Up at Night

My New Digital Project December 6, 2010

As I mentioned in my last post, I am looking to do a digital history project that tests the argument of Sarah Igo’s 2007 book, The Averaged American:  Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public.   In her book, Igo argues that Americans’ engagements with social scientific findings represented a a “broad shift in consciousness.”   Those who studied communities, surveyors, and pollsters all helped to define who was considered part of the nation – the typical, average American.  In other words, the modern survey helped create a mass public and transformed American culture.   While many challenged the conclusions of pollsters and surveys, the language was still becoming ingrained with Americans.  According to Igo, “the best evidence that the public was being remade by scientific surveys can be found in the sometimes, reluctant, sometimes eager, embrace of their tools and vocabulary by a broad array of citizens” (p. 285).

What am I testing?  Throughout the book, Igo asserts that there were general scientific terms associated with the three surveys she examines.   The Kinsey reports helped people understand what was “normal” sexuality, the Middletown studies provided insight into what was a “typical” American community, and pollsters like Gallup and Roper shed light on what the “average” American was thinking.  Currently, I am in the process of text mining popular magazines such as TIME, Ebony, Life, and Jet in order to see if the frequency of these terms correlate with particular events.  I will run the charts against these events:

1929:  First Middletown study published

1936:  Gallup and Roper both gain national recognition after each pollster accurately predicts Franklin Roosevelt’s election win

1937:  Second Middletown study published

1948:  First Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, is published

1953:  Second Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, is published

Below are a few sample visualizations can help understand what I intend to produce:

Chart URL: Above is a chart that shows how TIME magazine used the word “average.”  Note:  TIME’s first issue was published in early 1936, so the first set of data might be ignored.

Chart URL: Above is Billboard magazine’s use of the word “average.”

Chart URL:  An extended version of this study might include particular collective phrases like “the people.”  Click on “Chart URL” to see the full chart.

In addition to the book’s blanket argument, I would also like to test some of her sub-arguments.  Igo argues that after the first Kinsey Report was published, its findings “gained much of their authority from a discourse that trafficked in ‘facts’ and ‘reality.’  This was a potent vocabulary, and academic and popular commentators alike adopted it readily” (p. 244).  These two terms I would like to also analyze in popular magazines to see if these terms increased in frequency during the years right after the first Kinsey Report was published.