Attention, Status, and the Politics of Perception

The Social Logic of State Reputation (first author, with Filippo Pasquali)

_{Presented at Peace Science (International) 2025, the weekly meeting of the International Relations & Data Science research group at ETH Zurich 2025, ECSA 2024, Fragile Lives 2024, and the IPW Summer Retreat 2024.}

The way in which a state in conflict is perceived by the international public is central for its alliances, international support, cooperation and bargaining power. Yet the conditions under which state perception changes remain poorly understood. We argue that state perceptions are socially constructed second-order beliefs and analyze them using betting market data from the Eurovision Song Contest. We find that when broad public attention is directed at a conflict state, its international perception can change.

Status-based Pride: Social Hierarchies and the Politics of National Success (single authored)

_{Presented at SEPS Research Seminar, EPSA 2025, SVPW 2025, the HSG winter retreat 2025 and the Comparative Politics Jour Fixe.}

Citizens hold multiple group identities and feel more included and invested with the nation when they see that their group is contributing to national success. This, however, depends on whether and how success is attributed. I argue that these attributions are often biased toward high-status groups, causing lower-status groups’ successes to be overlooked unless explicitly stated. Survey experiments in England and Germany using football victories show that women report greater pride in the national team’s successes when this success is explicitly attributed to the women’s team. Overall, clearly crediting lower-status groups seems to be a fruitful strategy to increase recognition of their contributions.

Not Just a Game: Racism and the Politics of Perception in Women’s Football (first author, with Tabea Ernst)

This study investigates whether racist insults of England’s Jess Carter during the 2025 UEFA Women’s Euros, shaped public opinion on racism in women’s sport. Our survey shows that awareness of the abuse substantially reduces the belief that racism is less prevalent in women’s than in men’s football, underscoring the role of high-salience events in reshaping systemic bias.