In politics classes, you read material from a variety of places, including books, academic journals, mass-market journals, think tanks, and news sources. When I went to school, the difference between these was really clear (in part, because we read things in hard copy and they all look really different), but it’s much more difficult now, in part because you are consuming most information online and in part because the lines between types of sources and readings have blurred. In this video, I cover how to identify these sources more clearly online and note some of their special characteristics.
Books remain one of the easiest formats to recognize. If you are reading a book online, you should be able to identify the title, author, and publisher. You should be able to find a table of contents that shows you the organization of the book. For the readings in class, I will either link to the table of contents (for eBooks) or to a pdf of the chapter I’d like you to read (for books that are available in print only).
Academic journals (in political science) are usually published by professional associations or universities and are subject to peer review. That means that when an author sends an article to the journal to be published, the editor of the journal sends that article to three experts on that issue and asks them to evaluate the quality of the work. Academic journals are supposed to have a higher standard than just having an editor review it (as you would for a book or news article) and is meant to weed out fraud and poorly done research. These journals are also primarily written for an academic audience – this is mostly university professors writing for other university professors. And while nothing is free of bias, academic journals try to avoid it and to publish articles that contribute to the scholarly understanding of and debate on an issue.
How can you tell you are looking at an academic journal article? You can sometimes tell based on the title of the journal. The American Journal of Political Science or Journal of Politics, for example. But Journal isn’t always in the title – World Politics is a well-respected academic journal, while Foreign Affairs is a well-respected mass-market journal. If you are searching within the library, their database will tell you if a source is peer-reviewed or not. You can often find them in an academic databases like JSTOR, but not everything in these databases is an academic journal. And not everything in a peer-reviewed journal is empirical research (they also publish letters to the editor, book reviews, and literature reviews). In the video on “how to read academic articles” for Monday, I will talk through what empirical research articles actually look like and how to read them efficiently.
In contrast to academic journals, what I am calling mass-market journals are written for a policy or general audience. These articles tend to be shorter and more readable, and may not cite their sources. For example, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are two different mass-market journals for international relations. They tend to offer more depth and analysis than a news article. As with think tanks (which I will get to in a moment), it is important to remember that these sites have several types of information on them. Both Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are actual physical magazines that you can get in print, but they also have a lot of on-line only content produced just for the website. You actually have to cite these in different ways, but for now just remember that the authors on these articles are presenting their individual analysis and perspective. It is often very well-informed, but they are not claiming to be unbiased. These sources are credible, but not scholarly.
I also assign readings from news media like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or the Economist. These are published daily or weekly (while journals are published monthly or every other month) and usually cover current events. As with all sources, it is important to remember that news sources produce lots of types of content. Sometimes it’s just straight news, where authors try to present unbiased facts on a current event. Sometimes articles will be feature or analysis that go into more depth and may or may not present facts from a particular perspective. Opinion pieces (like op-eds) are usually written by dedicated columnists or guest authors (not regular journalists) and present that person’s opinion. Credible news sources will have all their content reviewed by editors and fact-checkers and distinguish between the types of content they provide – so you can tell an op-ed from a news story. Adfontesmedia produces an interactive online chart you can use if you are interested in learning more about how and which direction common media outlets are biased.
The last type of source I want to talk about is think tanks. Think tanks are organizations that hire experts to produce a variety of content in order to shape the public policy debate on an issue. They are meant to generate new ideas and contribute expertise; that expertise may come from academia or from extensive work on the issue. There are all types of think tanks. Some are centrist or have no real agenda, such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or U.S. Institute of Peace. Some are just known for a bit of a bias to the right or left, such as CSIS (the Center for Strategic and International Studies) which is center-right and the Brookings Institute, which is center-left. The easiest way to identify this type of bias is to look at which type of former US officials they higher as experts – do they have Republicans, Democrats, or both? Other think tanks have an explicit agenda. The Heritage Foundation and CATO Institute are well known think tanks on the right, while the Center for American Progress fills a similar role on the left. Credible think tanks like this will be explicit about their perspective. If you click on “About” when looking at their website, Heritage will tell you that they seek to define conservative values, while CATO is explicitly libertarian and CAP progressive. Remember to look beyond just the first description, though – you can see that CAP describes itself as nonpartisan. This is true – they are not affiliated with a political party – but nonpartisan doesn’t mean apolitical. Sometimes think tanks are known for a regional or issue focus. For example, Carnegie has a particularly strong Russia program.
Just because a think tank has an agenda doesn’t mean they don’t produce credible research – just be aware of what the agenda behind that research is. And even when there isn’t a specific agenda behind think tank content, it is still representing the perspective of the author rather than an effort at unbiased analysis. You will find lots of types of content on think tank websites – everything from blogs to analytical reports. Each of these has a different purpose and you need to look more closely at this material before you can know what to do with it. It is more likely that items listed as “White Papers” or “Research” are empirical research, while things categorized as analysis or commentary are not. But look carefully at the material to judge – is the primary purpose of the paper to publish new research or to make policy recommendations? The former may be empirical, the latter, probably not.
If you would like more information on think tanks (or ideas on think tanks to look for), I recommend the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tank Index. It doesn’t provide details on ideology, but it does rank think tanks by their influence on policy.
I hope this has been helpful in sorting through the different material we use.