The growing academic field of periodical studies is a direct result of advances in digital technology in the last two decades (Latham / Scholes 2006; DiCenzo 2015). Keyword-searchable digital archives and algorithmic mining tools have become accessible to an increasing number of researchers, and have transformed our view of journals from mere containers of discrete bits of information to autonomous objects of analysis. The most important of these tools is network analysis. The periodical’s complex and composite form "embodies the concept of the network on both a material level (in the juxtapositions and interconnections it generates between different texts) and on an institutional level (in the collaboration between authors, editors, illustrators, publishers, and readers, which goes into producing it)" (Fagg et al. 2013). Accordingly, newspapers and journals offer researchers a perspective to engage with the question of how social and intellectual connections are forged, furthered, and diffused within a public sphere. The interest in periodical networks is seen in special issues dedicated to the topic in Victorian Periodicals Review (2011), American Periodicals (2013) and The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies (2014).

The network metaphor is primarily used as a model of two aspects of periodical culture. First, a single periodical forms an intertextual network of individual texts, authors, and titles (Murphy 2014; Segal forthcoming). Second, periodicals are rarely isolated and exist within a larger print culture. Contributors, editors, publishers, and readers form an important, though sometimes barely visible, social and institutional network connecting different periodicals (Colavizza et al. 2014; Cordell 2015). At the same time, this line drawn between a journal’s internal and external networks is extremely permeable and porous, since the contacts between internal and external "nodes" established in previous editions always form the basis for ongoing editorial decisions. Consequently, external and internal factors are only artificially separable over the course of a journal project.

The main problem is in detecting the existence and structure of the networks. In some cases, we can find a network of authors by recognizing recurring names (Haberman 2008; Ehrlicher / Herzgsell 2016). However, during the nineteenth century many articles lacked clear authorship, due to, among other things, a culture of reprinting (Cordell 2015) or the use of pseudonyms (Unsworth / Morton 1981; Mintz 1995). Although this excludes effectively using name-recognition methodology to uncover periodical networks, hints remain within the text. "In some cases," state Smith et al. (2013), "we cannot directly observe network links, or even get a census of network nodes, and yet we can still observe text that provides evidence for social interactions." Gennete’s (1997) notion of transtextuality – "all that sets the text in relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts" – is useful in understanding Smith's remark. Instead of approaching networks through people and working outwards, we can identify and analyze networks through published texts and their similarities in exact phrasing and styles.

The results prove the existence of a journalistic network of writers, information, and readers, among journals published in distant locations and different ideological orientations. They reflect an increasing number of inter-journal writers, announcements, advertisements, as well as on-going discussions. As it seems, publishers, writers, and advertisers were aware of the existence of these transnational connections. The rapid development of a transnational Jewish public sphere in the second half of the 19 th century is revealed in this analysis. These results shed light on the multiple affordances of applying textual reuse and stylometric analysis to a large corpus of Hebrew journals. Those relate to the significance of Hebrew journals in the production and maintenance of a Jewish national imagination; to the characteristics of the emerging Hebrew print culture; and to the general understanding of journalistic networks.

This paper presents the research, its integration of multiple computational tools, and suggests a categorization of textual similarities and reuse: from linguistic conventions of the Hebrew language, such as reuse of biblical and rabbinic phrases, to outright plagiarism of articles.