09/09/2025
We’re proud to share that TRIP researchers have two new publications in Perspectives on Politics!
International Relations Scholars, the Media, and the Dilemma of Consensus (Sept. 9) examines how journalists use IR scholarship in their reporting. Drawing on a sample of more than 1,000 foreign policy journalists, we find:
📌 Journalists frequently seek out IR experts and scholarship, especially for background information.
📌 They value social science expertise, ranking international affairs, public policy, and economics as most useful, relative to experts in other disciplines.
📌 Yet, they often create “false balance” by underrepresenting expert consensus, giving disproportionate weight to dissenting voices.
🔗 Read here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592725000763
Gender and Political Expression among International Relations Scholars and the Public (June 27) explores how gender shapes political expression not only in the general public but also within the academy. We find:
📌 A persistent gender gap in political expression. Female IR scholars are more likely than their male peers to say they don’t know the answer to survey questions.
📌 Knowledge helps explain this gap, but it is not the full story. Female scholars are less likely than other women to say “don’t know,” suggesting that expertise makes a difference.
📌 Confidence plays a key role. Women, whether in the public or in academia, are less likely to choose extreme responses to questions with numerical responses and report lower confidence in their answers than their male counterparts.
🔗Read here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592725000507
American Political Science Association
