'Shadow Topics' in International Affairs -- Survey of IR Professionals

The project involves surveying three groups of international relations professionals 1) international relations scholars; 2) former senior foreign policy professionals who served across three U.S. presidential administrations; and 3) international relations focused professionals at major U.S.-based think tanks. These surveys include one survey experiment in addition to a series of questions generating observational data. Before describing the hypotheses and responding to other questions in the pre-registration, we first describe our work on “shadow topics”, which will assist readers in understanding our question responses throughout this pre-registration. Members of my research lab (the Political Violence Lab) and I are engaged in an extensive study of “shadow topics”. These are broadly defined as international issues that involve significant (human, environmental, etc.) cost or significant benefit (or expectations of significant cost or benefit) that foreign affairs professionals otherwise deem highly important but that have, for one reason or another, tended to receive minimal attention amongst major news media outlets. The task of identifying such topics is complicated by an unknown-unknowns dynamic insomuch as we seek to identify those issues that are, by definition, largely unreported (by the major news media, at least). To identify such topics, we are presently engaged in semi-structured interviews with current/former professionals from across the United Nations system; many major international non-governmental organizations; foreign affairs think tanks; major philanthropic organizations; foreign country embassies based in Washington DC; amongst other organizations. We have completed approximately 150 interviews as of the date of this submission, and interviewees have highlighted a variety of "shadow topics". Examples include: the consequences of "period poverty"; patterns of elderly abuse around the world; the environmental consequences of bottom trawling; the harmful effects of in-door cooking with biofuels; the loss of indigenous languages; and the costs of lack of road signs/signals, to name just some. In this project, we explore whether news article previews (designed to mirror article previews displayed on major news media websites) on “shadow topics” can be framed in a manner that increases the likelihood of readers engaging with them.