rank even higher on Google's index on the front page of a search, but are not considered 'well known' holocaust sites. For example, History1900 has one of the highest listings under the term "Holocaust" but it is a timeline of the events in the 1900s, and is rather exclusive in the information it deals with, and while it has a high ranking, it is not the same as a Holocaust or Shoah Education site with hundreds of sections set to teach holocaust education. Likewise, some anti-Semitic sites gain large mention because of ongoing daily 24/7 active forums, although they should not be discounted in effectiveness, because forum visitors often turn to link to them on their own sites.

A Word of Warning.

We often get complacent in Shoah Education, thinking that with shoah Education in thousands of classrooms, we must be 'winning the war'. I see weekly new curriculum ideas, new reports of classroom projects, of students collecting paperclips, bottlecaps, 'pretending' to be Jewish for a day etc. etc. and almost every college campus has at least one course on Holocaust education, taught at least every year or two. However, when a child or an adult has a question about the holocaust, they do not go first to a museum or a classroom: they go to the internet. We have far undervalued the amount of Education that goes on in cyberspace, not to mention the problems with quality. People believe too often without discernment what they read on the internet, trusting facts without question, and not even stopping to find out whether their source might be a Denial site or a Traditional site.

In the early 1990s, we happened across many persons from the Patriot Movement, in our stand for free access Homeschooling, and became acquainted with their beliefs. They were at that time still a radical fringe group equated with the Militia, and most traditional Christians steered far clear of them, with concerns about fringe on flags and Maritime law, opposition to drivers' licenses, unregistered churches and schools, and general anti-government stands. The main publication for their ramblings at the time was "THE SPOTLIGHT", which back then contained some very vitrolic hatemongering against the Jews who were held accountable for all the world's ills and who were in their eyes at the center of a worldwide conspiracy, although it must have been far fewer after WWII, since that perspective turned out to be a genocidal one. At the time I thought, well, it is a radical position and while vile, it is not likely to gain much footing in a tolerant and free society with a great deal of respect for Civil rights. (!) Over the next ten years though till its demise (or once demise) it gained the perspective that to win converts, they had to appeal to mainline conservatives whom they knew would go along with many of their tenets (many conservative Christians for example believe in unregistered homeschools and churches but are not Anti-Semitic). They did exactly that and the newspaper started appealing to moral and Christian conservatism with only a few articles broadcasting their more purile beliefs, but it was a foot in the door, that caught a growing and loyal audience, who were then more susceptible to arguments they thought they would never entertain.

The brief data above and in the previous article shows that we are not far from seeing a similar trend online, with more and more 'mainstream' youth and adults willing to go on more 'radical' sites for discussion. The traditional sites, my guess is, have abandoned the fervor of building online Shoah education sites because

1. it is costly and time-consuming and may not always be cost-effective, and
2. because there are no guarantees on the net, and hacking and interference, as
well as competition have grown fierce and ugly, even to the point of physical harm in some cases.

Forsaking a determined and wise effort though at being forefront online in Holocaust education, in favor of Museums, exhibits, talks etc, is to ignore that longterm ongoing education will be occurring more on the net that in the brief encounters in the 'real world'. We cannot let down our guard, and become complacent, falling prey to the ennui of dealing with the net right now. In the past 12 years of online shoaheducation.com, I probably have more of a reason to both retire from the purpose, or give it far less attention. I have questioned whether or not the massive labor involved has produced the desired effect. Further, the whole area and topic has become even dangerous at points leading many to turn to other endeavors. However, who and what is on the net will very possibly determine the coming generation's attitudes when for the first time, there will be hardly any eyewitnesses.

Do you know who has most effectively educated about the shoah on the net without really setting that as their main purpose? Youtube.com and Wikipedia. Youtube carries hundreds if not thousands of clips of historical footage of everything from the Beerhall Putsch to Bonhoeffer on the radio and all points around and in between. There are clips of the burning of the Reichstag and of the Russian Front, of the liberation of Auschwitz and other camps, of deportations, the Warsaw ghetto and more. Wikpedia has beginning articles worthy of a scholar, and really should be leaned on to provide a subsidiary Holocaust 'Encyclopedia' by pulling together an index of related topics. Most critically of all, though, we have before us the ability to cooperate and claim a generation for the truth, or let it fall into the hands of violent persons with an agenda.