The Role of Networked Narratives in Amplifying or Mitigating Intergroup Prejudice: A YouTube Case Study
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis article is intriguing and is a nice piece illustrating the potential for doing research on YouTube comments. It is good to see the extensive theoretical discussion.
The methodology itself is appealing, and the findings could be important to our understanding of the effects of the impersonal, anonymous interactions we have on the internet. Nevertheless, I am recommending this article for substantial revision and resubmission for three reasons:
(1) The finding on positive acceptance (major). The paper makes a major point of how exposure to a trusted channel can influence positive acceptance of cultural outgroups. If true, it identifies a way in which intergroup contact theory can work in an online setting where there is no direct contact between parties. However, I find the results inconclusive. The key finding appears to be mentioned only among the Ugyhurs (Sec. 5.1), and the viewership patterns described in Section 5 appear to vary by video, thus opening up the possibility that the Ugyhur video may have alternative explanations, i.e., that individuals already have predispositions toward the group when they come to the video, which is why they were searching for Ugyhurs in the first place. I realize I’m setting a high bar here on what might be viewed as a natural experiment, but there may be two ways to make the results more convincing looking more for patterns among differing viewing levels across all groups by common traffic source, geography, and search trend, perhaps similar to what you did in Table 3. Perhaps you already did this toward the end of the second paragraph in 5.1, but by burying this in the discussion of the Uyghurs it implies that this point only pertains to those searching for Uyghurs and is not a general conclusion as implied in the abstract.
(2) How trust is defined (major). It is unclear to me how you establish that an online channel is trusted. This point is not about the theory, but methodology. How can you establish trust with this data.
(3) Format (minor). This paper is quite dense and the argument is sometimes hard to find. Two comments here. First, it appears there are two lit reviews here, one for intergroup contact theory at the beginning and the other trust and networked narrative at the end. Second, it is hard to trace the argument as you work through the results. One possible solution: Make the first line of each paragraph in Sections 4 and 5 written in a way that highlights the theoretical point.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We are deeply grateful for your time and thoughtful review, which have been invaluable in refining our work. Please see the attachment for the details.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe text presents an important topic of analysis on user participation in social-digital platforms regarding emotions and cultural and ethnic stigmas, with which the researchers also present an analysis method based on the use of AI to collect information from user comments and participation in the channel. In this way, the proposal is novel in methodological terms and helps in the assessment and creation of future content to combat hate speech due to racial and cultural differences.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We are deeply grateful for your time, thoughtful review and generous support. Please see the attachment for the details.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Editor and Author(s),
Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Does YouTube Amplify or Mitigate Intergroup Prejudice? The Role of Networked Narrative in Shaping Sentiments Towards Ethnic Neighbourhoods”. The manuscript explores the impact of social media on prejudice. In particular, it examines whether digital media content reduces or exacerbates intergroup prejudice between different ethnic groups.
The topic of this paper is interesting and worthy of publication. In particular, the value of the article is that it is practical research using an experiment that is rarely the subject of academic research. The paper's structure is logical and predictable, contributing to its readability. However, a scientific paper should be written correctly with a good structure, justification of the topic choice, formulation of a research objective and a research question, good methodology chapter, findings, discussion and conclusion chapters. To make this paper publishable, the author needs to respond to the following substantive points:
1. The abstract is well written. However, the purpose of the article is missing.
2. In the introduction, the author(s) write: “The purpose of this research is to build on intergroup contact theory in the context of networked narrative theory and reflect on the digital context to understand how…(…)” (line 126) but in another place we have: “ the purpose of our research: to achieve a reduction in prejudice and foster empathy formation, ultimately leading to intergroup empathy and friendship” (line 265). So what is the purpose of the article and what was the main purpose of the research project conducting from 2017? I suggest that the authors reorganise the article because the theoretical part is mixed with the research part. There should be a separate chapter like Materials and Methods and Result.
3. In the Theoretical Background chapter is also mixed with a discussion of practical research (e.g. line214, 246). The whole research process, and individual stages (action research project, a comparative case analysis, data analysis..) should be in the methodological chapter. A diagram/graph of the authors' steps would help to understand the different stages.
4. Research Site - chapter should be named Material and Methods and be extended with a description of the entire research process.
5. Chapter 4 and 5 describe the research results but there is no clear, precise answer to the question asked in the title: “Does YouTube Amplify or Mitigate Intergroup Prejudice? or at the beginning of the introduction: “Can digital media content reduce intergroup prejudice among ethnic groups, or does it exacerbate hate?”
6. Technical issue: Image 3 in line797 should number 4
Overall, the topic is very interesting but the manuscript requires some methodological improvement.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We are deeply grateful for your time and thoughtful review, which have been invaluable in refining our work. Please see the attachment for the details.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe improvements to this article were impressive. I particularly like the continued attention to a two-stage methodology, which allows the reader to make a clear distinction between the quantitative aspects of the article and those where the conclusions are more subjective. Has me wondering if I should assign this in research methods class. . .
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAfter reviewing the revised article and the authors' responses again, I believe the article is now suitable for publication. The authors have taken into account all my suggestions and comments.
