The-Reality-of-the-Virtual_AYK

The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online The Reality of the
Virtual:
Looking for Jewish
Leadership Online
Ari Y Kelman
UC Davis
Research for this ar7cle was conducted under the auspices of the Avi Chai Founda7on's project on young Jewish leaders directed by Jack Wertheimer. 1 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Introduc7on1
In September, 2009, MASA, a partnership between the Jewish Agency and American communal organizaHons that provides a “gateway to long term Israel programs,” launched a PR campaign on Israeli television and the internet. A central feature of the $800,000 effort was a commercial, shot with a vague MTV aestheHc, that featured mocked‐up missing persons posters of American Jews. The adverHsement’s female narrator urged her Israeli audience to connect their American acquaintances with MASA in order to encourage them to travel to Israel and save the “more than 50% of diaspora youth [who] assimilate and are lost to us.”2 Though intended for an Israeli audience, the adverHsement quickly caught the aXenHon of Jewish bloggers and journalists in the United States, many of whom objected vociferously to the commercial and the implicaHons of its message. Most expressed a sense of outrage at the 1 The author would like to extend his deep graHtude and appreciaHon for the insight and assistance of the following people: Steven M. Cohen, Sarah Bunin Benor, Shaul Kelner, Sylvia Barack Fishman, and Jack Wertheimer, who are some of the finest collaborators, thinkers, colleagues and friends that I’ve had the pleasure to work with. At various points Riv Ellen Prell, Jack Ukeles and J. Shawn Landres provided valuable insight into some of the issues discussed here. Ted Sasson and Charles Kadushin offered vital criHcism and assistance at exactly the right Hmes, and without their help, this would have been a much impoverished project and a significantly less interesHng paper. Robert Swirsky wrote the custom script used to gather the data for this project and he also mapped the networks that appear here. Without Robert, this project could never have happened, and I’m deeply grateful to him for his help, paHence, curiosity and interest in the project. Finally, I want to express my graHtude to the Avi Chai FoundaHon who helped usher an idea into a research project and a research project into this paper. 2 The 35‐second commercial is sHll available online at <hXp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYGdgIxIe4> [accessed December 10, 2009]
2 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online use of the term “lost” and quesHoned an outreach strategy that insulted its target populaHon.3 Some bloggers quesHoned the cost of such an effort, while a handful of print publicaHons, including the Jerusalem Post, published their own criHcal responses online.4 In response to the the broad and loud chorus of blog‐based objecHons, MASA removed the commercial and issued a public apology, explaining the event as a “misunderstanding.”5
The MASA incident highlights three criHcal ways in which the internet is changing the landscape of Jewish life. First, the internet made the objecHons possible by bringing the commercial to American viewers. Were it not for the internet and its ability to facilitate the rapid sharing of informaHon, the commercial likely would have run its course on Israeli television without incident. However, the “viral” nature of media on the internet, and the ability of people to share informaHon quickly, cheaply, and transnaHonally meant that an Israeli cultural product quickly became part of a global Jewish conversaHon. 3 Kung Fu Jew’s Jewschool post of September 3, 2009 is one of the most widely cited and circulated of these. <hXp://jewschool.com/2009/09/03/17696/masa‐tv‐commercial‐intermarried‐jews‐are‐lost/> [accessed December 10, 2009]. Other objecHons came from bloggers like Esther Kustanowitz <hXp://estherkustanowitz.typepad.com/
myurbankvetch2005/2009/09/lost‐not‐the‐tv‐show‐the‐intermarried‐jews.html> [accessed December 10, 2009], and Ed Case, who blogs at the website interfaithfamily.com <hXp://www.interfaithfamily.com/smf/index.php?
arHcle=3373> [accessed December 10, 2009]
4 JJ Goldberg, “‘Lost’ In Plain Sight: An Israeli Plan to Rescue American Jews.” Posted September 6, 2009. <hXp://
blogs.forward.com/jj‐goldberg/113535/> [accessed December 10, 2009]. It should also be noted that there is some anecdotal evidence of conversaHons between American Jews and some leaders at the Jewish Agency which also helped foment the organizaHon’s change of heart, but nevertheless, the conversaHon online helped evidence the widespread concern over the adverHsement and its overtones.
5 The Jewish Agency posted its response on its websites (September 6, 2009) <hXp://www.jewishagency.org/
JewishAgency/English/About/Press+Room/Press+Releases/2009/sep06a.htm> [accessed, December 10, 2009). The full text of the leXer explaining the response appeared in a number of blogs and on a host of online Jewish news sources including ejewishphilanthropy.com (Posted September 8, 2009) <hXp://ejewishphilanthropy.com/
masa‐officially‐pulls‐the‐plug‐on‐lost‐campaign/> [accessed December 10, 2009] and the fundermentalist blog on the JTA.org website (Posted September 8, 2009) <hXp://blogs.jta.org/philanthropy/arHcle/2009/09/08/1007698/
jewish‐agency‐changes‐course‐on‐masa‐ad> [Accessed December 10, 2009].
3 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Second, it highlights the power of the internet as a new forum for debate and conversaHon about contemporary Jewish issues. The vitality of this new forum means that the very ways in which we share and encounter informaHon are changing. PosHng a television commercial to YouTube does not change the content, but it does change the size and scope of the audience while also fostering new ways for people to shape the meaning of that content. The MASA incident clearly illustrated this, as the adverHsement quickly turned into debates about Jewish idenHty and the relaHonship between Israeli and American Jews. The chorus of voices raised in objecHon to the MASA commercial resulted in a short‐term change in the organizaHon’s media strategy, but more importantly, the incident showed that the established, mainstream Jewish organizaHons no longer have sole propriety over either the content of communal Jewish debate, nor do they control the venues in which those debates take place. Third, the MASA incident revealed the diversity of Jewish voices eager to parHcipate in communal discussion. From the lev and the right, the religious and the secular, from established newspapers to single‐authored blogs, the MASA commercial generated responses from almost every imaginable corner of the Jewish world. One could read the variety of responses as indicaHve of the fragmentaHon of the Jewish people. AlternaHvely, one could understand it as a reflecHon of diversity within a single, unifying conversaHon. Either way, it is clear that the internet enabled a great diversity of parHcipants from a variety of Jewish communiHes to join the debate without having to channel their parHcipaHon through established communal organizaHons, news sources, or congregaHons. Episodes like this one are as mythical as they are myriad in the literature about the internet. Both journalists and scholars have argued that the internet will radically reshape the commercial marketplace, alter how we regard knowledge and educaHon, challenge our 4 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online understandings of markeHng, shiv our concepHons of power, and even change our relaHonship to democracy.6 One need only look to the role of TwiXer in the social upheaval in Iran during the summer of 2009 for one small example of how these changes are playing out globally. What these changes mean, however, remains the subject of some debate.
Why Study the Internet?
Of course, the changes iniHated and enabled by the internet are affecHng Jews as they are everyone else. Abundant anecdotal examples aside, we know almost nothing about how the internet is changing the arrangements of power and order in Jewish communiHes worldwide, or how it is informing concepHons of Jewish collecHvity, educaHon, and leadership. What does it mean for Jewish communal organizaHons when individual bloggers can challenge the Jewish Agency over its characterizaHons of diaspora Jews? How are the diversity of voices now accessible changing the shape of Jewish communiHes? What do dynamics like these mean for a global sense of Jewish communal membership? Are we seeing a new cadre of leaders emerge, or new expressions of leadership? How is the internet challenging some of the established structures of Jewish life, and how is it reenforcing others? Where are new loci of power emerging in the Jewish community as it takes shape online? How does what happens online inform what happens offline? As a response to these quesHons, this paper will focus primarily on the internet as a relaHvely independent sector of communal life. Neither purely a reflecHon nor strictly a driver 6 For examples of each see Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (Hyperion, 2008); James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (Anchor Books, 2005); Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Groundswell (Harvard Business Press, 2008); Clay Shirkey, Here Comes Everybody (Penguin, 2009); Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (Yale University Press, 2007). 5 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online of Jewish life, the “virtual sector” is an increasingly important venue for Jews at all stages on the broad spectrum of what we might call “engagement.” In one light, the internet might be most important for those Jews who are least connected offline, as it becomes a first portal for informaHon about holidays, history, or local Jewish life. AlternaHvely, it might address the needs of Jews deeply enmeshed in Jewish life, who are looking for news or services that address their parHcular needs and interests, as well. For some, it might be a portal into Jewish life, while others might use it to voice opinions that might not be acceptable within own Hghtly‐knit communiHes. As the parHcular moHvaHons of individual users indicate, internet use depends on offline realiHes. Studying the Jewish virtual sector, then, can illuminate aspects of Jewish life more broadly and it holds some important lessons about new arHculaHon of community, influence, informaHon and leadership.
Understood as an integral sphere of Jewish life, the internet becomes an illuminaHng case study for the changing dynamics of the American Jewish community. The internet has made informaHon far more accessible, it has enabled new venues for communal debate, discussion and engagement, and it has expanded the chorus of voices in the Jewish communal conversaHon. The organizaHons and insHtuHons of the organized Jewish world, built primarily in the thick of the 20th century, have found themselves working in a world where communicaHon is much more mulHfarious, and in which informaHon (and the curaHon of that informaHon) plays an ever‐increasingly important role. Jewish organizaHons are discovering what record companies, television networks, adverHsers and PR firms are all learning: the old broadcast model does not work as well as it used to. As a result, the ways in which organizaHons imagine and engage their audiences have to change, as well. Just claiming to be the “central address” no longer packs the punch it once did, especially because we can measure 6 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online whether or not a parHcular website’s address actually is central with a given network (Spoiler Alert: JewishfederaHons.org is not the “central address” of the Jewish community. Not by a long shot).
Online, the centrality of a url can be measured, in part, by documenHng its relaHonships to other sites. The more sites with which it is connected, the more central the site. Consider an offline analog. Jewish insHtuHons like synagogues, museums, and federaHons are typically housed in free‐standing buildings, whose relaHonship to one another is not always clear. One can belong to one or more organizaHons and have liXle or no contact with others, even within one’s local Jewish community. The internet is similarly built out of relaHvely free‐standing sites, but by contrast, it is fueled by the relaHonships between sites. We call these relaHonships links. A site with no links will, in all likelihood, not aXract a whole lot of traffic because people navigate the internet by following links between sites. Without links, the internet would be almost impossible to navigate and quite cumbersome to use. Links turn free‐standing websites into a network. Usually, the more links a website has, the more it benefits from those links as the links drive traffic to the site. Links make concrete relaHonships that can be quite murky offline, and they represent some concrete ways in which sites interact and direct visitors. Mapping and measuring those links will provide some important insights into the dynamics of community organizaHon, leadership and influence within the Jewish virtual sector.
7 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online To be sure, much research and popular wisdom have shown that technology is dominated by young people.7 So, one could conclude that the significance of sites like Myjewishliearning and Jewcy ought not to be a surprise, and that their prominence in these measures shows liXle more than the fact that young people remain more adept at using the internet than their older counterparts. This is true, but it remains only part of the overall story. Equally as important is the fact that the internet is not going to recede or disappear; in all likelihood it will conHnue to play a significant role in our lives, our culture and communiHes. Although it currently favors the young, its importance is not an effect of age; the current generaHon of people in their 20s and 30s will not “age out” of using the internet, and the following generaHon will not necessarily supersede the current one in this regard. Therefore, the internet is crucial for examining current communal dynamics that are likely to inform the future, because of the prevalence of young people in shaping it. This paper takes a systemaHc look at the Jewish virtual sector, as comprised primarily by blogs and websites. Approaching the websites as nodes in a network, we will assess the significance of each, and the role it plays in the overall network. Using the tools of social network analysis, we will produce a different set of measurements of communal influence and engagement than more tradiHonal explicaHons could.8 With these measurements as a kind of baseline, we will map the relaHonships between websites, creaHng a detailed depicHon of 7 The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project rouHnely releases data about the gaps (generaHonal, class, race, region and otherwise) in internet use. The most recent data sHll shows a significant lag in people aged 65 and older, when compared to their younger counterparts, although it also shows that 79% of all adults 18 years old and older are online. 8 I’m thinking here of the American Jewish CommiXee’s 2008 Primer on The American Jewish Community, which is, essenHally, a field guide to establishment Jewish organizaHons. Jerome Chanes, A Primer on the American Jewish Community (AJC, 2008) Available online <hXp://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?
c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=843137&ct=1044883>
8 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Jewish communal relaHons within the Jewish virtual sector. First, we will apply this analysis to the 148 most popular Jewish websites. Then we will recalculate and recalibrate our measurements to account for nearly 300 Jewish blogs. Finally, we will turn our aXenHon to two local communiHes, Los Angeles and San Francisco, in an effort to account for differences of scale in the virtual sector. Methodology and Social Network Analysis
Insofar as this paper is concerned first and foremost with relaHonships between blogs and websites across the Jewish virtual sector, it does not focus on the content of parHcular sites, nor will it focus on audience size, beyond some basic consideraHons. It is not an examinaHon of “best pracHces,” nor foes it explore how to opHmize search engine capabiliHes or generate adverHsing revenue. Similarly, it does not focus on facebook, myspace or twiXer, as they represent social networking pla|orms which operate by a whole host of other rules and logics that fall beyond the scope of this paper.9 Instead, this paper examines the dynamics that shape the Jewish virtual sector as a way to highlight the emergence of new loci of influence and leadership within discussions and performances of Jewish communal life.
For the purposes of this project, I define a “Jewish website” or a “Jewish blog” as any site that regularly contains overt Jewish content, targets a Jewish audience, and self‐idenHfies as 9 Facebook, MySpace and TwiXer are all certainly interesHng, and they are part of the overall online landscape of influence, communicaHon and social networking. However, they do not operate online in ways similar to other websites, and while they do play important roles in sharing links and so on, as unique technological pla|orms, they fall outside the purview of this paper, though I welcome new research on those phenomena.
9 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Jewish. More broadly considered, Jewish websites and blogs engage in a larger, evolving conversaHon about Jewish issues. According to this definiHon, websites like Haaretz, Jdate, and Jewlicious all count as Jewish websites, but the wikipedia entry on “Jews” does not. Neither is Jewwatch, an anH‐semiHc site dedicated to tracking Jews and their influence (both real and ficHonal). For the purposes of this study, Shamash, the self‐proclaimed “Jewish search engine” is a Jewish website, but Google, even though it can find the most sites with informaHon about Jews, is not.10
I disHnguish between websites and blogs, so a word about that disHncHon is important here, too. Included in the study of websites are those that either represent or have come to represent either an offline organizaHon or collecHve editorial perspecHve. In some cases, these insHtuHons have walls, buildings and a professional staff. This includes the websites of the Orthodox Union and the AnH‐DefamaHon League, as well as that of J‐Dub Records or the Union for Reform Judaism. These websites serve largely as portals for connecHng an organizaHon with its audience or membership, and they are important sites for distribuHng informaHon or engaging in online debate. News outlets like JTA and Ha’aretz are included here, as well, and although they oven have blogs embedded in their websites, I treat them as elements of the larger website, not as stand‐alone blogs. I also include in this category the handful of group‐
authored blogs like Jewschool, Jewlicious and Jcarrot. Although they may have begun as individual or group‐authored blogs and typically do not pay their writers for content, they maintain a robust and regular presence, which makes them funcHon much like online magazines or newspapers with which they are in conversaHon (and compeHHon). Thus, the operaHonal 10 A note on nomenclature: When referring to websites, I will be excluding the .com or .org suffixes throughout the body of this paper, for the sake of readability. A full list of all websites included in this study, complete with their suffixes, is included in Appendix A and Appendix B.
10 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online definiHon is that a website represents an enHty of some kind, even when that enHty is a loosely organized editorial board.
Blogs, by contrast, are solo‐authored websites that reflect or represent the voice of a single author, and in the study that follows, I treat them as a different category than websites because they represent a different kind of relaHonship between an individual and his or her Jewish community. They are cheap to maintain, because of free blogging pla|orms like blogger or wordpress, and although some blogs sell adverHsing and generate a liXle income, most do not. Typically, blogs have much smaller audiences than websites and most do not reach more than a few people (This does not necessarily mean that they are not influenHal ‐‐ if read by the “right” 5 people, a blog with only 5 readers could be quite powerful). Because of their small readerships, blogs are more interesHng in their aggregate impact on the overall network than they are on account of their individual content. As we will see below, accounHng for blogs within the larger social network of Jewish websites reorients the enHre map of the virtual sector and illuminates a different dimension of how influence is exerted across the enHre Jewish online world. In point of fact, the disHncHons between blogs and websites are parHally illusory, but only partly. Both JTA and the Forward have embedded blogs in their websites, and bloggers use Facebook and TwiXer for both personal and professional purposes. Indeed, one of the remarkable aspects of the virtual sector is the flexibility and interpenetraHon of communicaHon streams, and the fact that anyone can employ a blog, a TwiXer account or a website for any purpose. Yet their differences are important and they inform the measures we use to quanHfy the significance or influence of a parHcular website or blog.
11 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Within the industry that has developed around calculaHng the significance of websites, there is general agreement that popularity (as measured by total number of visitors) and “links in” (links from other websites) are two of the most important measures of a site’s significance. Because of the way the internet works, it is difficult to imagine either a site with high traffic and low links or a site with low traffic and a high number of links. More influenHal sites aXract large numbers of visitors, but perhaps more importantly, they are also connected to other sites. Links both direct traffic and serve as indicators of reliable content, much like references in an academic paper or a news source. According to one ov‐recited saying “links are the currency of the internet.”11
Therefore, we focused on how websites and blogs connect to one another and facilitate exchanges of informaHon and audience. Audience measurement services cannot calculate what percentage of visitors are Jewish, so the difference in traffic between Haaretz (which aXracted over 300,000 unique visitors in January, 2010) and Myjewishlearning (which drew only 81,000 during that same month) indicates general popularity, but not necessarily definiHve popularity among Jewish visitors.12 Insofar as we are examining the internet as a venue for Jewish communal engagement, turning our aXenHon to relaHonships among Jewish websites instead of looking plainly at popularity will produce a richer picture of the dynamics of community that are being acted out online.
11 This aphorism is repeated countless Hmes around the net as a pithy summary of how sites interact. One of the best explanaHons I’ve read recently belongs to Pete Cashmore, the editor and founder of the social networking site Mashable.com. The definiHon is embedded in an arHcle he wrote for CNN.com explaining his objecHons to the New York Times announcement of a fee‐for‐service model for accessing its online content. See Cashmore “Why the NYTimes.com Fee is a Step Back.” Posted January 21, 2010 <hXp://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/21/
cashmore.Hmes.payment/index.html> [accessed February 8, 2010]
12 <www.compete.com> [accessed February 5, 2010]
12 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online In calculaHng links, then, we counted only mutual links, which indicate the strongest possible connecHon between two sites. The presence of a mutual link, in which site A links to site B, and site B links back, indicates a reciprocal relaHonship between two sites in which each thinks of the other as reliable or worthy of linking to. If site A links to site B, but site B does not link back, then this indicates a weaker relaHonship than if that link is reciprocated. Any site can embed a nearly infinite number of links out (links to other sites) with a minimum of effort. However, the presence of large lists of links do not indicate much beyond the industriousness of the creator of the list. Trying to account for the sheer number of “links out” or “links in” would have produced a preponderance of interesHng data, but it would not have shed a whole lot of light on the ways in which the dynamics between Jewish websites help us to understand those of Jewish communal life more broadly considered. We collected data on 148 websites and 257 blogs between May and November of 2009, using a combinaHon of readily‐available online services and and custom‐authored script. In terms of audience, we found the 99 most popular Jewish websites, according to traffic, and the 49 most popular Jewish websites that aXracted audiences between the ages of 21 and 35. We determined both popularity and demographics through an aggregate analysis of exisHng rankings from four well‐known sources: SEOmoz.com, Compete.com, Google pagerank, and Alexa.com. Although each of the four sources provided different assessments of a site’s significance, they all basically agreed on which sites comprised the top 99. To asses the top 49 sites that catered to audiences between the ages of 21 and 35, we examined reports by Compete.com, Alexa.com, and SEOmoz.com, each of which provided a breakdown of audience by age. The calculaHon of age is, at best, approximate, and obviously there is a great deal of crossover between which people visit which sites. 13 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online This baseline measurement of popularity generated the list of 148 websites which comprise the primary data set of the analysis that follows [see Appendix A for the list of 99 sites, and Appendix B for the list of 49]. We followed this with a deeper analysis of each site’s links, extending five pages deep within each site. This provided us with a profile of each site and idenHfied mutual links between each site and the other 147. In this way, we created a kind of “closed network,” because we counted only mutual links among the primary set of 148 sites. Although this kind of assessment goes against much convenHonal wisdom when people talk about the power of the internet (that it can connect disparate communiHes and opinions), we found it necessary to do so in order to focus on the parHcular dynamics among Jewish websites. The map of the Jewish virtual sector produced here depicts a closed community when, in truth, the network is far more porous.
In addiHon to the list of 148 websites, we generated the list of 257 blogs by following the lisHngs included on two major Jewish blog aggregators: Jrants and Jewishblogging. Of the over 800 blogs listed on the aggregators, we included only those that had been updated within three months of our invesHgaHon.13 We also pursued a snowball sampling method, following links from within the blogs themselves to other blogs. Because the majority of blogs have very small readerships, the measurement for inclusion could not be traffic, so we included all of the acHve Jewish blogs we found. Part of the story here is the prevalence of blogs (parHcularly among the Orthodox), so their sheer number is, itself, of significance. Moreover, they are not easily categorized according to topic or viewpoint, and they are not exclusively the domain of either 13 Jewish blogs, like other blogs have a very low survival rate. The vast majority of blogs have a lifespan of less than one month. Because they are free to maintain, they are rarely taken down, and most are simply abandoned by their authors aver a few posts.
14 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online the old or the young. Thus, they represent a powerful and unique forum for expression and potenHal organizing that is only made possible because of the internet. Once we generated these two lists, we began a detailed and systemaHc social network analysis of the relaHonships between these sites, in an effort to beXer understand the relaHonships that emerge, and how they inform our understanding of influence, Jewish leadership and the Jewish virtual sector.
An Overview of the Jewish Virtual Sector
From the outset, two items bear repeaHng. First, our primary data set for this project is not a comprehensive ranking of popular websites from top to boXom. Traffic only maXers as a baseline for inclusion here. It is not the ulHmate measurement of a site’s significance. Second, the internet is dynamic, which means that links are constantly updated, added, deleted and changed. The data presented here provide a snapshot of the Jewish virtual sector during 2009. The analysis that follows is instrucHve but not definiHve, and if we were to analyze this same set of sites in a year or two, the data might reveal an enHrely different set of relaHonships. Thus, the trends and relaHonships observed and discussed here should be understood within the larger framework of the broader, well‐documented changes that are reshaping Jewish communiHes at the outset of the 21st century. Indeed, the relaHvely independent virtual sector is only relaCvely independent, and it is sHll tethered to conversaHons in the public and private sectors, as well. Before we begin our in‐depth examinaHon of the relaHonships between the sites in the Jewish virtual sector, we should sketch out its general contours and provide a basic map. This overview will provide some essenHal informaHon that will guide our deeper discussion about 15 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online the influence of certain websites within the Jewish virtual sector, and what these findings can tell us about insHtuHons, organizaHons, community, and leadership. The 148 sites can be broken down into nine different affinity areas that represent various segments of Jewish life. [see Figure 1].
Breakdown by Affinity Area
11%
6%
11%
9%
8%
6%
18%
11%
Singles
Orthodox
Blogs, Magazines
Service Organizations
18%
Commerce
Museums, Schools
Media
News
Reference
Three important facts emerge from this first level of analysis. [For a list‐based breakdown of these nine interest areas, see Appendix C] First, given the vast number of Jewish service organizaHons, it should be no surprise that they account for a significant proporHon of the most popular Jewish websites. By that measure, one could conclude that the virtual sector is but a reflecHon of the public sector. However, the equally significant presence of reference sites ‐‐ the majority of which do not represent offline organizaHons or insHtuHons ‐‐ affirms the 16 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online significance of informaHon online. The prevalence of reference sites indicates that even at this most basic level of analysis, the Jewish virtual sector reflects a broad desire for informaHon from a variety of sources that compete with establishment organizaHons for the aXenHon of audiences.
The second notable aspect of the affinity area breakdown is the presence of sites that cater to the interests and needs of Orthodox Jews. In fact, the percentage of such sites is even larger than the 11% calculated here because daHng sites like Frumster or Sawyouatsinai are counted as “singles” sites, above even though they cater to more observant Jews. Likewise, the majority of the commerce sites also likely serve a predominantly Orthodox audience. What emerges from this assessment, then, is the growing prominence of the internet in Orthodox life. Far from technophobic, we see here (and we will see again, below), that Orthodox Jews are acHvely involved in the Jewish virtual sector and as such play a disproporHonately large role not only in Jewish expression online, but in the overall shape of the network of Jewish websites. The third finding speaks directly to quesHons of leadership and influence. TradiHonal news outlets and group blogs or online magazines account for equivalent percentages of the total. More importantly than their parallel presence, however, is the fact that the blogs/
magazines Hlt heavily toward a younger demographic. This is not to say that blogs are as popular or powerful as tradiHonal news outlets; generally speaking, the two most popular Jewish websites by far belong to the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz (with Jdate holding steady in third place). However, the prominence and popularity of blogs/magazines among younger readers indicate that younger visitors are likely to be visiHng them instead of or in addiHon to tradiHonal news sources. Thus, these blogs and magazines not only represent an opening up of alternaHve sources of informaHon, but they do so by aXracHng younger audiences.
17 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Moreover, the prevalence of blogs and online magazines that cater to a younger audience suggests that among younger Jews, blogs and online magazines are among the most popular vehicles for mass expression and communicaHon. The blogs/magazines represent a variety of voices and perspecHves. Some focus on humor, others on popular culture, and sHll others on providing alternaHve news or commentary within the Jewish community. Some of the blogs/magazines see themselves as a kind of free‐form op‐ed addendum to tradiHonal news sources either through alternaHve reporHng or through parody and humor. Most offer a liXle of everything. Significantly, over the past few years, they have also played a significant role in breaking and exploring some important news stories including the MASA incident, the Rubashkin’s scandal and revelaHons of sexual misconduct at Brooklyn yeshivot. Clay Shirkey, in his book Here Comes Everybody explains that the low cost of starHng and maintaining a website (as opposed to the relaHvely high start up costs for a newspaper or print magazine), has made it possible for anyone to seek an audience online. 14 Within the Jewish virtual sector, this situaHon has created an environment where a handful of group‐authored blogs have successfully moved into important posiHons within the world of Jewish informaHon sharing, and have become valuable sites for news, culture, and community on their own merit (consider Jewlicious, which began as a blog and now hosts a large annual fesHval of Jewish culture in Southern California). The rise of blogs and magazines with younger editorial boards and younger audiences than tradiHonal news outlets reinforces the prominent ways in which the Jewish virtual sector is changing the structure of Jewish communiHes by altering not only 14 Clay Shirkey, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without OrganizaCons (Penguin, 2009)
18 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online what “counts” as news, but by engaging an audiences that might otherwise not find their way to more tradiHonal news sites. CounHng websites provides some introductory data, but in order to understand them as a network, we must map them in relaHon to one another. To do this, we will need to move from a list to a sociogram, or a graphic representaHon of the network that is capable of accounHng for each site in relaHon to every other site and idenHfying which sites are linked to one another and which are not. Sociograms map networks of relaHonships, with each “ego” or “node” in the network represented by a dot, and each relaHonship, mutual link, or “edge” represented by a line. In our map, each node will represent a website, and each edge represents the mutual links they share.
Using an energy‐repulsion algorithm, we generated a map that highlights two aspects of the Jewish virtual sector. First, the size of a node indicates the number of mutual links it possesses; the larger the node, the more mutual links it has. Second, the locaHon of the node within the sociogram indicates the presence of common links among neighboring sites. We generated this sociogram using the Fruchterman‐Reingold ‘physics model’ algorithm, which operates according to the following principle: Imagine a general force that is trying to move each of the nodes in figure X away from each of the others, as in models of the expanding universe following the Big Bang. But, a secondary force (like a spring) is acHng between nodes that share links in common, which works to counteract the general force pushing them all apart. The dynamic tension between the general force of repulsion among all nodes and the specific force of aXracHon among parHcular nodes eventually serves to create an equilibrium in the network as a whole. 19 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online In order to understand the figures that follow, it is important to remember that specific pairs of linked nodes cannot reach equilibrium on their own within a complex network because of the other forces working upon them. Instead, they only reach equilibrium through a clustering of linked nodes, whose mutually aXracHve forces work in combinaHon to stabilize the network as a whole. Thus, sites that share a lot of common links appear close to one another on the map, even if they may not share a mutual link (note: In order to present the enHre sociogram here, the names of the sites must be reproduced so small as to make them impossible to read. Not to worry, they will be discussed and presented again in greater detail, shortly).
20 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Figure 2: Sociogram of the Jewish Virtual Sector
21 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online A few general observaHons. First, the network is fairly small and very well‐connected. The longest distance between two sites is only 4 links, and the average distance between two sites is 1.93 links. That means that it is possible to traverse the enHre network in only four “clicks,” and that most sites are less than two clicks away from most other sites. By the “six degrees of separaHon” rule of thumb, the Jewish virtual sector is quite densely populated and easily traversed. AddiHonally, this measurement does not include linked adverHsements that one site might purchase on another. So, for example, though Chabad might adverHse on Jewlicious, and thus allow visitors to click through directly from the laXer to the former, this measure does not account for such opHons. This means that if we account for the prevalence of adverHsements for other Jewish websites, the network is likely even more easily traversed than the current measures suggest. Second, the largest node, indicaHng the site with the most links in the network, belongs to Myjewishlearning, a “trans‐denominaHonal” resource for informaHon about Jewish life, sponsored by a number of foundaHons and philanthropies. Three qualiHes of Myjewishlearning are important to the present discussion. First, it is a reference site, meaning that it does not represent a communal organizaHon, nor does it have consHtuents, as such. Second, aXracts a significant audience of Jews between 21 and 35, and it is the second most popular site for Jews in this demographic, behind Jdate. Third, Myjewishlearning only exists online. It does not have a paper‐based distribuHon system or a membership‐based organizaHonal structure, nor does it rely on events or programs. Its young editorial staff and youthful approach to materials, subjects, and presentaHon has made it one of the most well‐linked and heavily trafficked sites in the network.
22 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online The other large nodes represent Shamash, a “Jewish search engine,” the Jewishvirtuallibrary, which is supported by the American‐Israeli CooperaHve Enterprise and claims to be “the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the word,” and the Israelnewsagency, an Israeli online news source. Like Myjewishlearning, none of these have offline components and they all trade in informaHon, in one way or another. AddiHonally, these sites are also clustered closely together in the sociogram, indicaHng that they share a lot of links in common, even if they are not necessarily linked to one another. The locaHon of these four almost equally‐sized and similarly posiHoned nodes within network indicates that the disappearance of any one of these nodes would not impact the overall stability or cohesion of the network all that much, as each of the others plays a similar role in the network as a whole. From the standpoint of overall “health” of the network, measured by the chance that a network could be crippled should a single node disappear, it appears to be relaHvely healthy. Healthier networks are characterized not by the presence of a single, strongly linked node, but by the presence of many nodes, which distribute power throughout the network.15 This network does not have a single, dominant, central node, although it does feature a few that claim significantly more links than the rest. This is a healthy quality in social networks because it shows that the network will not collapse or be significantly handicapped if a single node disappears. Although some sites play more influenHal roles than others, the network, overall, benefits from the more‐or‐less even distribuHon of links throughout it. By this measure, the Jewish virtual sector appears to be rather healthy and capable of responding to shivs within the network.
15 The distribuHon of links around a network as the sign of a healthy network is well‐documented. See Albert‐
Laszlo Barbasi, Linked (Plume, 2003); Mark Buchanan, Nexus (Norton, 2003); Duncan WaXs, Small Worlds (Princeton University Press ,2003).
23 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Healthy as the network appears to be, it is worth noHng the central importance of reference sites in the network. The four sites discussed above play a powerful role in organizing the network. By sharing a large number of links with other sites, these four sites appear as trusted references and they, in turn, reciprocate. More importantly, because links provide visitors with a virtual roadmap for traversing the network, these sites are more likely than many others to turn up when people explore the Jewish virtual sector. In this way, they exert far more influence over the Jewish virtual sector than any communal insHtuHon, any tradiHonal news source, or any representaHon of a religious body or community. Online, informaHon plays a key role in convening community and it indicates that both visitors and other sites are seeking reliable sources of informaHon about Jewish life. Accoun7ng for Links (Not Just Coun7ng Links)
This becomes even more apparent when we measure how certain sites facilitate the movement of visitors through the network. In other words, it is possible for a node in a network to have a lot of links but not play a parHcularly acHve brokering role between other nodes. So, we want to measure not only how many links a node has, but how many relaHonships it enables. In the language of social network analysis, this is called “betweenness centrality,” which describes the “capacity to broker contacts among other actors ‐‐ to extract ‘service charges’ and to isolate actors or prevent contacts.”16 In other words, betweenness is not a gross measurement of the number of links, but it is an aXempt to account for the acHve parHcipaHon of a parHcular node within the overall network. 16 This definiHon of betweenness is provided in the online version of Robert A Hannemanand Mark Riddle’s IntroducCon to Social Network Methods. The specific quote is from this page <hXp://www.faculty.ucr.edu/
~hanneman/neXext/C10_Centrality.html#Freeman> [accessed February 5, 2010]
24 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online This measurement is important because of how people typically traverse the net by “clicking through” one site to the next. If links are the currency of the internet and people “click through” sites to move from one to the next, a site with high betweenness centrality plays a valuable role in facilitaHng movement through the overall network. The results of these calculaHons are presented in Table 1, which presents the top 10 sites with the highest betweenness centrality scores. To keep this in perspecHve, these measurements do not capture actual “click‐throughs” of website visitors, but instead, they calculate the number of possible relaHonships that this node helps to broker. Table 1: Betweenness Centrality
Rank
Betweenness Centrality
Site Name
1
1317.231
Myjewishlearning.com
2
328.1
Shamash.org
3
302.784
Jewishvirtuallibrary.org
4
237.196
Jpost.com
5
231.13
Jewcy.com
6
167.507
Urj.org
7
163.053
IsraelnaHonalnews.com
8
161.52
Israelnewsagency.com
9
152.396
Headcoverings‐by‐devorah.com
10
137.067
Juf.org
The four sites represented by the large nodes in the first sociogram are all represented here, but Myjewishlearning has a betweenness centrality score of approximately four Hmes as large as Shamash. Myjewishlearning is far more acHve in brokering relaHonships and direcHng 25 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online traffic than its closest counterparts. In fact, JPost, Jewcy, and URJ (the website of the Union for Reform Judaism) all outscore IsraelnaHonalnews, indicaHng that while it claims a significant number of links, it actually plays a rather marginal role in the overall network.
Although Jpost may have more traffic than Myjewishlearning, the laXer occupies a more central role in the Jewish virtual sector than the former and can be said to exert more influence over the network. Correlated with its younger audience, Myjewishlearning emerges as a powerful and influenHal website both within the Jewish virtual sector, and within the more general audience of Jewish internet users because it is so well‐connected to other sites. As such, Myjewishlearning occupies a prominent and powerful locaHon from which it can influence the circulaHon of both informaHon and visitors across and through the Jewish virtual sector. It is just one example of an endeavor that is leveraging the internet to supersede the ability of more tradiHonal outlets to influence visitors and shape Jewish experiences online.
Perhaps even more importantly for the larger discussion of leadership and communal structures online, Jewcy has a higher degree of betweenness centrality than every other established news source except Jpost. Even with a much smaller audience than its more‐
established compeHtors, Jewcy is nearly as successful as Jpost at brokering relaHonships within the Jewish virtual sector and thus exerts even greater influence within the network. Jewcy’s high betweenness centrality means that it is both strongly embedded within the network and that it exerts influence over the experience of visitors to it. Taken together, Myjewishlearning and Jewcy, which have editorial staffs largely between the ages of 21 and 40, and which cater to an audience from that same demographic, are leveraging the internet to become powerful players in the Jewish virtual sector. The influence they exert may or may not translate to sheer numbers of unique visitors, but it certainly 26 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online evidences that they are among the most significant websites in the online Jewish world, outpacing tradiHonal news sources and establishment Jewish organizaHons. The correspondence of youth and technology here indicate some of the ways in which the internet is enabling new loci of influence and leadership to emerge.
Again, betweenness centrality does not calculate how visitors actually move from site to site, but rather it measures the relaHve value of each node within the network in terms of their ability to let visitors move from site to site. Taking stock of these ten sites reveals the clear significance of informaHon‐brokering sites, which account for seven of the ten sites on the list. Clearly, Jewish people and websites share a desire for reliable informaHon and they rely on these reference sites to provide corroboraHng data or longer explanaHons of aspects of Jewish history, culture, and poliHcs. These sites play a key role in the ways in which Jewish internet users from all backgrounds engage with informaHon about Jewish life and learn how to be Jewish. As important as informaHon is in the shape of Jewish communiHes online, Jewish communal organizaHons appear significantly less important and are represented here by only two websites, represenHng the URJ and the JUF (Jewish United Fund/Jewish FederaHon of Metropolitan Chicago). The relaHve weak showing of communal organizaHons illustrates a great disparity between their ability to convene community online and off. Compared to news and reference sources, establishment communal organizaHons hold very weak posiHons within the Jewish virtual sector and thus lack the investment in online networks from which to either influence or lead. CalculaHng betweenness centrality reveals the Jewish virtual sector’s emphasis on informaHon and highlights the emergence of new loci of leadership and influence. 27 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Yet, measuring betweenness only tells us how many short paths a parHcular node sits on. It does not tell us if those paths connect otherwise important sites. If a site connects other sites that are unpopular, then we might say that even though it has high betweenness centrality, it is less significant than a site that connects other sites with greater “presHge.” When we account not only for betweenness but for the presHge of the sites to which each node connects (according to what social network analysis calls the Bonacich centrality measure), we find slight adjustments in the boXom four of the top ten. JTA appears and Headcoverings‐by‐devorah disappears, but liXle else changes.
Table 2: Bonacich Centrality Measure
Rank
Bonacich Centrality Measure
Site Name
1
88
Myjewishlearning.com
2
61
Shamash.org
3
59
Jewishvirtuallibrary.org
4
50
Jpost.com
5
49
Jewcy.com
6
49
Israelnewsagency.com
7
45
Forward.com
8
43
Urj.org
9
39
Juf.org
10
38
Jta.org
Viewed through the lens of betweenness, we find a few sites with younger audiences and editorial staffs asserHng a significant amount of influence by virtue of their ability to 28 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online leverage their posiHon within the Jewish virtual sector and compete with established news outlets for influence not only over the structure of Jewish conversaHons, but over its content, as well. The ability of a site like Myjewishlearning or Jewcy to leverage its posiHon in the network and amplify certain voices within the broader Jewish community makes them both significant and influenHal, and it evidences the ways in which the Jewish virtual sector reveals new paXerns in community organizing and leadership. ParHcularly when we take into account the very real possibility that many visitors to these two sites are younger and thus rather unlikely to belong to synagogues or JCCs, these sites are posiHoned to exert significant influence not only within the network online, but among their visitors, as well, visitors who live largely outside the Jewish insHtuHonal world.17 Having mapped the Jewish virtual sector, we can see an image of American Jewish leadership begin to come into focus. It is an image that includes outlets and individuals who have not, historically, been close to centers of Jewish communal power. It is an image that emphasizes the importance of informaHon in the ongoing conversaHons about Jewish communiHes and Jewish life. It is an image that features younger Jews who not only direct the flow of informaHon but generate it, as well. Finally, it is an image that runs counter to the more convenHonal image of “The Jewish Community” as represented primarily by establishment organizaHons.18 What emerges is a very densely connected network of websites, the most 17 The literature on Jews ages 20‐40 is now fairly substanHal. For some examples, see Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y Kelman, Uncoupled: How our Singles are Reshaping Jewish Engagement. (ACBP, 2008). See also Pearl Beck, Ron Miller and Jack Ukeles. Young Jewish Adults in the United States Today (AJC, 2006); Leonard Saxe. Tourists, Travelers, and CiCzens: Jewish Engagement of Young Adults in Four Centers of North American Jewish Life. (Steinhardt Social Research InsHtute. 2009).
18 Jerome Chanes, A Primer on the American Jewish Community (AJC, 2008) Available online <hXp://www.ajc.org/
site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=843137&ct=1044883>
29 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online valuable of which, from the perspecHve of social network analysis, are not establishment communal organizaHons but rather sites that trade primarily in informaHon.
Given the prominence of informaHon over communal service organizaHons online, it is clear that the internet is not simply a reflecHon of Jewish life offline. Instead, it is a relaHvely independent sphere of Jewish communal engagement and involvement. The preceding analysis revealed the growth and development of a network of Jewish websites in which younger voices compete and oven outperform tradiHonal organizaHons, where newer voices occupy central posiHons within the overall landscape of Jewish websites, and where influence manifests in the ability to contribute to and shape the direcHon of Jewish communal conversaHon. Neighborhood Networks
Having laid out this overview of the network and its emerging loci of influence, we will now turn our aXenHon to the ways in which the network is organized. Therefore, it is instrucHve here to return to a brief discussion of the algorithms employed to produce the sociogram in order to reveal further insights into the nodes, the links between them, and what they tell us about the Jewish virtual sector. Because the Fruchterman‐Reingold algorithm uses the existence of common links to create equilibrium among all nodes in the sociogram, it necessarily produces certain groupings or “clusters” of websites, according to the presence of common links. In order to emphasize the appearance of clustering, we employed another 30 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online algorithm which produced an even more densely‐connected map featuring two, not terribly disHnct clusters [See Figure 3].19
Figure 3: Network Map With Clustering
This remapping reveals two clusters: one, in the upper lev‐hand corner, that caters largely to the Orthodox, and another, spanning the middle, that does not. This clustering reenforces the 19 To produce this sociogram, we used the LinLog energy model.
31 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online earlier finding about the significance of Orthodox Jews in the Jewish virtual sector, while also reflecHng offline social disHncHons between Orthodox and non‐Orthodox Jews. However, the proximity of the two clusters suggests that these differences are more easily transgressed online than off.
The other cluster, comprised of the rest of the sites (with a few far‐flung excepHons) amass to comprise a large, densely connected cluster with JWA (The Jewish Womens’ Archive) si•ng just to the right of the main cluster and Jewishagency just to the lev. Slight openings emerge between the large mass in the middle and the two clusters immediately below it, but they are so closely located to the main cluster that it hardly qualifies as independent.20
The failure of the clustering algorithm produce significant disHncHons reenforces the earlier observaHon that the Jewish virtual sector is relaHvely small and well‐connected. So, in order to observe any clustering at all, we must return to Figure 2 and take a closer look at the emergence of a few subtle but nevertheless significant groupings. Strictly speaking, these are not clusters, so instead, I will refer to them as “neighborhood networks,” a term that suggests some similariHes between the sites but is not held to the same mathemaHcal standard as clustering. Figure 4 presents the overall map again, highlighHng clusters that will be discussed below. Reading the map for neighborhood networks, we find five relaHvely disHnct clusters, highlighHng the emergence of common links and thus, common interests. 20 This paXern of clustering reproduced when run through two different algorithms.
32 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Figure 4: Neighborhood Networks within the Jewish Online Network
33 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online At the center of the Figure are the four large nodes represenHng the Reference SecHon. The large, relaHvely dispersed cluster across the top of the sociogram consHtutes the Orthodox Archipelago. On the far right sit two clusters that comprise the Start‐Up Sector, both of which primarily include sites by and for Jews between the ages of 21 and 40. The upper cluster includes three sites that are acHvely engaged in a Zionist conversaHon, while the lower cluster features sites for which Israel features among a broader array of other issues. Below those clusters lies the Establishment Bloc, which includes most of the sites belonging to communal service organizaHons. Not surprisingly, the center of the sociogram features the largest and therefore best connected node, discussed earlier [Figure 5].
Figure 5: The Reference Sec7on
34 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online It is worth noHng that within the Reference SecHon, Shamash sits slightly further toward the top of the sociogram, which suggests that it shares slightly more links with those sites that fall within the broadly dispersed neighborhood network of sites that cater primarily to Orthodox communiHes. [Figure 6] The relaHve posiHon of Shamash with respect to the Orthodox Archipelago suggests that it shares more links with sites that serve a more religiously observant audience and who might be less inclined to use one of the more popular search engines. Less religiously observant users might not even know that Shamash exists.
Figure 6: The Orthodox Archipelago
35 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online These sites, which include news sources alongside daHng sites, reference sites, and commercial portals, all evidence strong expressions of Jewish religious life. Thus, the sites tend to link with one another, as visitors who would be interested in Vosizneias, a news service dedicated to meeHng “the demanding needs of the Orthodox Jewish community,” might also be interested in Oukosher, or any of the number of Orthodox daHng sites. The Orthodox Archipelago is not, however, exclusively Orthodox, and it includes a balance of sites of interest to Jews of all ages. In fact, a handful of sites in this region, including FrumsaHre and Bangitout, which are both informed by an insider’s perspecHve on the religious world, are wriXen by and cater to younger Jews. In terms of the overall shape and relaHons of the Jewish virtual sector, this large neighborhood network indicates that the internet has become an important aspect of contemporary Orthodox Jewish life (an observaHon that will become even more apparent when we look at blogs, below). In terms of influence, the sheer number of sites that cater to the needs and interests of Orthodox Jews is worth our aXenHon. Although there is not a single site that dominates the Orthodox Archipelago, collecHvely, they represent a significant presence within the Jewish online network, and they draw on pracHcally every one of the nine affinity areas. The diversity of these sites reveals a fairly robust array of choices for Orthodox Jews as they engage in a shared conversaHon about contemporary Jewish life. As will become clearer, below, the internet has become an important site for the expression and exploraHon of Jewish life for Orthodox Jews. Because Orthodox Jews tend to be deeply embedded in Jewish social networks offline, the preponderance of online sources that cater to Orthodox Jews makes sense; people most interested in Jewish issues are more likely to seek out Jewish websites. The Orthodox Archipelago is made of sites ‐‐ like Headcoverings‐by‐
36 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online devorah ‐‐ that cater almost exclusively to Orthodox Jews, whose needs are parHcular to their Jewish interests, pracHces, and communiHes. The relaHvely small size of most of these nodes is not of much consequence, as none seem to seek a posiHon of broad communal prominence as much as they do to serve the parHcular needs of their communal niche. Thus, the Orthodox Archipelago illustrates the prevalence of Orthodox Jews who have expanded their search horizons to include the internet, which has become a powerful alternaHve to offline sources and a new venue for sharing and discussing communal concerns. The same is not quite true of the Establishment Bloc, which sits almost directly opposite the sociogram from the Orthodox Archipelago. [Figure 7]
Figure 7: The Establishment Bloc
37 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online The Establishment Bloc includes leading cultural and educaHonal organizaHons like the 92nd Street Y and Hillel, as well as the sites of important communal organizaHons like the American Jewish CommiXee (AJC) and the website of the United Jewish CommuniHes (UJC, now JewishfederaHons). Unlike the diversity of nodes that comprise the Orthodox Archipelago, the Establishment Bloc is consHtuted primarily by educaHonal and communal service organizaHons. The generally small size of the nodes in the Establishment Bloc indicate that these sites do not share many mutual links with other sites in the network. However, the emergence of this neighborhood network indicates that the sites represented here likely do share similar links with one another, which means that the establishment organizaHons are, in some measure, talking to one another but they are failing to establish sustaining mutual relaHonships with other sites. In other words, the emergence of this neighborhood network reveals high bonding social capital (as in the case of Nextbook (now Tabletmag), which appears close to the 92Y because they oven co‐sponsor programs), but weak bridging social capital as they are generally not successful in establishing mutual links with sites across the larger network.21 Again, since this study emphasizes the presence of mutual links, a site might provide lists of links as a reference, but unless those links are reciprocated, they do not consHtute strong relaHonships and thus would not enter into our calculaHons. The Establishment Bloc reveals the failure of most communal organizaHons to establish the mutual links necessary for them to connect with 21 Robert Putnam. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Putnam, 2001)
38 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online other websites and either contribute to or influence Jewish conversaHons and relaHonships in this arena.
By way of comparison, if MyJewishLearning were to be deleted, it would impact but not cripple the overall network, but if UJC (now JewishFederaHons.org) were to be deleted, it would have almost no impact at all because it does not occupy a central place within the network. As the internet conHnues to shape the structure and content of Jewish life, it enables the emergence of new loci of leadership and challenges establishment organizaHons to develop new strategies for being more influenHal online.
By contrast, the final neighborhood network, the Start‐up Sector, consists of two different clusters, which are both comprised of sites that largely cater to and are oven authored by Jews between the ages of 21 and 40. Neither of the sites in these two sub‐neighborhoods has proven parHcualrly adept at leveraging its role in the network, either, although they do tend to be beXer connected than their establishment counterparts. The primary disHncHon between the two sub‐neighborhoods corresponds to the centrality of Israel in each organizaHon. The first sub‐neighborhood includes sites that foreground a connecHon to Israel, while the second sub‐neighborhood addresses Israel alongside a host of other contemporary Jewish issues. The first sub‐neighborhood consists of three nodes represenHng very different enHHes, though each represents an viewpoint in a shared conversaHon about Israel and Zionism. 39 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Figure 8: The Start‐up Sector (Part 1)
These three organizaHons ‐‐ one long‐standing insHtuHon and two others established within the past 10 years ‐‐ represent three different approaches to contemporary conversaHons about Zionism. Jewlicious began as a blog and now hosts annual Jewish cultural fesHvals, Presentense is an incubator for Jewish social entrepreneurs and the Jewishagency oversees MASA and coordinates thousands of Israel trips for young Americans annually. Of these three, two are run by younger Jews but all three sites appeal to an audience aged 40 and younger. AddiHonally, all three of these organizaHons arHculate a strong Zionist sensibility and a connecHon to Israel, and thus end up sharing many similar links which correspond to the emergence of this neighborhood network.
By contrast, the other sub‐neighborhood in the Start‐up Sector includes many non‐
establishment organizaHons for whom Israel and Zionism are not primary concerns. [Figure 9]
40 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Figure 9: The Start‐up Sector (Part 2)
The sites included here generally cater to younger audiences and represent a variety of efforts to reinvigorate Jewish culture, primarily for American Jews. Both BirthrighHsrael and Roicommunity serve Jews roughly between the ages of 18‐35. Likewise, Jdubrecords and Heebmagazine both cater to a similar audiences of young Jews who are seeking alternaHve routes of connecHon to Jewish life, culture, and community. BirthrighHsrael, much like Jewishagency, centers around trips to Israel, but unlike its counterpart, Birthrighisrael does not necessarily advocate for aliya (emmigraHon to Israel), nor does it raise money for Israeli causes. In this way, BirthrighHsrael is more dedicated to deepening connecHons between American Jews and Israel, not with helping American Jews 41 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online become Israelis, which differenHates it from Jewishagency and parHally explains its appearance in this neighborhood network. As is the case with their neighboring cluster, what accounts for the parHcular grouping is less a maXer of explicit poliHcs and more a maXer of shared sensibility and audience, as evidenced by the links they share in common. In terms of leadership, the emergence of this neighborhood network within the larger virtual sector suggests that these sites are playing a role in culHvaHng a disHnctly youthful Jewish presence with an emphasis on American Jews. And, like their counterparts in the Establishment Bloc, they are beXer at culHvaHng a conversaHon among themselves than they are at leveraging mutual links across the network. Nevertheless, the presence of this neighborhood illustrates that younger Jewish writers and organizers are involved in larger Jewish conversaHons, even as their bonding social capital holds them together.
Before concluding this discussion of the neighborhood networks that comprise the Jewish virtual sector, it is important to highlight the presence of a grouping that does not properly qualify as a cluster or a neighborhood, but is significant nevertheless, within this larger analysis. Falling just to the right of the reference sites and running from top‐to‐boXom within the map is a line of news and magazine sites, including nodes represenHng the Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, the Forward, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and Jewcy. Insofar as news sites are consistently among the most highly trafficked sites in the Jewish virtual sector, they represent influenHal sources of informaHon. The presence of Jewcy among these other news sources, all of which have significant offline followings, reinforces the contenHon that the internet has opened up opportuniHes for engagement in public discourse in ways that significantly weaken the posiHons of tradiHonal media outlets. Certainly, Jewcy’s relaHvely large number of links, high betweenness score, and presence in the stretch of nodes belonging to tradiHonal news 42 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online sources indicates that the news arena is making room for voices and audiences that would have likely been excluded from the conversaHon prior to the advent of the internet. The internet is changing the structure and content of Jewish communal life in some significant ways, and examining Jewish websites as a network helps to highlight precisely how. First, we find a more level playing field between new and old, establishment and non‐
establishment organizaHons. The MASA example is but a small one of how an establishment organizaHon changed its communicaHons strategy in response to a vocal chorus of criHcism. But the fact that some of the most influenHal sites in the network do not represent offline organizaHons and the most powerful offline organizaHons tend to take less influenHal posiHons within the Jewish virtual sector indicate that the Jewish virtual sector is revealing a new array of dynamics of Jewish life. The prominence of Myjewishlearning, the emergence of Jewcy, the sheer size of the Orthodox Archipelago and the relaHve marginality of the UJC (now JewishfederaHons) illustrate that any conversaHon about “the Jewish community” must begin to account for these new virtual realiHes.
Second, we have observed the prominence of informaHon and the influence wielded by sites that broker informaHon. Whether news or reference sources, we found that sites that focus on informaHon are among the best connected and most valuable to the overall network. Insofar as the web excels at making informaHon widely and readily accessible, it should come as no surprise that the Jewish virtual sector follows this paXern. However, what is striking here is that these sites both provide informaHon to their visitors and shape the ways in which people navigate between and among Jewish websites. In this way, the reference sites inform the experience of their visitors by both providing informaHon and by direcHng the ways in which 43 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online people traverse the network. InformaHon, then, is more than mere facts; it literally shapes how people engage in Jewish life online and off.
Third, the sociogram reveals that the majority of establishment organizaHons exert only a modest force upon the overall network. Significant neither in terms of centrality or betweenness, the majority of these nodes, represenHng the majority of establishment organizaHons, comprise a rather marginal presence online. Though well‐funded and quite powerful in the public sector, these organizaHons are failing to meet most Jews where they virtually are and show only modest success at establishing relaHonships with other websites. In this way, they are neither acHvely contribuHng to nor directly shaping the online dimension of Jewish life. As a venue for invesHgaHng the exerHon of leadership in Jewish communal maXers, the network of Jewish websites reveals some emerging dynamics in the structure of American Jewry. InformaHon plays a crucial role in the network, and sites that are emerging as facilitators of informaHon are beXer posiHoned to lead and influence the network. The leading sites in this conversaHon do not come from establishment organizaHons, and the Orthodox represent a significant minority of Jewish websites in general. As a representaHon of the American Jewish community, the online network captures a very different image in which there is no central address, and within which leadership and influence are more diffuse, derive from a greater diversity of sources and, ulHmately, take very different forms than they have in the past.
44 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Accoun7ng for Blogs
Expanding the Jewish virtual sector to include blogs, the picture becomes both clearer and murkier. The network described above accounts for 148 of the most popular Jewish websites. AccounHng for some 279 addiHonal blogs will reveal some more significant trends with respect to quesHons of community, innovaHon and influence online. Blogging technology has made entering the Jewish communal conversaHon easy and nearly free; Jewcy, Jewschool, and Jewlicious all began as blogs authored by one person or small groups of people, and each has since grown into a significant source of informaHon for younger Jews. Moreover, Blogging pla|orms like Wordpress or Blogger provide all of the hosHng, search‐engine placement, and widgets that one could need in order to create a fairly robust and comprehensive web‐presence without having to learn one line of programming code. Indeed, blogs are so easy to start and so many blogs are created that something like 95% of all blogs are essenHally abandoned.22 Most blogs come stocked with a ready‐made funcHon called a “blogroll,” where you can easily post links (again, with no programming skills required) to other blogs. Blogger protocol also holds that if blog “A” links to blog “B,” then blog “B” ought to return the favor and link back. This changes the nature the network of blogs because they add so many mutually linked sites into the formula without necessarily increasing the number of visitors in significant ways. Nevertheless, as an oven unfiltered, varied and popular vehicle for personal expression, blogs represent the voices of individuals who are moHvated enough to put their own thoughts online for anyone to read. SHll more importantly, they are not just independent journals, but linked to 22 Douglas Quenqua. “Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest” New York Times June 5, 2009. <hXp://www.nyHmes.com/
2009/06/07/fashion/07blogs.html?_r=1> [accessed September 4, 2009]
45 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online other blogs, they become a loosely affiliated cacophony of voices. Moreover, because of the “comments” feature and the protocol that bloggers respond to comments lev for them, blogs are more than virtual soapboxes (although they are that, too), but they are oven opportuniHes for connecHon and conversaHon within a larger social network.
Indeed, what is so interesHng about blogs and why they are included here is not that they aXract very large audiences. Rather, in terms of social network analysis, blogs are useful because they rely so heavily on mutual links, on comments, and on the contribuHons of individuals, not organizaHons. For this reason, blogs represent a crucial aspect of the Jewish online network not because they exemplify leadership in any tradiHonal sense nor because any one blog has the ear of the “right” readers, but because they represent a network of individuals. Traffic, again, is less important than the presence and value of links between sites because those links represent relaHonships and those relaHonships comprise and traverse a broad and varied populaHon of Jews. In other words, for this paper, blogs are more interesHng in aggregate than individually.
Although it would be impossible to categorize most blogs because of their varied content, what becomes clear aver surveying nearly 800 Jewish blogs (some defunct, some acHve), is that many many writers either idenHfy as Orthodox Jews or indicate that they were raised in Orthodox families. Some idenHfy themselves as having lev that community, while others regularly post lengthy exegeses about torah porHons or poliHcs, the lives of single people looking for partners or the daily lives of young mothers. Given the sheer dominance of Orthodox bloggers over non‐orthodox bloggers in this arena, it appears that for Orthodox Jews, blogging has become both a popular past Hme and a powerful vehicle for expressing dissent or 46 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online differenHaHon within that community, and their presence shadows the large dispersed network of websites that cater to those same communiHes.
There are any number of reasons for the preponderance of Orthodox blogs. One might be that a non‐Orthodox Jewish blogger might not idenHfy her blog as “Jewish” and post about any number of issues, only some of which might be easily idenHfied as Jewish. IdenHfying one’s blog as Jewish, indeed, orients it and its readership toward conversaHons that deal, primarily, with Jewish issues. So, Orthodox bloggers, given their relaHvely deep investment in Jewish issues might be more prepared than their non‐Orthodox counterparts, to engage primarily in those conversaHons. In other words, this project might idenHfy more Orthodox bloggers because more Orthodox bloggers idenHfy themselves and their blogs as Jewish. Another reason might be that blogs provide an outlet for sharing stories and informaHon outside the grasp of tradiHonal communal authority. For those quesHoning their relaHonship to Orthodoxy or, the web might provide a safer space for doing so than within their synagogues, families, or schools. Similarly, those who have lev the Orthodox world may use blogs as a way to remain in contact with friends and family, but from a distance. Finally, within the orthodox world, blogs might provide venues for discussing issues of concern that would be difficult to raise within Orthodox communiHes. 23
Nevertheless, the sheer number of Orthodox blogs is worth noHng and accounHng for them all dramaHcally shivs the overall map of the Jewish online network. Figure 10 presents the overall network, mapped out according to the same algorithm used to produce the previous sociogram, so as to emphasize the pull of common links. In order to highlight a few important 23 These are speculaHons as to the preponderance of Orthodox bloggers and addiHonal research into the writers and their blogs would be necessary to properly account for this phenomenon. 47 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online dynamics, we have omiXed the names of the sites represented here.24 Blogs are represented in light green and the websites appear in purple. Figure 10: Blogs and Websites
24 To include the names of all of the websites and blogs would have made the map enHrely unreadable.
48 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Overall, accounHng for blogs increases to 6 the greatest number of links between nodes (it had been 4, when calculated for websites), and it increases the average distance between nodes to 2.622 links (it had been 1.93). Thus, the presence of 279 addiHonal websites expands the bounds of the Jewish virtual sector, but only slightly, maintaining its earlier characterizaHon as a fairly well‐connected, easily traversed network.
The sociogram, even without the names of the sites, shows clearly that despite the pronounced number of Jewish blogs and the sizable links accrued by a handful of blogs, the map divides fairly neatly in half with the majority of websites on one side and blogs on the other. Most blogs, while plenHful and certainly capable of generaHng lots of links, do not generally garner the reciprocal aXenHon of Jewish websites, which limits their ability to exert influence over the network as a whole. Therefore, what makes blogs interesHng in this context is not their individual readerships as much as it is their aggregate relaHonships, and this is made evident by how they reconfigure the Jewish virtual sector as a whole. In order to highlight precisely how they do this, we will take a closer look at the core of the sociogram to highlight some interesHng shivs in the balance of power within the network. Figure 11 is a close‐up view of center of Figure 10 that captures the contact zone between blogs and websites and features only a handful of site names (for legibility’s sake). 49 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Figure 11: Core of Blogs ‐ Websites Sociogram
We find some of the usual suspects, including MyJewishLearning and Jewishvirtuallibrary (both located in the upper right‐hand quadrant of this close‐up). But we also find the websites 50 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online FrumsaHre, Frumster, Aish, IsraelnaHonalnews, and Jewcy, each of whom relocate to the center of the sociogram because of the links they share with both websites and blogs. The majority of these are sites with younger audiences and, with the excepHon of Aish, and IsraelnaHonalnews, a younger editorial voice, as well. The blogs that emerge in this encounter represent a variety of viewpoints, but significantly, the majority represented here are wriXen by Orthodox Jews, which might parHally explain why and how they emerge as strongly as they do in this reconfiguraHon of the Jewish virtual sector. AccounHng for blogs reveals a significant shiv in the sociogram. Orthodox bloggers and sites that cater to younger audiences emerge as both the most central to the network and as the most highly‐connected sites. Nextbook (now Tabletmag), basically did not change sizes once we account for blogs although it moved closer to the center of the network because of the similariHes of the links that it shares with those of other blogs and websites. Likewise, Jewcy expanded and relocated, dwarfing IsraelnaHonalnews and emerging as a central source of connecHon within this expanded Jewish virtual sector. Meanwhile, nodes represenHng few other sites, like FrumsaHre, expand dramaHcally and emerge as parHcularly influenHal in the overall network.
The shivs evidenced here ‐‐ toward the young and the Orthodox ‐‐ indicate new loci of power in Jewish life online. An outlet like Jewcy or Jewlicious (accidentally appearing in green here) might be more prepared to share links with an Orthodox blog than Haaretz or the UJC (now JewishfederaHons) would be. This difference in approach to sharing and building links between websites and blogs boosts the prominence of those more willing to share links, while those unwilling to do so diminish their own influence over the Jewish virtual sector as a whole.
51 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online CalculaHng for betweenness centrality affirms this trend. Table 3 lists the ten blogs and websites with the highest betweenness centrality.
Table 3: Betweenness Centrality for Blogs and Websites 25
Rank
Betweenness Centrality Site Name
1
117
Myjewishlearning.com
2
112
Cj‐hereHc.blogspot.com
3
101
FrumsaHre.net
4
100
Jpost.com
5
91
Jewcy.com
6
89
Forward.com
7
88
Jewishvirtuallibrary.org
8
85
Jewishjournal.com
9
77
agmk.blogspot.com
10
76
Haaretz.com
AccounHng for blogs considerably alters the Jewish virtual landscape as it favors those who are willing to share links broadly. Myjewishlearning and Jewishvirtuallibrary retain their strong posiHons within the network, as do Jewcy, Jpost and Haaretz. Yet, we also see the emergence of two single‐authored blogs and one website, FrumsaHre, that is, essenHally a blog, as well. Thus, we see three blogs emerge among the most significant nodes in the network and the virtual dominance of informaHon‐sharing sites in the network as a whole. In terms of 25 CalculaHng for Bonacich Power reproduced this list almost exactly. The only change was that in the new calculaHon, Haaretz drops off and is replaced by JTA. Otherwise, the rankings remain exactly the same.
52 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online brokering links, sites that trade in informaHon play a crucial role in the experience of Jewish internet users who are drawn to the network of Jewish websites. Perhaps the most notable development in this recalculaHon is the extraordinary prominence of FrumsaHre, the website of one Heshy Fried, which apparently receives no funding beyond what it makes in adverHsing (which, according to Mr. Fried, is not much). In terms of betweenness, Fried is more important than every other website save Jewishjournal, and including Jpost, Jewcy and Haaretz, and he brokers far more relaHonships than the websites of any of the establishment Jewish organizaHons. Fried owes his success to his mixture of Jewish insider knowledge and his ironic, humorous a•tude which allows him to aXract aXenHon (and links) from the Orthodox world while simultaneously transcending it. Fried’s influence derives from his locaHon on the margins of the Orthodox world and his ability and desire to engage in conversaHons about current Jewish issues that intenHonally transgress the offline boundaries that structure Jewish communiHes.
In an interview with Fried, who is both young and Orthodox, he explained that his efforts with FrumsaHre are intended to engage the very large Orthodox audience in conversaHons and debates over contemporary Jewish life. “Blogger is sHll a dirty word in some Orthodox communiHes,” he said, adding that sites like his and like Failedmessiah are aXempts to foster dialogue and transparency. Fried aXributed his success to two things. First, he talks about things that Orthodox people are not “supposed” to talk about. He talks openly about sex, about daHng, and about interfaith relaHonships. Second, he aXributes his success to his regular inclusion of opposing viewpoints on his blog. “And I mean really opposing. I push people’s buXons.” He explained, “When you go to Myjewishlearning, people are expecHng to find [opposing views]. When you go to Aish, you’re not going to find it.” This strategy enables him 53 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online to host a dialogue between the religious, the non‐religious, and the ultra‐Orthodox in ways that are rare in the offline world.26 Further, he explained that he is not interested in the “Manischewitz Judaism” that he sees Jewcy and Heebmagazine peddling. “There’s only so many Hmes you can talk about the hole in the sheet,” he says. Fried’s betweenness centrality score indicate that he pracHces what he preaches, and it evidences both his prominence within the overall network and his ability to create and sustain mutual links with bloggers and websites. Indeed, much of his cache derives from his connecHons to other bloggers; recall that FrumsaHre did not appear terribly central within the
Orthodox Archipelago.
If leadership can be measured at least parHally on one’s ability to exert influence within one’s communal sphere, then the Jewish virtual sector is clearly being led by a chorus of younger voices from both the Orthodox and non‐Orthodox worlds who are leading from outside the established bases of communal power. For the ways in which they are building relaHonships between sites, occupying posiHons in every neighborhood network, and for their ability to bridge the gap between blogs and websites that comprise the Jewish virtual sector, younger voices are leading their older, more established counterparts by virtually every measure. They are making acHve inroads into every sector of Jewish life online, they are more adept at establishing mutual links between blogs and websites, and they are more devly leveraging the potenHal for community organizing online. The Jewish virtual sector, as a relaHvely independent arena of Jewish communal engagement, is clearly taking shape around a 26 Interview with Heshy Fried. February 10, 2009. 54 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online younger cadre of leaders who are both contribuHng to and reconfiguring Jewish communal conversaHons.
Two Local Case Studies
The preceding analysis of the Jewish virtual sector is instrucHve for what it reveals about the significance of informaHon‐sharing and relaHonship‐building as qualiHes of influenHal websites and blogs. AddiHonally, it demonstrates the ways in which the Jewish virtual sector has enabled the emergence of new loci of influence from well beyond the Jewish public sector. Examining the Jewish virtual sector at this scale assumes that websites like Jpost, Myjewishlearning, Jewcy, and FrumsaHre all parHcipate in and shape a global exchange of informaHon that is by, for, and largely concerning Jews. Therefore, these media play important roles in both creaHng and maintaining a sense of parHcipaHon in a common community by creaHng shared, albeit virtual experiences as well as a kind of virtual commons for Jewish debate, discourse and conversaHon. In this way, the preceding assessment of the Jewish virtual sector primarily focuses on a large and oven abstract noHon of Jewish collecHvity, oven called “peoplehood.”
Yet, Jewish life is always lived locally. Regardless of mobility and reseXlement paXerns, people can only live in one place at a Hme, and while the above analysis of the Jewish virtual sector reveals some important dynamics in terms of leadership and influence on the level of Jewish peoplehood, we cannot neglect the ways in which people build and live Jewish lives locally. Internet use reflects these two scales, as well. People search for answers to quesHons or buy books from Amazon, but they also use it to find restaurants, local services, movie Hmes, synagogues, schools and so on. So, in order to beXer understand the role of the internet in the 55 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online actual Jewish communiHes in which people live, we will turn to two case studies: the Jewish communiHes of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. These two communiHes exhibit a few important qualiHes that make them well‐suited for analysis within this larger conversaHon about influence, innovaHon and leadership. San Francisco is one of the largest Jewish communiHes in the United States, and it has one of the highest rates of inter‐faith families and some of the lowest rates of synagogue membership in the country. Moreover, because of the presence of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area has the reptuaHon of being an innovaHve, risk‐taking community that is only loosely bound by tradiHon. Los Angeles, as the second largest Jewish community in the United States, provides another rich site for analysis. Sarah Benor’s essay in this volume provides a deep qualitaHve portrait of its organizaHons and relaHonships, and this analysis offers a different perspecHve on that community in order to understand the relaHonship between online and offline organizing, influence, and leadership. Comparing offline and online efforts will provide an important addiHonal perspecHve on Benor’s ethnographic analysis.
To examine our two local communiHes, we gathered lists of local websites and applied the same algorithms and formulae as we did to the data in the earlier part of the paper. The sociogram of the San Francisco Bay Area appears in figure 12.
56 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Figure 12: The San Francisco Bay Area
57 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Unlike the fairly well‐distributed sociogram of the Jewish virtual sector depicted in Figure 2, the Bay Area’s map resembles the spokes of a wheel radiaHng out from a central hub that is more or less paXerned on the geographic layout of the community. Nodes represenHng organizaHons in the East Bay largely sit to the right of the map, and organizaHons based in San Francisco and the Peninsula sit to the lev. The large node in the upper lev belongs to BayJews, a kind of bulleHn board that promotes itself as “your portal to Bay Area Jewish Life.” The size of its node indicates that it has many of mutual links, although its locaHon shows that it shares many more common links with East Bay sites than with those focused on San Francisco or the Peninsula. In other words, BayJews has high degree centrality (lots of links), but significantly lower betweenness centrality, as it plays a less significant role in brokering relaHonships between sites across the network.
At the center of the sociogram we find two, overlapping nodes: One represenHng the San Francisco Jewish Community FoundaHon (SFJCF) and the other, Jewishsf (now Jweekly) represenHng the “J,” the Jewish newspaper of Northern California. The node represenHng SFJCF dwarfs that of Jewishsf, indicaHng a departure from the earlier paXern that emphasized informaHon‐brokering sites in the network. This paXern reappears in the sociogram of Los Angeles and suggests that the relaHonship between Jewish communiHes and informaHon depends on the scale of the community in quesHon. Although sites that present informaHon about holidays or the history prove influenHal in a general sense, they play a more marginal role in the local funcHoning of a parHcular community. The dominance of SFJCF in the network indicates another significant difference between global and local mappings, as well. In this context, it appears that the SFJCF wields a powerful place online, as the site with the greatest number of links, the highest degree centrality and the 58 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online highest betweenness centrality. Yet, in such a highly centralized network, the network itself is actually weakened because it is too reliant on this single node to broker relaHonships. Indeed, were we to remove this site from the sociogram, the network would be deeply compromised, and the coordinaHon of informaHon within the network would become far more difficult. Without the brokering role of SFJCF, links between the organizaHons of the East Bay, San Francisco and the Peninsula would become quite strained. Though this speaks to the centrality of the SFJCF website, it also indicates the overall weakness of the network as a whole. Healthier, more balanced networks are typically more diffuse, featuring a number of well‐
connected sites which do not rely on a single hub to sustain the enHre network. The sociogram of the San Francisco Bay Area therefore reveals a rather old‐fashioned distribuHon of local power and leadership, one that is highly centralized among an otherwise weakly connected populaHon. This raises significant quesHons about the nature and style of leadership and influence exerted in this context. The SFJCF is poised to lead and lead strongly, but there is liXle evidence that it is successful here in building coaliHons among consHtuents or relaHonships among communiHes, as illustrated by the relaHve paucity of mutual links between synagogues, JCCs, museums and other local agencies. It is possible to read this sociogram as a funcHon of the Bay Area’s demographic profile, which features a large but fairly disconnected Jewish populaHon.27 However, the sociogram does not map individuals, but the websites of organizaHons who are, by definiHon, commiXed to building Jewish life. If the most commiXed organizaHons are represented here, and they appear as relaHvely weakly linked, then the actual offline populaHon of Jews might be even 27 Bruce Phillips. 2004 Jewish Community Study. (Jewish Community FederaHon of San Francisco, 2004)
59 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online more weakly connected to one another. In this way, the centrality of the SFJCF is not an indicaHon of overall communal health, but rather, perhaps, just the opposite.
Los Angeles, by comparison, looks quite different. [Figure 13]
Figure 13: Los Angeles
60 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online The online network of Jewish Los Angeles appears to be more evenly distributed and not dominated by a single node. Though, like San Francisco, the map is roughly radial, unlike its neighbor to the north, Los Angeles is not dominated by a single node. Rather, the center is occupied by a number of nodes, none of which can claim a majority of sites.
Before focusing on the center, though, we will turn to some clusters, which, owing to the size of the overall map, emerge with some clarity. Across the upper right‐hand corner are a string of nodes represenHng organizaHons that cater primarily, but not exclusively to Los Angeles’ younger Persian Jewish community: Nessah, 30yearsaver, and Ledorvador. [Figure 12]
Figure 12: Cluster of Sites Catering to Persian Jews
It makes sense that the nodes represenHng organizaHons that cater to young Persian Jews would all appear in a cluster, owing to the greater likelihood of their common interests and the presence of other links in common. In addiHon, it is worth noHng the presence of Jconnectla nearby, which is due, in part to a number of co‐sponsored events during the spring of 2009 and the increased likelihood of common Hes.
61 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online The same dynamics of co‐sponsorship common interests informed the emergence of a small cluster of nodes to the lower lev of the center, which represent organizaHons that feature, as well, in Benor’s paper, highlighted in Figure 13. Figure 13: Non‐Establishment Los Angeles
These clustered organizaHons share similar visions of their roles within the social and generaHonal landscape of Los Angeles, and they represent some of the most acHve and interesHng organizing efforts by and for younger Jews in the area. The largest node of these four belongs to the Progressive Jewish Alliance, which, while not the oldest, is clearly the most successful of these organizaHons at building relaHonships, as evidenced by the presence of mutual links, between itself and other Los Angeles‐based organizaHons. The presence of the 110 year‐old Workman’s Circle (Circlesocal) in this group can be explained both by its generally progressive poliHcal commitments, which ally it with PJA, and also by its relaHonship to the shHbl minyan, an independent minyan that meets at the Workman’s Circle building. ShHbl’s 62 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online node lies lies further toward the margin of the sociogram, close to that of Ikar, another “spiritual community” that aXracts some of the same demographic as PJA and Reboot.
Turning to the center of the sociogram, we find a diverse collecHon of sites, none of which predominate either in terms of either centrality or links.
Figure 14: Los Angeles Central Sociogram
A quick look at the center of the sociogram reveals a few larger nodes belonging to one locally‐
based philanthropy (righteouspersons), Uclahillel, and JewishfoundaHonla, the city’s central Jewish philanthropic organizaHon. Also present is Jewishjournal, which plays a central role in the larger network of blogs and websites, but plays a much smaller role, here, suggesHng that much of its local influence is exerted through its weekly published newspaper, and that the newspaper focuses is online efforts at parHcipaHng in a much larger Jewish conversaHon.
63 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online In order to reveal differences among the roles these sites play, we can apply the same measurements to this set of nodes as we did earlier [See Table 4]. Table 4: Betweenness Centrality in Los Angeles
Rank
Betweenness Centrality
Site Name
1
1015.25
jconnectla.com
2
806.234
30yearsaver.org
3
714.231
righteouspersons.org
4
712.231
laguardians.org
5
696.677
jdubrecords.org
6
686.779
jewlicious.com
7
668.992
jewishfoundaHonla.org
8
471.978
jewishla.org
9
469.024
16hazon.org
10
456.301
jcpsocal.org
CalculaHng for betweenness centrality reveals the centrality of jconnectla and 30yearsaver, who, despite their marginal presence in the sociogram, occupy important roles in brokering relaHonships in the network. We also find Jewishla, the website of the Jewish FederaHon of Greater Los Angeles, and Jewlicious, which emerged as an influenHal site in our earlier discussion and also evidences a strong connecHon to Southern California. Jconnectla, a relaHvely new organizaHon that caters mainly to Jews between 21 and 35 years old, echoes our earlier findings that sites represenHng non‐establishment organizaHons have been much more successful at leveraging their posiHon online than establishment organizaHons. Indeed, on its 64 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online website, Jconnectla expresses exactly this sensibility to community building. As the self‐
described “premier Jewish experience organizaHon for young professionals in Los Angeles,” the organizaHon also emphasizes its independence, boasHng that it is “an independent, grass‐roots organizaHon, not affiliated with any movement or parent organizaHons.”28 The absence of affiliaHon or “parent organizaHons” seems to empower Jconnectla to establish relaHonships across social differences, much like we observed earlier with respect to FrumsaHre and other, similar sites.
However, if we look at Bonacich Centrality, we find a slightly different arrangement of sites.
Figure 5: Bonacich Centrality
Rank
Bonacich Centrality
Site Name
1
19
righteouspersons.org
2
14
pjalliance.org
3
14
uclahillel.org
4
11
jconnectla.org
5
11
30yearsaver.org
6
10
birthrighHsrael.com
7
10
jdubrecords.org
8
8
jewishjusHce.org
9
8
jewlicious.com
10
8
yiddishkaytla.org
28 Site
65 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online When we calculate which sites are connected to others with high presHge, Righteouspersons emerges as the most significant and influenHal site in Jewish Los Angeles. As the website of a powerful foundaHon, it makes a certain amount of sense that Righteouspersons not only has high betweenness, but that it is connected to other sites with high presHge. Though hardly a start‐up, righteouspersons supports a few of the organizaHons represented in this sociogram, including Jdubrecords and Reboot. More importantly for the quesHon of influence and leadership, this recalculaHon finds both Jewishla and JewishfoundaHonla ‐‐ the nodes represenHng the city’s most established communal organizaHons ‐‐ missing.
What appears is a lisHng of centrally influenHal sites that consists almost exclusively of sites that represent organizaHons that are either run by or cater to Jews between the ages of 21 and 35. This speaks volumes about the ways in which the internet is changing the definiHons, dimensions and arHculaHons of influence in the larger Jewish world on the local level. The Los Angeles sociogram reveals a diffuse and stable network that is being led by a handful of organizaHons that are led by and cater to younger Jews. CalculaHng for centrality reveals the powerful role of non‐establishment organizaHons in creaHng a well‐connected and stable network that manages to cross social boundaries that oven divide ethnic and religious communiHes from one another. In comparison to San Francisco, where the sociogram was dominated by a single node represenHng an establishment organizaHon, Los Angeles reveals the vital power of non‐establishment organizaHons to build healthier, more diverse Jewish communiHes both online and off.
Taking a closer look at these two local community studies both reaffirms and refines what we observed in the study of the Jewish virtual sector more generally. Most significantly, 66 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online we find that online, older models of leadership, such as that revealed by the San Francisco Bay Area sociogram, are not effecHvely fostering healthy online networks. And as the analysis of Los Angeles revealed, these new models of influence, leadership, and community building are being driven in large measure by organizaHons that are led by or cater to younger Jews. As illustrated by the difference between Myjewishlearning and UJC, or by the differnce between Righteouspersons and Jewishla, this reenforces our earlier finding that non‐establishment organizaHons are more devly able to mobilize mutual links on the internet than their establishment counterparts.
Looking locally, we also find that news sources, like Jewishjournal and Jewishsf, play less significant roles than they do at a larger scale. This may be due to the fact that many people sHll subscribe to the paper versions of their local Jewish newspapers and thus render the newspaper’s online presence somewhat redundant. AlternaHvely, this discrepancy may reveal that people are looking for different things locally than they are naHonally. In fact, what we might be observing here are the ways in which concepHons and pracHces of Jewish life differ quite dramaHcally when accounHng for scale. Moreover, these differences point to the ways in which Jewish life online is connected to Jewish life offline, and vice versa. Conclusion
These differences notwithstanding, disHncHons between offline and online experience, between “virtual” and “real” community, poliHcs, leadership, and influence is becoming increasingly less and less clear. Even as “social networking” becomes entrenched in the vocabulary and pracHce of communal organizaHons, the internet is not replacing buildings, 67 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online gatherings, or face‐to‐face interacHons. This paper is a first aXempt to assess the role of the internet in Jewish life by paying parHcular aXenHon to the ways in which Jewish websites and blogs capture the changing landscape of communal Jewish life, enable new organizaHons and new dynamics of communicaHon to emerge, and chart the emergence of new loci of influence. Yet, websites, blogs and sociograms only maXer if they help us understand shiving landscape of contemporary Jewish life. This essay argues that they do. The blogs and newspapers that ulHmately forced MASA to rethink its public relaHons strategy exerted influence over a large, establishment organizaHon. Because of its strategy of invesHng in mutual links, Myjewishlearning exerts influence over the Jewish virtual sector, and once we account for blogs, it appears that FrumsaHre does the same. In Los Angeles, Jconnectla works on a similar principle and, as a result youthful organizaHons dominate the virtual sector. Each of these cases represents one way in which websites that are authored by or cater to a younger audience are pu•ng themselves into influenHal posiHons within the online network that represents the Jewish community.
Part of what makes Myjewishlearning, Jewcy, Jewlicious, FrumsaHre and Jconnectla so influenHal in this analysis is their respecHve abiliHes to culHvate mutual links that cross social disHncHons and in this way, build relaHonships that circumvent some of the older poliHcal disHncHons (though someHmes creaHng others). Working largely outside the establishment Jewish organizaHons (though someHmes funded by them), the websites of these organizaHons (and Mr. Fried) prove far more capable at creaHng and sustaining mutual links than their establishment counterparts. This dynamic was brought into sharp relief by the comparison of the San Francisco and Los Angeles sociograms. San Francisco, dominated by the SFJCF, presented a strongly 68 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online centralized but weakly connected network in which non‐establishment organizaHons played a marginal role. Los Angeles, by contrast revealed a well‐connected and diffuse network in which sites represenHng non‐establishment organizaHons emerged as the most significant and influenHal presences in the network.
In this way, what we observe the creaHon of new spaces for expressions Jewish communal life. But more importantly, we can understand that the internet is modeling a different kind of communal structure, one that is decentralized, mulH‐dimensional, diverse, and in which mutual relaHonships bespeak not only one’s ability to lead, but a different sensibility toward what consHtutes community. Blogs are but a manifestaHon of this larger tendency, and how their introducHon reshapes the Jewish virtual sector is crucial here not only because they readjust the overall structure of the Jewish virtual sector, but because they also emphasize non‐
establishment sites. These uncoordinated relaHonships make for a more healthy, more decentralized network, and the uncoordinaHon is part of what lends the network its overall dynamism. This is a crucial factor in the emergence of new leadership within it.
Whereas the “Jewish community” used to be shorthand for the organizaHons that claimed to represent the concerns and needs of Jews, the map of the Jewish internet landscape clearly captures a much more variegated and diverse community, sustained across social divisions. The internet has given both younger and more marginal voices a pla|orm for speaking, broadcasHng, organizing, and creaHng their own communiHes while sHll parHcipaHng in larger communal conversaHons. The emergence of online technologies has opened up the possibiliHes for new forms and formulaHons of leadership, and these voices are spurring the Jewish virtual sector to vie for prominence alongside its public and private counterparts. The 69 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online leaders are those who have most successfully leveraged this new technology and who, more importantly, acHvate their social networks both online and off. 70 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online APPENDIX A:
Top 99 Jewish Websites by Traffic (in alphabe7cal order)
adl.org
holocaust‐history.org
jnf.org
oukosher.org
ahuva.com
holocaustresearchproject.org
jpost.com
remember.org
aipac.org
huc.edu
jrants.com
seraphicpress.com
aish.com
huji.ac.il
jsingles.com
shamash.org
ajc.org
iranjewish.com
jta.org
shemayisrael.co.il
ajudaica.com
israelnaHonalnews.com
j|.org
shlager.net
ajws.org
israelnewsagency.com
jtsa.edu
shmais.com
akhlah.com
jbooks.com
judaicawebstore.com
templeinsHtute.org
anshe.org
jccmanhaXan.org
judaism.com
thejc.com
artscroll.com
jccsf.org
juf.org
thejewishmuseum.org
askmoses.com
jcpa.org
jwa.org
thejewishweek.com
babaganewz.com
jewfaq.org
k12.il
torah.org
beingjewish.org
Jewishagency.org
kashrut.com
torahmedia.com
chabad.org
jewishaz.com
kkl.org.il
tzadik.com
cjh.org
Jewishblogging.com
kosher.com
ujc.org
cjnews.com
Jewishencyclopedia.com
kosherdelight.com
urj.org
crownheights.info
jewishfamily.com
luach.org
uscj.org
debka.com
jewishgen.org
maven.co.il
ushmm.org
feldheim.com
jewishjournal.com
mechon‐mamre.org
virtualjerusalem.com
Forward.com
jewishmag.com
my‐hebrew‐name.com
vosizneias.com
haaretz.com
jewishpress.com
nmajh.org
wiesenthal.org
hareshima.com
jewishrecipes.org
ohr.edu
yadvashem.org
hebcal.com
Jewishsovware.com
oorah.org
ynetnews.com
hebrewbooks.org
jewishvirtuallibrary.org
ort.org
hebrewsongs.com
jewishworldreview.com
ou.org
71 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online APPENDIX B
Top 49 Jewish Websites with significant audiences between ages 21‐35 by Traffic (in alphabe7cal order)
92y.org
jewishclub.com
aHme.org
jewishfirendfinder.com
bangitout.com
jewlicious.com
bbyo.org
jewssip.com
birthrighHsrael.com
jewssip.com
brandeis.edu
jewtube.com
calmkallahs.com
jlove.com
chossonandkallah.com
jpeoplemeet.com
frumchat.com
jvoices.com
frumsaHre.net
mostlymusic.com
frumster.com
myjewishlearning.com
g‐dcast.com
ncsy.org
geshercity.org
nextbook.org
headcoverings‐by‐devorah.com
nvy.org
hebrewcollege.edu
presentense.org
heebmagazine.com
roicommunity.org
hillel.org
sawyouatsinai.com
israel‐music.com
shabot6000
israelfree.com
theknish.com
isreallycool.com
theyeshivaworld.com
jcarrot.org
tznius.com
jdate.com
usy.org
jdubrecords.org
wejew.com
jewcy.com
yu.edu
jewishcafe.com
72 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Appendix C: Sector Breakdown of Websites
News
jpost.com
haaretz.com
jewishworldreview.com
ynetnews.com
israelnaHonalnews.com
debka.com
jta.org
jewishjournal.com
Forward.com
vosizneias.com
Singles
jdate.com
jpeoplemeet.com
frumster.com
jewishfriendfinder.com
jewishcafe.com
sawyouatsinai.com
jsingles.com
jewishclub.com
jlove.com
Blogs, Magazines
theyeshivaworld.com
jewcy.com
bangitout.com
Jewlicious.com
nextbook.org
heebmagazine.com
seraphicpress.com
Jewishblogging.com
frumsaHre.net
jewschool.com
jewishmag.com
jewssip.com
thejewishweek.com
jbooks.com
jewishaz.com
jrants.com
israelnewsagency.com
jcarrot.org
jewishpress.com
jvoices.com
thejc.com
theknish.com
cjnews.com
babaganewz.com
73 The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for Jewish Leadership Online Appendix C: Sector Breakdown of Websites
Orthodox
aish.com
chabad.org
ou.org
torah.org
crownheights.info
oukosher.org
akhlah.com
ohr.edu
shmais.com
shemayisrael.co.il
oorah.org
torahmedia.com
anshe.org
frumchat.com
aHme.org
calmkallahs.com
Service Organiza7ons
adl.org
jewishgen.org
urj.org
ujc.org
uscj.org
hillel.org
ort.org
birthrighHsrael.com
jnf.org
juf.org
Jewishagency.org
ajws.org
ajc.org
israelfree.com
j|.org
aipac.org
bbyo.org
nvy.org
usy.org
wiesenthal.org
ncsy.org
jcpa.org
kkl.org.il
iranjewish.com
geshercity.org
roicommunity.org
presentense.org
74 Museums, Schools
ushmm.org
brandeis.edu
yu.edu
92Y.org
yadvashem.org
thejewishmuseum.org
jtsa.edu
jccmanhaXan.org
huc.edu
jccsf.org
cjh.org
nmajh.org
huji.ac.il
hebrewcollege.edu