Telegraph Network Growth and Voter Turnout in America 1840-1852

Featuring digitized data on the expansion of the electric telegraph network in America from 1840 to 1852, used to study its impact on national elections and news coverage. It was created by Tianyi Wang for research analyzing how telegraph access influenced voter turnout and newspaper content.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between telegraph network expansion and changes in voter turnout in national elections.
• Conduct text analysis on historical newspaper content to measure changes in coverage of Congress, the presidency, and sectional divisions.
• Study the dissemination of national news from Washington to local areas via newspapers facilitated by telegraph access.
• Apply a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the causal impact of telegraph access on political participation.

Strengths

• Data covers a specific 12-year historical period from 1840 to 1852.
• Focuses on a novel research question linking information technology, news media, and political participation.
• Associated with a published academic paper providing methodological context.

Limitations

• The specific data structure, column names, and row count are unknown.
• Data is historical and may have gaps or inconsistencies inherent to 19th-century records.
• Scope is limited to America during a specific pre-Civil War era.

Provenance

Source

Tianyi Wang, ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Newly digitized data, methodology described in the associated research paper.

Time Range

1840–1852

Freshness

The dataset record was last updated on 2026-02-23.

Geography

America (United States)