 I'm just gonna give an intro here to our fabulous speakers today. So globally, women are far less likely to be drawn upon as experts in media, making up, according to the Harvard Business Review, only 19% of experts featured in news stories. In the US, according to Women's Media Center, women accounted for 28% of guests on morning and primetime cable shows during the 2016 US presidential elections. In the largest 12 newspapers, 32% of those quoted in stories about campus rape were women, and 33% of those quoted in stories about reproductive health issues were women. 38% of US news sources in print, radio, and TV were women in a single day's stories in 2015. A recent special report put together by the International Women's Media Foundation and commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that even when a woman's voice is heard in the news on COVID-19, it's drowned out by the voices of men. And that when women are given platforms in stories about the pandemic, it seldom as authoritative experts or empowered individuals and rather they usually appear as victims of the disease. The findings are consistent with studies conducted before the pandemic. So for example, one showed that women only made up 24% of people featured in the media as experts on various subjects. The Global Institute for Women's Leadership here at Kings found that COVID reporting in the UK and US had just under 5% representation of women from STEM backgrounds. Women only made up 15% of the economists brought into these discussions, meaning that for every woman, there were four male economists speaking as experts. Only a third of people quoted in journal reports for women. Comparatively, women make up over half of those quoted in articles related to childcare and domestic violence, and more than a third in articles related to education, but fewer than one in six of those quoted on financial and economic coverage. Such an under-representation of women on certain topics and over-representation on others fosters a gender imbalanced picture of society which can reinforce and perpetuate harmful stereotypes around expert knowledge and indeed who are knowers and who are taken seriously. Under-representation of women in media is also closer to home. In our own School of Security Studies, a preliminary audit of experts who featured in English media excluding visiting professors from April through November found that there were 15 women to 76 men. There have been some successful initiatives and to name two, the BBC's 50-50 gender parity and representation of experts and the Women's Media Centre She-Source, which is a database of women experts' experience with the media that media contacts can reach out to. But what else can be done to alter these gendered stats and who is it that holds the responsibility here? Thank you, Sarah. These are key questions amongst others that we hope to address in today's panel. We're joined today by Professor Brooke Rogers, a female academic expert with a multitude of media engagements, and Lizzie Ellen, who's the School of Security Studies Communications Manager. Professor Brooke Rogers, OBE, is a Professor of Behavioral Science and Security and Deputy Head of Department in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. Professor Rogers is a social psychologist interested in risk communication, public, and practitioner attitudes to perceptions of and responses to health and security risks and threats. Many of her multidisciplinary, collaborative research projects explore psychological and behavioral responses to low likelihood, high impact events, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents. Professor Rogers chairs the Cabinet Office National Risk Assessment, National Security Risk Assessment, Behavioral Science Expert Group, as well as the Home Office Science Advisory Council. She is an independent participant on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, so you can understand how busy she is at the moment and how grateful we are for her time. She's also co-chairing the Behavioral Science Subgroup during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Rogers also contributes to a range of local, national, and international committees, including the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology. She's joined here today by Lizzie, and Lizzie Ellen is the communications manager, like I said, for the school here. As communications manager, she oversees public engagement and communication activities across war studies and defense studies departments at King's, including PR and media engagement, podcast and video content, event planning, and web and social media management. Up until September of this year, Lizzie was producer for a podcast of one's own, a podcast from the Global Institute of Women's Leadership at King's, which she established in March, 2019. For the series, Lizzie worked with former Australian Prime Minister and podcast host, Julie Godard, to plan and create episodes, which have featured in prestigious and inspiring women, including Kate Blanchett, Mary Beard, and Rene Edo Lodge. Prior to this, she held communication officer roles in Policy Institute for King's College London and the University of Sheffield. Before working in higher education, Lizzie worked for MP Paul Bloomfield. So Lizzie has lots of experience in supporting and engaging with women and female academics and experts and making their research more, disseminating it across different media platforms. So both Brooke and Lizzie will be reflecting upon the challenges and opportunities around women experts in the media today, as well as taking questions from you, the audience. My name is Dr. Maddachism and I'm the chair of the series and the broader new voices in global security. I'm also a senior lecturer for the School of Security Studies, teaching and researching on gender and global security. And I'm the EDI chair for the school. I'm very pleased to be co-presenting this event, like I said, with Sarah Louise Miller. Sarah is a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies. She holds a BA in first class and an M fill in history. For the latter, she wrote her thesis on women's auxiliary Air Force and their work in the British Air Intelligence in the Second World War and carried out extensive research on military intelligence behind major RAF operations during this period, including the Battle of Britain, the Down Busters Raid and the Thousand Bomb Raids and the discovery of the V weapons. She is very interested in recovering the history of women in intelligence work, an element that is often missing from existing research in the intelligence world. Sarah is also the leader of women in war and international politics, a department led initiative that seeks to give greater visibility to the achievements of women in the field of war studies and international politics, security and events. And she works closely with the department's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committees in this capacity. WeWIP is an initiative that's specifically run out of war studies. And it's a network of women, students, staff, and alumni across the faculty of social science and public policy. WeWIP seeks, again, to support and increase the visibility of women across kinks who work in these broader fields, whether they're students, researchers, and practitioners, some works to showcase their work as well as broader mentor support. So I think what we're going to do is we've decided to frame this structurally first by asking Lizzie in the capacity of the school and broader institutes around is the gender gap or gender disparity in media, who media presents as experts. Is this taken seriously? Before then, we moved to Brooke and her extensive experience of being a female expert with media and engagements and reflecting upon that. So I'm now going to hand the floor over to Lizzie with that question. Lizzie, is the School of Security Studies taking this issue seriously? Do they recognize it? And are they taking it seriously? So yeah, I think it would depend on who you speak to, perhaps, in the school and whose responsibility it is for encouraging more of our women researchers and academics to put themselves forward. I'd also say minority, you know, BAME, academics and researchers as well, because I think it's very important to raise the fact that there hasn't really been that many studies on. So obviously, you quoted a few studies in the introduction, including one from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, where I used to work, which analyzed women's expert voices in the media and the portion compared with male expert voices. But there's been relatively few studies done on BAME academics. So that's quite telling in itself as well. And I would say that, well, if we care about it in my team, but I'm not saying that we have done a lot to help bring it about, apart from a few tinkering at the edges. So for me, this is an opportunity to start a discussion around solutions, because we can see there is a major problem. And we all need to be aware of it. And it's something that needs to be communicated at senior levels of the school, but also Kings and the external relations team, perhaps, at Kings as well. I mean, they are aware of the issue. I'll go into that a bit more. But I would say that it's something we need to start doing at school level, showing people the figures. But also, I'm really interested in talking about solutions, because we know there's a problem. But what are we going to start doing about it? I'm happy to speak to that as we carry on discussion in a bit. In terms of a university level, Kings College level, it's something that the external relations, the communications, the corporate communications team are aware of. And it's something that we actually find with journalists, because sometimes they will say that journalists themselves are aware of it. They will sometimes say, we would prefer to have a woman speaker. And I actually had this last week. And unfortunately, it didn't go anywhere. But we had an ITV journalist come to us and say, oh, can we get an academic to comment on the government's increased defense budget announcement that was made last week. And so I quickly scrambled around to try and find someone. And Hilary Briffer, who I think is here, Hilary, she is, she volunteered to do it. Which was fantastic. But then, unfortunately, this is how fickle journalists are. Their journalists disappeared. So it is something that journalists that news outlets are aware of, especially on matters like defense and security where there are less women experts, less women academics working in the field. So if you are a woman academic who has an interest in security, who has knowledge and expertise, then it's a fantastic way to cut through. And I mean, I won't go into much more detail other than, so coming back to university level, as I say, the comms team is aware. And they want to put on more training around encouraging people, women and people from minority ethnic backgrounds to get media training to get the confidence to go forward. The only other thing I'd say is in sort of doing a bit of research for this talk, again, there's not very much research out there that sort of says, well, why are men getting the medium? Or one of the reasons, obviously we've got stats, but then we have to kind of try and come to some conclusions about why. But one thing I managed to come across was a BMJ report, basically, that showed it was 6 million articles in life sciences and academic medicine, and found that men are more likely than women to frame their research findings as, quote, novel, unique, promising, or otherwise positively. And if you yourself are seeing your research as something unique, something original, newsworthy, cutting edge, then you're going to have more confidence to go forward to a journalist, pitch to media outlets, and say, look at my amazing unique research findings. So yeah, it's not just about the opportunities that come along. It's also about changing mindsets, I think. How do we change mindsets, and how do we encourage people who perhaps don't feel so confident about their research findings or are too modest, perhaps, to be passionate about wanting to convey their findings and see their findings as something that's worthy of public attention and media attention. So I'll stop there. Thanks, Lizzie. I mean, those are certainly some important reflections. And I think they touch upon these other conversations we had around the publishing gap, the gender publishing gap as well too, certainly. I think I'd like to hand the floor over to Brooke now, just to Brooke to maybe bring more of a real life personal experience to these stats themselves. So can I hand the floor over to Brooke to engage with your own experiences and reflections on being a female expert with media engagement? Definitely. Thank you so much. And I'll just back up a little bit first and say to Amanda and Sarah that this new voices approach to your EDI efforts are amazing. And Julia and Christine and I were chatting after one of the events was it last week or the week before, it's all a blur, saying we never had that when we were coming through and we find these conversations so valuable. And Lizzie, bless your heart with your patience and reaching out to me for media. And we're going, I'm too busy. I'm too busy. I can't do it right now. I'll try to do better. But you've already created an idea and a link where I think that I can help address some of this. And my role as deputy head of department because I go through all of the PDR forms and I'm also part of the promotions process. So I read everything. And it's my job to think about how to draw out those golden nuggets of everybody's narrative and to see things as exciting that they might just think is very standard. And I would also say to Link with Julia Pierce with her work on the impact case studies. I think that you have been actually, and we can just start kind of encouraging people in your direction when we see those. So we can already address it, but it's having this kind of conversation that helps us see what we need to do. So women in the media, I will start by saying that I feel a little bit like a charlatan engaging in this at the moment because I'm really, really in the thick of it as an independent academic engaging with the sage process, where we are very clearly independent of government, the scientific advisory group for emergencies. Our advice that we give to government is independent as well. But our words are being politicized. No matter what we do, I think about every tweet 10 times now before sending it because I don't want to be framed as a government advisor when actually I'm just sharing a tweeted picture of the cookies my husband tried to bake that melted all over the oven. So I have made an active decision with Sage and I can go into that later. And because I'm in a leadership role on the spy be the behavioral science subgroup that I physically just don't have another minute in the day to give to the engagement that is needed to actually speak to the media in a responsible way at this point in time knowing that it's going to be politicized. And so I have opted to only engage in very science evidence-based conversations. So we did something with the children's commissioner speaking to children and that's public. That's released publicly. I'll have any kind of science-based conversation. But I get calls. I get dozens of calls and emails every day. And I am just trying to be responsible with that decision to say I can't stretch that at the moment. But watch this space as things calm down. I might stretch to it. And also to say I'm so grateful for some of my colleagues, Lucy Yardley, Theresa Marteau, and others. And Ram Medley as one of the modelers on spy M. And he's a huge supporter of getting women's voices out there through from the sage work in the sage subgroup. So this is really there's opportunity there. And when people ring and I answer, I do recommend several different female colleagues who I'm working with and people beyond sage as well. So I'm not just saying no. I'm answering the phone and saying, I'm terribly sorry. Have you considered ABC or D? So I'll perk that for now and just step back and say, more generally when I think about engaging with the media, I start from the point of I have a really strong belief that it's important for us to bring scientific evidence and systematic approaches to thinking about and talking about highly what when my field because a lot of my early media engagement was around terrorist attacks, highly emotive issues that can lead to what can sometimes be knee-jerk policy responses or inform that debate. If you're saying something and it's picked up in the media and it creates additional pressure, you can bring about really positive changes. But at its most basic level, it's just about trying to inform and to have conversations about science and evidence with members of the public and not to have a strong emotional reaction. I've engaged when there were beheadings taking place. It's horrific as a human being, they ask you how you feel. I don't know what kind of response they want from me. It's horrific, but my job is not to be emotional. My job is to sit there and say, this is what we know. This is what we don't know. This is where we have a bit of uncertainty and we could go a few different ways. And I try to hang my hat on and base everything that I say in that framework. What do we know? What do we have evidence for? What don't we know? And what are some of the exciting ideas of things we think might be happening, but we still need more evidence? I also feel that a quite strong moral obligation that it's our job as scientists and as academics to share evidence, especially if it brings balance to a debate. And this is driven by the fact that the majority of my research funding comes from public sources. And so I've always felt in my colleague, Julia Pierce and I used to call it the Thelma and Louise. Every time we finished a study, people would contribute and take part in our studies practitioners, policymakers, publics. And so we would go on a little road show, not funded by it, but just to go back and say, thank you for taking part. This is what we found and see where it goes. So I do think that we have a duty, not just through publications that members of the public might not always want to access, unless they're having trouble sleeping at night and it can lull them to sleep, but in terms of bringing science to life and really feeding it back into society because society is feeding into our capability to answer these really challenging questions in our academic and practical world. I also think that because of our independent position as academics, that especially when I work in the area of emergency response or emergency preparedness and planning and policymaking that we are trusted academics, we are trusted individuals and we interview people and we run surveys and we run focus groups and they do trust us and they are very open with us. I mean, if you want awards and all approach just come and listen to one of our focus groups with lots of enthusiasm for the job and for the potential but a lot of honesty about what works and what doesn't work. And we can analyze that systematically and adopt theoretical approaches that then help us hopefully improve things or reinforce things that are working. But I think that I have all of those voices in my research and in my head. So when I go to an interview I can almost bring those voices to life. So for example, when the media is having a go at the prevent strategy and a lot of the publications and academic work around the prevent strategy really only brings negative evidence to bear. But when you go in and work with prevent area coordinators and look at the systematic way in which they have to put together projects and they have to engage with communities and they have to collect data. You start seeing that prevent means very many different things even two streets away prevent and activities around preventing violent radicalization can look completely different. From working with mothers to teach them about online safety to opening up youth clubs it can look very, very different. And having that insight that doesn't always come out and all of the media and policy debates but that does come out when you actually speak to these people can add a little bit of balance. I will say that I have as of COVID-19 been asked several times to act as an off the record source and I always say no to that. I'm very uncomfortable with that. Anything that I have to say should I try to be public and transparent with my work? I try to publish my findings and if there's anything that I have to say to a journalist it should be something that I'm willing to say in public. I don't like undermining my colleagues. I don't like whispering campaigns or a source said. So I'm very uncomfortable with that and I don't really understand that approach. If you can't name who the source is unless it's going towards whistleblowing type of events and I think that might be another thing for another day but in my field I say what I think and I say it proudly as an independent academic. I would say in terms of my media journey perhaps it's not a natural fit for me. I never ever know what to do with my face, my hands, my body. If they ask me to walk towards camera it looks like I think my two year old can walk better than I can. I'm stiff, I'm uncomfortable. If I'm sitting on the morning breakfast show couches what do I do with my legs? Do I cross my legs? Do I tuck them gently under? And some of this can be addressed by media training but then when I get in front of the camera it kind of goes out the window. I can't remember what I'm supposed to do with all of my body parts and you can see probably here even I'm talking with my hands don't talk with your hands. It's one of my ticks when I am doing media. I've also learned and people have said which race now that if you go in with maybe two or three key points that you want to make and kind of stick to those or keep on coming back to those you're making it much easier for yourself and in a few days of media engagement I used to try to almost cite people and they want to know what friends are really they want to know and I would say oh, oh, Ragnar Lofsted and Orchwin Render really interesting work and media interview is not the point to show that I'm actually drawing upon the work of everyone else so they want the top lines go in with a few key points be confident in those points and then you can talk around it. As an academic, I always want to provide details and caveats when a one and a half to three minute interview that's rarely, rarely the right place to do it although you can be strong and correct them if they're oversimplifying something. I will say I had media training I did one as a very young academic through the science media center I love the science media center and I would say, you know if you have to go and speak to something look at some of their publications they're always giving rapid reviews and evidence reviews but I also had some more in-depth media training at King's which was very, very useful but I think I learned how to pause how to speak more slowly but a lot of what they taught me I think I just need to have constant media training because I forget it when they turn on the camera or when I'm going live on air. So some of the things might have rubbed off don't speak too quickly don't try to fit too much in don't use my hands too much I do that a lot. I've also learned how to push back how to stay in my lane because quite often you'll get a call and you'll put the time and effort and speaking to whomever is trying to pull you into the studio about what you could talk about and en route they've changed the question they've changed the agenda and when you actually arrive in the studio they want to talk about something completely different and actually I showed up for an interview with David Dimbleby once and he kind of looked at me a little bit grumbly and then they kind of float you in on the chair and you know you're trying to get miked up wear something with pockets it's much easier et cetera et cetera and then you need to sit down and they usually do acknowledge you some of them can be very charming and some of them I don't know how they do it they're processing so much information people in their ears information on the screen you know I just let them get on with their job but David Dimbleby said oh so you're here to talk about X, Y, Z and I said I have no idea what you're talking about I'm here to talk about this and he was very very grumpy with me and said well why are you here and I said I have no idea I'm very happy to go but they pulled it together and we did have a conversation but it's very fact it moves quickly don't be insulted if the agenda changes don't feel forced to talk about things that are beyond your expertise so in those initial setup meetings I'm very clear on what I can talk about I'm even probably more strongly or frame more strongly what I cannot talk about and sometimes what you're saying have you considered this have you thought of this it actually turns into the story because it's something new it's not just what they assumed you would talk about I try not to be I do try to be warm I tend to be a warm person I think so I'm not there just to give you statistics I'm a human being I face the threat of these large and small scale events as well so yes stick to the evidence but I have had it said that don't get overly trained in media training because they really like the fact that I'll sit and actually have a chat with them and I remember in one of the examples I can't remember what issue it was it was possibly around terrorism I was on the good morning Britain couch and somebody asked me how the public were responding and we had been shopping for new pillows and an East sheen and the conversation I had with the lady and the bed store was actually brought on your good morning Britain as an example and I had such a strong public reaction to that that it was really nice to know that I do normal things and that I kind of see the woman who I was highlighting reflected their views and feelings so do be human you can draw on parts of your life I do try to keep my children out of the media I will say that I have probably done a lot less media engagement after since having the little ones and some of that's logistics wanting to get home wanting to actually see them and some of it is because I do feel and we can go into this later that there is some targeting afterwards some of it's targeting with love and appreciation and you get wonderful letters from people saying you help me speak to my child about terrorism they were feeling really anxious I've had a wonderful mother right to me saying my daughter basically wants to do what you do and we ended up chatting I was just about to go on maternity leave but they even sent me a little maternity present and everything so you can have some really lovely interactions and people saying you made me think differently about the world but I'm also because for example I've had not overly lovely reaction from right-wing groups I'm also sensitive to the fact that I do have young children and I don't try to openly share that when I'm doing the media there are moments where you're doing media engagement and especially if you're new at it you think this is my moment and I hope I don't get it wrong and I'm going to be absolutely ruined if I do and the reality is your mom's probably watching it and a few of your friends will get really excited and take a picture of the screen and put it on Facebook and say we saw you he he and that's about it so it could be your moment of triumph but actually it's a flash in the pan in terms of the media debates and the media discussions and it moves quite quickly so if you get it wrong don't worry someone else will get something wrong and you can replace that and it fades into memory if you get it right it's wonderful and share it and share the successes of your colleagues as well because this is how we can amplify voices I'm just going through my notes are we okay on time we probably want more of a discussion or okay time commitment this is one of the reasons I've really decreased my engagement we've moved out of London it was much easier when I lived in Putney and I could get a they'd send me a car at four in the morning and I'd have full makeup it's great for date night full hair and go on to the morning couch the breakfast couches and then straight over to Kings for Work they're less willing to send a car out just even I'm just the other side the M25 nowadays and it does require early early starts and sometimes they want you to travel for several hours on a train for a three minute interview just to have you in the studio and it also involves quite late nights and that was all well and good when I wasn't trying to rush home to my family but I also am very keen to be a role model and my son's very excited when he sees me on the TV and so on and so forth so it's trying to find that balance COVID-19 if I won't absolutely worry of the political angle of anything I have to say or the politicization of it I cannot speak today then I probably could have engaged a lot more just through not having to travel pre-interviews, discussions take time and sometimes end up to mean nothing because it changes before you get there I always ask what their angle is I always like to know what they're thinking before I start responding and sometimes I have examples I can give that change that angle and other times I can reinforce it if it's a big story, cancel everything I think I did 27 interviews in one day for one of the London terrorist attacks and this is dashing from place to place to place as a radio, this is TV it's all a bit insane and you kind of start repeating yourself if you've got your same points you're still making some of the facilities are less than pleasant I remember being in a little room doing a live debate for a French TV station and I had to just look into the camera and the TV was broken so I couldn't see who I was debating with I just could just kind of hear them and it was all kind of soft to absorb the sound on the walls and someone in the next room was having a huge argument and I think that they actually threw a chair against the door while I was trying to give the interview and this had a beautiful view of parliament behind me but you can find yourself in interesting situations payment and contribution, some places pay some places don't but it is actually a time commitment and I think that they just need to be very, very open because I know other people are getting paid and I see this with speaker fees as well I do so much of my work for free but if men are getting paid I expect to get paid too and I think that they should just be open and offer it rather than making you ask managing expectations, no go area so again clearly stating what I can and cannot do insists that they get the details right I don't care if anybody wants to call me Brooke I care if they're calling me Dr. Brooke or Professor Brooke or Ms. Brooke and they're calling my colleagues who are often male colleagues Doctor surname or Professor surname so treat us all the same and I go with the flow when it's happening but my husband gets really, really head up about it if they do that I think being interviewed is a little bit like dancing if you have a talented presenter or host it's effortless they lead you through it it's fun and the time just flies I especially like radio interviews for that but I've had a few TV interviews where it's just like oh wow I could do that again that was fun if they're a bit not sure why you're there you're not sure why you're there and it's a bit challenging it can be like stepping on one another's toes and don't be a snob the quality of research that goes into prepping for these interviews from a show like Good Morning Britain is so, so much more in depth than the quality of prep and conversation prior to going on to some of our mainstream news channels and they'll actually come to me and say this is the way that we think it will go I can correct things and the reality is once you're on that couch and you're never 100% sure which direction it's going to go but I just have been so impressed with the responsibility around Good Morning Britain and the audience response as well versus the prep and sometimes the complete car crash of going on to some of the mainstream news channels where none of us actually know why I'm there or what was to be talking about yes and I have been known to get a little bit blushy with some of the hosts which I didn't even know I had in me so yes that can be fun too. So mixed responses to media interviews very, very odd sometimes I have a little drawer full of ranting letters that are often typed with the carbon copy paper behind it and they're clearly just sending weird letters off to everybody and anybody who will listen emails, lots of people who email and say have you seen this research why didn't you talk about this and so on and sometimes that's really useful and you think oh wow, gosh, I didn't know about that and it can create a link sometimes I just know where to send that email to help other people who could make use of it and some of it, you know it just goes on and on and on I can never get below a thousand unread emails right now I'm just being bombarded with emails, tweets again they can be quite horrible so lots of people if you look up spybee on Twitter they think that we're into mind control and everything is based on psychological theories that I've published about for years saying we have blood on our hands and that we shall hang and go to court I did have a hilarious man with the big reveal of the sage participants which was really bad reporting because I have had my sage engagement on my LinkedIn profile since 2014 all of my students knew I was on sage and they didn't leak to the press there were processes in place we were trying to change the whole system to enable us to publish everything that comes out of sage but this meant changing longstanding systems and government and so they outed us and that was really, really bad reporting I think they said something really silly about oh Brooke really believes in bringing science to policy do your homework, one it's not secret two you've got to be able to find something a little bit more exciting about me to say then I like bringing science and evidence to policymaking but one man reported Professor Brooke Rogers he was really interested in this name on Twitter and something about Tweaky from Buck Rogers in the 21st century show and I thought this was hilarious so never take yourself too seriously and I liked it and retweeted it and he got a little bit embarrassed that I kind of caught him talking about me on Twitter but I thought it was funny and also with the irresponsible reporting and inaccurate reporting around sage and other things you have to ask yourself a question do I defend myself or do I just let my work and the publications that are coming out and our work speak for itself I tend to try to be very positive on Twitter and to support interesting research and interesting colleagues I don't want to be a negative person on Twitter and so I have opted not to really defend myself I ignore the horrible ones if I feel threatened I report them to Twitter I report it to Facebook I report it to the sage system and they can take care of that and I'll always stand up for myself but when things are really, really hotting up on the media front with anything around COVID and sage especially in the early days it can feel really, really intense but you know there's going to be another story coming along in a day or two so I almost feel like I'm just like, yeah say what you want our publications are coming out and people can actually read what we've said when we've said it and finally, I don't think that this is just about women supporting female voices you've already mentioned the need for greater diversity across the board I always try to support interesting and good and exciting science I always try to retweet and be really supportive of colleagues doing interesting work and I feel very supported by my colleagues as well so somebody's doing something exciting even if you've never met them and it's exciting I do just try to say something about it or to retweet it and even if you can't do the engagement take the time to create the links and to try to enhance that diversity of voices that we have coming through the media so there's so many positives to it when we're past COVID or maybe it slows down a little bit for me and maybe when the children have grown up a little bit more you'll probably be sick of seeing me on your screens or in your radios again gosh, thank you Brooke for such an engagement and across a multitude of media spaces too I'm sure there's going to be lots of questions coming in but I'm going to abuse my position of chair, co-chair and Sarah and I ahead of time we're thinking about reflecting on media engagement and you touched on it a little bit when you're talking about the negative press especially with social media it can be quite instantaneous and sometimes cascading and whatnot and it's great that you've reflected on some strategies you do but I think if we combine this with early career researchers, early career women or a BAME who already have imposter syndrome who already have all of these insecurities about landing permanent jobs being taken seriously what sort of advice I think maybe not even just individual advice but what sort of advice can we do collectively, right? So bringing listening to this conversation what sort of advice should we do as colleagues being good colleagues but also what sort of support institutions should be doing broadly to encourage more diverse voices in that respect and respond to those negative feedback that invariably will come as part of the entering into these public domains if Brooke maybe you can reflect on that and Lizzie if you have anything to say can jump in. Yeah. So I do think that this requires a mentoring role and an opportunity for engagement. I have seen which I was absolutely shocked by because I never would have done it myself. I have seen in the past when a terrorist attack takes place that some of my male colleagues were actually proactively approaching the press office and I just kind of waited for them to come and find me if they were interested. So that was news to me and if it's something I care passionately about sometimes I mean, I can probably count it on one hand how often I've said, oh, you know, don't forget about me and then you're on the radar and they can negotiate that space. And that's really useful to use our PR experts to help arrange the interviews and to help set up the timings because if you're getting bombarded you almost need a system wrapped around you to enable it and to push your voice out and to negotiate that space so that you can just show up and do the interviews. I would say that the more often that you engage the easier it gets. So it might be worth hosting some sessions where we set a topic and have a few experts come around and we interview them about it and invite, you know, Lizzie and the comms team can come and the PR press office for the college so that we can build more of a relationship with them and they can understand us. I would also say that I have a dear colleague who I won't name but I think that she is absolutely amazing when she lectures, when she presents our work she is a true storyteller and makes all that we're doing so interesting and so relevant to every audience and she absolutely refuses to engage with the media and it breaks my heart because she's the kind of voice that we need there. So I do nag her, when people do call me I give them her name, even though she'll probably say no but she did end up doing a prerecorded interview recently and said that, you know, she was okay with that because you can listen to it and you can say, no, I'm not comfortable with that or ask them to change it. And so I think through almost constant nagging and giving her the confidence to do it that she has found a format that she can do and she can do well. In terms of imposter syndrome, I don't know how to ever get rid of that when I speak at conferences, when I chair things, when I used to go on TV, when I first started at Kings, I used to rock up on a motorcycle, I had a Honda Fireblade and I used to, if I were doing the media I'd be in a dress and so on but I always felt like they'd look down below or move the table, cloth aside and see my biker boots or something or cowboy boots, because I'm from the Deep South so I'm not sure how to get around that. It's just that confidence comes through doing it, through engaging with the media, through having these discussions and if you get it wrong, it's not the end of your career and it's not the end of the world. Yeah, so I just wanna come in quickly and just talk through a few things. And in terms of the kind of social media abuse, I mean, it's very easy for me to sort of speak about this because I'm not really in the public eye but I did this part of the podcast that Amanda mentioned before with Julia Gillard, we interviewed Caroline Creadid-Parris who held a number of public campaigns, first of all to get a genocidal in the 10-pound note and then to get a statue of a woman in Parliament Square and she was absolutely hounded with awful, awful abuse and she would get like rape threats every sort of seven minutes or something at one point and we sort of said, well, why did you keep doing it? Why, how did you cope with it? And her kind of standpoint was, yes, it was absolutely awful at the time. I'm not encouraging anyone to put themselves out there and sort of take this battering. It has to be about you and your choices and how comfortable you feel and where you are in your life. If you're going through difficult times, if you're feeling under confident, then it's your choice to not engage. But she said that we need a critical mass of women voices in the media. If once we get to a 50-50 ratio, then it will be normalized and people will hopefully accept it as the norm as opposed to having a sort of 30% of women and the men that want to are gonna sort of push them down. So it's, yeah, I mean, I thought that she spoke very courageously about that. But just in terms of some of the challenges that I think hold women's voices back from media and Brooke touched upon some of them before, but I think it's, again, like having confidence in your research, that your research findings are interesting and newsworthy enough and believing that you can confidently speak to them as an expert. And I think we've got to remember that there's a whole spectrum of ways to engage as well. It's not just about being on TV or radio. There are, you know, you can offer a comment to a written publication. So we are absolutely ready to engage with anyone who wants to offer a quote to a media outlet or to pitch a comment piece or a blog piece on their research or on an area of interest that they want to talk about. So, you know, you can do it in a less public way. If you don't feel confident standing in front of a camera or being on broadcast media, you can just, you know, we want to work with you to write and pen pieces that we can pitch out. And so there's various ways of doing that. I mean, if you're working on an interesting piece of research and you want to have a go, you think it might have an angle that might have interest, you know, come forward with it, don't be afraid. We're always, I much prefer to hear from people than them sort of hide their light under a bushel. I mean, an example the other day, academic in DSD who had a piece published in the conversation. I don't know if people are aware of the conversation, but it's a good one to start out with. And we've successfully pitched quite a lot of pieces actually to the conversation this year from academics and the conversation other journalists, other media outlets would pick up on those pieces and will do more stuff with the academic. So it's a good place to start and we're happy to work with you on pitching pieces to them. But yeah, she sort of had got a piece published there and we found out and I said, oh, why didn't you mention? She was like, well, I don't want to bother you with emails. And it's like, this is the kind of thing we absolutely want to amplify. We want to share it across our social media channels if you're there. We want to cross post it onto our website. We want to, and the corporate comms, the central comms team is always keen and they've been very pleased to see actually quite a lot of security studies pieces in the conversation recently because they get alerts when Kings is mentioned there. So yeah, we are ready to help work with you to turn your research into a kind of newsworthy comment piece style. We can offer editorial skills. Also the other thing is, if you are an expert in a certain area of security and you're following the news cycle, you've signed up to, I would encourage everybody to sign up to, it's another workload task, but a morning briefing of some kind, whether it's something very mainstream like The Guardian, political and play books really good for UK media and international actually or something more niche that's related to your area. And you see something interesting happen that morning. Come to us and say, oh, I'd be keen. As Brooke was saying, she said, a lot of men do it. They say, well, I'm happy to comment on this. Well, we need women doing that too. I'm happy to comment on this issue. Can you pitch me out to mainstream journalists and we would work on a pitch with you to then say, we've got an expert here who can comment on X crises or this aspect that's something happening in the world somewhere, we've got an expert ready. And if the journalists interest and they haven't got anyone out, anyone to comment on it yet, then that might be a way in. And if they, the thing is nine times out of 10, you don't hear back. That's another challenge with the media, especially during COVID, there's been loads of redundancies that the journalists has been quite badly hit to use paper journalism, but you can still have breakthroughs. And I always say, I always spy that even when you put something out and you don't hear anything back, you might hear back in a month, someone might say, a journalist might put you aside or put you on their books or this person expert in Russia, I'm just going to put them in my sort of contacts database and then they will get back in touch with you if they're interested. So yeah, I had something recently this week where a journalist from the FT came and I'd put something out like three, four weeks ago, thought I hadn't got anywhere. And they said, oh, we're really interested in this paper that you were discussing. Can you put me in touch with academic? So I did. So it's always worth, even if you don't hear anything, it's worth doing it and it's worth getting to habit of being able to condense your research into a headline. I think that's the other issue that maybe women might struggle with more is being able to make generalizations, sweeping generalizations that might feel uncomfortable about something as detailed and sort of, yeah. It's very hard to reduce something as complex as your research area into a headline and three key points, but it's really good practice just as a general basis, media training or not or media engagement or not to get into that habit of saying, okay, what would the headline be from this? What are the key three key takeaways from this that are newsworthy and speak to a lay audience, people that aren't experts in this field. And it might not be the key finding that you yourself think is the most interesting aspect to your research. It might be a secondary finding. It might be something that you think's more insignificant that actually speaks more to a lay audience or hooks into the current news cycle. So you've covered something, the main aspect isn't that relevant to the news cycle, but a secondary issue might be that you can then speak to. So you absolutely come forward to us, share your research with us. You can also pitch to blog sites like War on the Rocks or Strategy Bridge or our own blog channel. It's a good place to practice and to start to get going. I think I've covered most of what I wanted to say on that. Ash, I feel like we need to now have a workshop and I've realized I'm talking with my hands just as Brooke said, stop talking with your hands. So I'm gonna sit on my hands now. Yeah, I feel like we need to have a part two because we have lots of questions coming in. So I'm going to ask the people who are asking the questions live to do elevator pitch questions and then Brooke and Lizzie elevator pitch answers. So we hopefully can get through them. So we'll start with, I think the first person was Sam. Lizzie, do you wanna ask your elevator pitch question live? Yes, a lot of the comments that we've been hearing today made me immediately think of a chapter I read last night in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers where he cites Hofstadter's Power Distance Index and research on cultural attitudes towards power. And he talks about a really interesting case of air accidents. Caused by this high power difference between the culture of the pilots and the culture of the air traffic controllers. But it made me immediately think of that when we were talking about this today and whether women more naturally include what he terms mitigation in their speech and conversation. And I've seen it culturally in action when I was in the army where girkers are extremely deferential. They wouldn't dream of speaking out against a British soldier or officer. And I wondered if there's been any research in this area sort of building on Hofstadter's work and looking at whether there might be gender differences as well as cultural differences towards power. Great, thank you, Sam. I'm just gonna collect a few more and then get Brooke and Lizzie to respond to all of them collectively. So Inga, you had a question. Do you wanna elevate our pitch, ask it live? Yes, thanks so much, Amanda. My internet is still quite unstable. So I'm just going to be a voice out of the office, sorry. So first of all, thanks very much. This event is great. And it's such an interesting conversation to follow. I have a question for Lizzie and Brooke, but I think they addressed the same aspect because so far we've been talking about the media but what I've come to realize or what was basically clear for me from the first day was that it's obviously very different media outlets. So my work focuses mostly on Libya. And then in addition, I look at like terrorist groups and Islamists in Libya. So it's super politicized but not necessarily here in the UK or Germany or America but in the Gulf, like the Arab Gulf. So are there certain media outlets, Lizzie, that the School of Security Studies generally advises against engaging with? Like I, for example, have decided never to talk to Russian media but then Al Jazeera, yeah, I did once but the questions were biased definitely. And then for Brooke, what might be good media outlets for young researchers who are approached by various types to engage with first? Like definitely English speaking, definitely public or private radio versus television. Maybe just a general feeling. There will be really helpful things. Great. And before I hand the floor over to final elevator pitch question, I know we've gone over, but hopefully people who are interested will stay on is we have one from Marilyn who asks really about trust, right? So Brooke in particular, you mentioned the amazing candor you get in focus groups from people who foster trust with you. How do you build that trust, particularly in male dominated spaces or where you might be speaking to a lot of men does gender come into play in the broader of building trust within your research body or research community? And then for Brooke and Lizzie to really share of how do you build trust with the media? If you just can have some quick reflections on that, we'll give the floor over to you before we close and plan a part two, I think. So Brooke, do you wanna respond first? Okay, I will do my best. Interesting questions and Sam, thank you for raising this book to my awareness. I wasn't aware of the arguments in that book around cultural attitudes towards power, but I have to say that I can feel it happening when I give my responses. And even if I can't always say them, I still have all of the different, well, it's complicated and different caveats in my head. And it's almost like a physical pull when I am trying to distill things down to bullet points to have that responsible approach. And I think that as you engage further and further and more and more, they sometimes end up giving you longer or different opportunities to have longer discussions or different discussions. And that's where you can really pull it in, but it is almost like a physical weight trying to balance what could be a very strong point if the media got it and had a headline around it. But actually there's so much around it that dilutes the power of that point if they're going to use it in a responsible way. So other than saying, I'm really glad you brought this to my attention. I think that there are gender differences and I do think that there are cultural differences as well in terms of what is evidence, what is interesting evidence and what role does it have to play in these media conversations. Inga, a really great question and Lizzie, I think it would be a wonderful resource if we had without telling people what to do, but maybe a little bit of a document or some kind of understanding of the different ways in which different media organizations are funded. I know I've been invited to Voice of America. I've done quite a few international engagements and while in some senses I could make rules for myself. So if you show beheadings, I don't want to engage with you type of rule. I wasn't ever quite sure who was funding that media organization and it's for me to decide, but not knowing it and not having the time to find it. And it can be a little, how well respected are they? I don't know if there's some kind of scale in terms of impact or how well respected they are, but I think it's a really, really important point. And sometimes it's about thinking about the audiences you want to reach because the media are using us to legitimize what they're trying to say and do, but we can also use them to reach audiences who might find what we have to say useful or helpful. So it's a little bit of a symbiotic relationship. And at the end of the day, they need you and they need experts to fill that 24 hour news cycle so you can shape that conversation a bit more. And even if you don't answer the question they've asked, you can kind of take it in a different direction. Marilyn, how to build trust with the research processes? I think it just happened by accident, perhaps with some of the psychological approaches. We have a very ethics-based approach and very clear guidance around how conversations and identity are treated and protected. But again, I think it was that Thelma and Louise type behavior, hopefully not all of the behavior in Thelma and Louise, that Julia and I engaged in where we actually didn't just take the information from them and say thanks a lot and never speak to them again. We fed it back directly to them and then as I matured in my career, I started sitting and engaging with different advisory boards and I can feed that information in and they can actually see the government guidance and planning assumptions changing because of our research that was built upon what they told us and what they shared and their experiences. So I think it's just being able to share that, engage in that feedback loop. In terms of building trust with the media, their people wear people too. I'm being very honest about the reasons I'm not engaging right now. I'm not just saying I don't wanna talk to you. But before COVID, I would say that I always tried to respect that they have a hard job to do, a difficult job to do with not a lot of time to do it. And I always tried to respond and at least say no, tell them no or manage the timings or respond to them in some way. At the moment, they're texting me, they're finding me on WhatsApp, they're finding me on LinkedIn, Lizzie's getting it in the neck, they're calling me, they are finding every way that they can to get to me. And it's not that I don't want to engage, it's that I just don't think that I can stretch that. I'll admit I went to bed at five in the morning because I was working this morning. So there's just too much to do and to do it responsibly. So I am, when I speak to them, very open and very honest. And they also, I think, no, now that I've engaged so often, that I base what I say on evidence, I try to be responsible. I'm willing to consider other points of view and I can have a conversation with them. Yeah, so I'll just quickly come in. Just on Ingo's points. So we do sometimes pitch to international publications. We're more likely to national. So it's something that we need to, as Brooke said, perhaps come up with some guidance around funding and kind of audience and what they're, the ins and outs of some of these international publications. But I think Al Jazeera is well respected. I've been interested, Ingo, at some point to hear what experience you have with them. One person that you might want to reach out to is Andreas Krieg from DSD because he's often in Al Jazeera and he speaks a lot on kind of golf news and things. So he will have a good idea of other publications out there. One that we have engaged with which I think they're UK based actually and I actually know a personal contact there is Middle East Eye and they've been quite good at helping and supporting and putting our stuff out. They're not obviously mainstream though. And just in terms of media and being able to trust them, well, it's kind of in their interest to treat us with respect and to actually not undermine relations with us. So in most of the time that I've worked with journalists and academics they don't go out of their way to do anything dodgy or to try and undermine your work. Where I've seen it work the best is you've done a research paper or something they're really interested. Then you have a conversation with them and you talk it through and you say how you want your research to be presented, what the quotes are. You want to see a copy beforehand before they put it out and you really work closely with them on it especially the sensitivities around it. And we can help broker that sort of working relationship. So if you want to say to them these are my terms and conditions with working with this journalist we can have that conversation with the journalist and say look, it was one guy actually he was moving to a civil service job after his job at Kings and there were certain things he couldn't say and there was certain words he had to frame it. So we just made it very clear to the journalist that that was how it was and they had to work around that. And if they're interested enough in the research then they will do. And you don't need to give them your number. I mean, Paul Brook obviously is being handed by journalists but if you want to give them your number that's absolutely fine. They will come back to you at some point probably. And if you want that opportunity that's great but otherwise if you don't feel comfortable with that then you don't need to, at the moment being able to do things over Zoom and other platforms is really helpful because you don't have to give them your number you don't have to phone in. So yeah, I would say just you decide how you want to treat that relationship and make sure it's watertight and usually things are fine. We haven't had much engagement with tabloid journalists there is the occasional one I found people are less likely academics are less likely wanting to engage with them but it's still worth bearing in mind because they do reach a different audience from their mainstream, the sort of broadsheet outlets and it's important for us to engage with those audiences as well and they are quite interested in security and defense issues often. So it's probably worth just doing a press release or they're not gonna misquote you essentially and if your research is in the public domain anyway they can jump in and look at your research and use it anyway. So you may not want to kind of have a conversation with them or engage with them sort of interview setup but putting a press release out including tabloid outlets on the media list I think is always worth doing, yeah. Some amazing reflections and what a great discussion I think that we definitely need to have a part two with this. And I think for anyone who's listening or who hears the recording to definitely get in touch with Lizzie or the comms team for broader support, right? Like you've mentioned helping with press releases or just kind of broader media tips and media engagement I think that's the first instance for all of us female, male, early career, BAME whatever you wanna get involved in the media contact Lizzie, I'm giving Lizzie your contact details get in touch with Lizzie or the comms team to support. Sarah with WeWIP has also mentioned in the chat box that WeWIP is running some fantastic and important workshops and activities around confidence building mentorship but also broader media engagement too. So and she helpfully has the Twitter and email contact that you can get in contact with WeWIP. Yeah, and then keep the conversation going pop me an email, pop Lizzie an email, Sarah an email if you have further questions or interest in more elaborating on how two tips or practicalities around all of this we'd be interested in hearing from you and having another platform that supports you. So thank you so much for all of you who tuned in. Very huge thank you to Brooke and Lizzie for your time and sharing your expertise and Sarah for being an amazing co-host in supporting this. So a quiet round of applause for everyone. It was a real pleasure. So thank you. I always love engaging with y'all. Yeah, same here, do get in touch.