Media Reporting in International Affairs
News reports of political violence from around the world are being compiled into large conflict-event datasets that are used by governments, international organizations, think tanks, and academics in their efforts to understand conflict around the globe. While these datasets present various opportunities to examine the micro-dynamics of conflict, there are many reasons to suspect that the data may be skewed in ways that limit their value or, worse, lead their users to erroneous conclusions. Specifically, the news media is both constrained in their ability to report on violent events and may actively choose not to report others. In this project, we compare various news-report based datasets to high quality administrative records of wartime violence and other forms of social unrest maintained by government security forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, and South Africa to identify specific sources of systematic missingness in media reports of conflict. After identifying a variety of specific biases relating to violence intensity, weaponry employed, target, perpetrator, and deadly and non-deadly violence, we then establish their substantive significance in a large replication exercise, showing that media-based data fail to uncover the results reported in articles published across leading academic journals in economics and political science.
(Reject & Resubmit at the Journal of Political Economy)
Principal Researcher(s): Andrew Shaver, Michael Weintraub, Joe Felter
Co-Author(s): Kately Arriaga, Anne Blackburn, Kyle Cruz-Anderson, Bryn Farrington, Caterina Hyneman, Alexandra Leal Silva, Talia Lorch, Jack McLean, Mateo Quintero, and Marie Tobia
Shadow Topics
This project intends to study how U.S. media reports on international events and affairs, with a specific focus on variation in attention that various international affairs topics receive; what the implications of differing levels of attention are; and what might be done to bring greater awareness to topics that involve significant human cost but have received minimal news media attention.
Principal Researcher(s): Andrew Shaver, Jiahuan He
Co-Author(s): Cesat Alejandre, Mairead Allen, Leo Alwahab, Joshua Angelo, Mia Bartschi, Janina Cera, Rishab Chatty, Marwa Doost, Lauren Garibay, Daniel Grasso, Jasmine Her, Evan Holter, Anthony Kemp, Audrey Lozano, Colby Mathe, Phoebe Pham, Alejandro Robles, Mary Shamon, Danielle Startsev, Claire Zhao
Weather and Media Reporting
A large and growing body of research explores the effects of a changing global climate on political violence and are often based on data from major cross-national political violence datasets constructed from news reports. We consider whether the news media's reporting on conflict systematically varies with weather conditions and natural disasters. Comparing detailed records released by various government's security forces with news report-based records, we find that the media often under-report violence at higher temperatures and during periods of minimal precipitation -- periods when violence levels are the greatest. This research raises questions about the accuracy of existing empirical research and about how best to estimate the effects of a changing global climate on patterns of violence.
Principal Researcher(s): Andrew Shaver, Alex Bollfrass
Media Reporting on International Affairs
We consider how the U.S. news media reports on international affairs. Analyzing ~40 million news articles published between 2010 and 2020, we explore whether the American news media report differently on various international affairs topics based on partisan leanings. We then analyze ~25 million articles published by top online news sites to determine whether collective reporting shows disparities between the level of attention afforded major global issues and objective measures of their human costs (e.g. numbers of individuals killed). We find that left- and right leaning news outlets tend to report on international affairs at similar rates but differ significantly in their likelihood of referencing particular issues. We find further strong evidence that the frequency of reporting on the international issues we study tracks only modestly with their associated human costs. Given evidence U.S. public and policymakers' dependence on news reports for foreign affairs information, our findings raise fundamental questions about the influence of these reporting biases. Our findings raise questions about the influence of partisanship on how the media reports on international affairs and they raise fundamental questions about whether and to what extent reporting on foreign affairs reflects the actual patterns of issues covered.
Principal Researcher(s): Andrew Shaver
Co-Author(s): Hank Cheng, Leonardo Dantas, Katherine Gan, Tristan Jahn, Amarpreet Kaur, Robert Kræmer, Jazmin Santos-Perez, Grady Thomson
Many contemporary studies on political violence and social unrest rely on conflict event datasets, primarily derived from major international/national news media reports. Further, these conflict-event data are widely used and funded by governmental and other entities. Yet, a large body of research identifies systematic patterns of `missingness' in these data, calling into question statistical results drawn from them. In this project, we explore three specific opportunities for additional data collection to help recover systematically excluded events, and to potentially assist in addressing resulting bias. We find that all three approaches result in additional and often systematically different material than that reported in news-based datasets, and we reflect on the advantages and drawbacks of each approach.
Citation: Shaver, Andrew, et al. “Expanding the Coverage of Conflict Event Datasets: Three Proofs of Concept.” Civil Wars 25.2-3 (2023): 367-397.
Principal Researcher(s): Andrew Shaver, Hannah Kazis-Taylor, Claudia Loomis
Co-Author(s): Mia Bartschi, Paul Patterson, Adrian Vera, Kevin Abad, Saher Alqarwani, Clay Bell, Sebastian Bock, Kieran Cabezas, Heidi Felix, Jennifer Gonzalez, Christopher Hoeft, Kai Keltner, Aileen Ibarra Martinez, Jessica Moroyoqui, Kieko Paman, Ethan Ramirez, Priscilla Reis, Juan Jose Rodriguez jr, Jazmin Santos-Perez, Katha Komal Sikka, Arjan Singh, Cassidy Tao, Richard Tirado, Aishvari Trivedi, Lillian Xu, Margaret You
Many major international issues receive minimal news media attention. Does such lack of reporting reflect low demand? We estimate demand for news stories on major international issues amongst four distinct populations -- 1) U.S. residents; and international affairs professionals consisting of 2) international relations faculty at colleges and universities across the United States, 3) current/former senior U.S. government officials who served across three presidential administrations, and 4) international affairs-focused staffers at major U.S. think tanks. Results reveal significant interest in undercovered issues.
Citation: TBC.
Paul C. Avey, Irene Entringer Garcia Blanes, Shauna N. Gillooly, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, Shaver, Andrew, Michael J. Tierney. “TRIP Policymaker Survey 2022 Report.” Teaching, Research & International Policy (TRIP) Project Global Research Institute (GRI) (2023).
Principal Researcher(s): Andrew Shaver, Jiahuan He, Shawn Robbins
Co-Author(s): Nihan Karagul, Yuval Cohen, Owen Cooksy, Katie Crumpley, Leonardo Dantas, Jacob Duarte, Charles Gilb, Fernanda Serna Godoy, John Grammas, Courtney Quach, Dylan Richardson, Milo Rudman, Lekha Sapers, Ching Sergeant
Global patterns of political and social unrest
Citation: Shaver, A., Komal Sikka, K., Keltner, K., Azimioara, N., Manly, J., Marin, R., Milinic, S., Green, B., Shah, D., Barbour-Berson, S., Creach, C., Baradwaj, A., Fan, S., Cabezas, K., Sanders, H., & Goldstein, L. "Global Patterns of Political Violence and Social Unrest." Working Paper, 2023.
Principal Researcher: Andrew Shaver