August 24, 2004 == MEDIA ADVISORY
The most popular website on the Calvin College server now also tops Google.
Calvin communication arts and sciences professor Randy Bytwerk began the
German Propaganda Archive (GPA) in 1996 on a whim.
"I had some translations of material I had done for my students," recalls
Bytwerk, "and thought it might be worth the trouble to put them on the web."
Initially the site got a few dozen visitors a day.
Now, eight years later, it gets some 5,000 hits a day during the school year
and over 2,500 per day during the summer.
It also is linked to by over 1,500 other sites around the globe - which is
where Google comes in.
One of the ways Google ranks sites is based on how many other sites link to a
page. The popularity of Bytwerk's site meant that for over a year it would
show up first for a search on ""Nazi propaganda."
But the increasing popularity of the site now has pushed Bytwerk's GPA to
number one on Google for a search on "Nazi." In fact, Bytwerk's site now has
supplanted the official homepage of the American Nazi Party as the first site
Google displays.
The gregarious Bytwerk derives some satisfaction in this.
"It's nice to push the Nazis from the number-one spot. I'm optimistic I'll
stay ahead of them," he says with a smile. "My site provides more accurate
information than people would get from the American Nazi Party."
Bytwerk's archive consists of English translations of propaganda material from
Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic., including such things as
speeches and writings by Nazi leaders, visual materials, war propaganda and
material for propagandists.
He says his goal for the site is to make available the actual material that
persuaded Germans to accept two quite different dictatorships.
"Nearly all the material in the GPA," he notes, "was previously available only
in German and even then was difficult to see."
Bytwerk has been interested in Nazi propaganda since 1970 and developed an
interest in East German propaganda around 1980.
He has published a variety of books and articles on the subject and just
finished a book comparing Nazi and East German propaganda. That book, from
Michigan State University Press, is called "Bending Spines: The Propagandas of
Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. "
Contact Bytwerk at 616-526-6286 or bytw at calvin.edu (replace the at with @)
See http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa
Received on Tue Aug 24 09:52:34 2004
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