[SIGCIS-Members] Ira Chinoy dissertation on UNIVAC election night forecasting

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

Googling around for something else I just stumbled on a 2010 dissertation
called "BATTLE OF THE BRAINS: ELECTION-NIGHT FORECASTING AT THE DAWN OF THE
COMPUTER AGE" by Ira Chinoy from U. of Maryland.

The full text is at
http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/10504/1/Chinoy_umd_0117E_11395.pdf.

I didn't read it yet, but the abstract makes it sound interesting and it's
certainly an exceptionally focused topic for a 588 page dissertation. The
basic argument seems reasonable, and in line with the characterization of
1950s computer made in places such as my own paper "The Chromium Plated
Tabulator" and the work of Yates, Cortada, etc of business computer use in
the 1950s as an evolution of earlier practices combined with a symbolic
gloss of revolutionary technology.

Tom

ABSTACT: This dissertation examines journalists' early encounters with
computers as tools for news reporting, focusing on election-night
forecasting in 1952. Although election night 1952 is frequently mentioned in
histories of computing and journalism as a quirky but seminal episode, it
has received little scholarly attention. This dissertation asks how and why
election night and the nascent field of television news became points of
entry for computers in news reporting.

The dissertation argues that although computers were employed as
pathbreaking "electronic brains" on election night 1952, they were used in
ways consistent with a long tradition of election-night reporting. As
central events in American culture, election nights had long served to
showcase both news reporting and new technology, whether with 19th-century
devices for displaying returns to waiting crowds or with 20th-century
experiments in delivering news by radio.

In 1952, key players - television news broadcasters, computer manufacturers,
and critics - showed varied reactions to employing computers for election
coverage. But this computer use in 1952 did not represent wholesale change.
While live use of the new technology was a risk taken by broadcasters and
computer makers in a quest for attention, the underlying methodology of
forecasting from early returns did not represent a sharp break with
pre-computer approaches. And while computers were touted in advance as key
features of election-night broadcasts, the "electronic brains" did not
replace "human brains" as primary sources of analysis on election night in
1952.

This case study chronicles the circumstances under which a new technology
was employed by a relatively new form of the news media. On election night
1952, the computer was deployed not so much to revolutionize news reporting
as to capture public attention. It functioned in line with existing values
and practices of election-night journalism. In this important instance,
therefore, the new technology's technical features were less a driving force
for adoption than its usefulness as a wonder and as a symbol to enhance the
prestige of its adopters. This suggests that a new technology's capacity to
provide both technical and symbolic social utility can be key to its chances
for adoption by the news media.