Agenda-Setting Dynamics during COVID-19: Who Leads and Who Follows?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting piece of work and engages with a timely topic, namely with the examination of the relationship between the social media and online media's coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic during the first wave in Latvia. It makes use of the theoretical framework of intermedia agenda-setting to analyse through a content analysis research design stories in national newspapers as well as social media. It provides a good overview of agenda-setting theory and its evolution, and attempts to connect this with the empirical work. 

However, there are many problems here and major revision is required before it is ready for publication. Some sentences could be improved and written in a more academic manner, adding more information, detail and depth, instead of the current vagueness (i.e. "The mankind is facing its challenges....", Pg. 2 "We tried to advance existing literature in two regards: to examine the content of Covid-19 information flow in a country in Central Eastern Europe....". ). It is also not clear what the argument and intellectual framework here is, and this could be strengthened. 

Moreover, the article feels a bit thin and there is room for expansion in the engagement with the theories - which is good, but can be more critical and better connected to the argument and the findings - as well as in the methods section and in the 'findings and discussion' part. There is a good research design, but this needs to be better explained to the reader, including the approach to quantitative content analysis as well as further clarification on what articles where chosen in which newspapers (to be included in the appendices) as well as the collection of data from social media. This needs to be explained more clearly, with the research questions included here also and not in the section above. 

The findings and discussion also need to be improved and explored further. There are some good results here, but these are presented in a very condensed manner, with many graphs in the middle of the text which take up space for discussion and interpretation of the results. What do these results actually mean? Has social media had an influence in shaping the online media agenda (as was previously explored in the theoretical part on the public having more space to shape public opinion in the digital age)? These questions were not clearly answered in the discussion of the findings, and could also be further developed for the conclusion, which also felt very short and condensed. 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Dr./Mr./Ms,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript “AGENDA-SETTING DYNAMICS DURING COVID-19: WHO LEADS AND WHO FOLLOWS? to the Journal “Social Sciences”. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of your suggestions. We have used Track changes tools to highlight the changes within the manuscript.

Here is a point-by-point response:

Comment 1: Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Response: We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have made revisions providing only the citations that are relevant.

Comment 2: Some sentences could be improved and written in a more academic manner, adding more information, detail and depth, instead of the current vagueness (i.e. "The mankind is facing its challenges....", Pg. 2 "We tried to advance existing literature in two regards: to examine the content of Covid-19 information flow in a country in Central Eastern Europe....". ). It is also not clear what the argument and intellectual framework here is, and this could be strengthened

Response: Agree. We have revised the above-mentioned sentences and tried to provide more clear intermedia agenda-setting framework.

Comment: 3: There are some good results here, but these are presented in a very condensed manner, with many graphs in the middle of the text which take up space for discussion and interpretation of the results. What do these results actually mean? Has social media had an influence in shaping the online media agenda (as was previously explored in the theoretical part on the public having more space to shape public opinion in the digital age)? These questions were not clearly answered in the discussion of the findings, and could also be further developed for the conclusion, which also felt very short and condensed. 

Response: We have revised Conclusion section to address these concerns. The revision of theoretical part has also helped to make our conclusions more relevant.

 

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article compares the categories within which the pandemic was discussed in official news organizations’ websites and in Twitter, and also examines whether it can be inferred that news articles predict Twitter posts or vice versa. Thus, a discussion on the role on mass media as agenda –setters within social networks is implemented on a specific Eastern-European case study. The authors state the manuscript’s goals very clearly. The literature review on agenda setting is very good albeit overly journalism-studies-oriented. The results are presented clearly as far as I, a qualitative researcher, can assess, except the final figure, which I think is flowed. The Conclusion part is a bit too narrow and lacks some wider theoretical framing. The article’s focus on a non-Western-European / North-American country is conducive to comparative studies. All-in-all, I find the article refreshingly clear and focused, and strongly recommend its publication under condition of revising the two major issues.

·       FIGURE 5, maybe MAJOR: I am a qualitative researcher, so if I am completely wrong please ignore this comment, but it seems strange that a graph with a flat line below the X axis represents a proof that Twitter posts predict new articles.

Conclusions, Major: The introduction and literature review made me expect a more nuanced discussion of agenda-setting as found in the Latvian case versus the existing theories. The conclusions section is very short, and mainly summarizes the findings. My PDF word count extension is malfunctioning so I do not know how much words the authors have left, but I suggest allowing them the space if possible as it will add theoretical value to the article.

In general, if the Authors have reached their word limitation, I suggest cutting parts of the agenda-setting literature review (not complete sections of it but less details and references in each section).

·       Literature review, Minor: The authors seem to be well versed in journalism theories, but I suggest that for readers of other expertizes a clear distinction should be made between agenda-setting and position affecting. The authors give the right definition when they write that the media affects the importance of topics (and not the public view of right or wrong concerning these topics) but later some of what the authors write suggests that the media is expected to set the public stance on subjects. As Mccombs and Shaw (1972) cite Cohen – “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its leaders what to think about”.

·       L57-58 Minor: Characterizing all social networks the same is too general. Twitter does not act like Facebook, LinkedIn or Weibo. Benkler (2012), for example found that most news stories shared on Facebook originate in news organizations, and are not the product of “Citizens Journalism”. This is not my main field so I cannot give a more updated reference. I suggest the authors should relate specifically to Twitter as soon as possible in the article.

·       Introduction/Literature review, Minor: The separation between social networks and news organization is somewhat artificial, especially when discussing Twitter. Some researchers regard Twitter to be the favorite social network for journalists, politicians and social activists (Hedman, 2020; Molyneux & Mourau, 2019). You should discuss this in your research. First of all, I assume that the number of posts uploaded by news organization’s official Twitter accounts is miniscule comparing to the total number of Tweets. Second, journalists posting on Twitter may be considered as representing themselves and not their organizations, therefore their posts can be counted as user-generated content. 

·       L1 Grammar: “The Mankind” sounds wrong. Mankind, Humanity (more gender neutral)…

 

·       L29 Typo: “Theses” should be these

·       L57 grammar: Should be “that social media can provide”

·       L88 typo “un deals”?

·       L246 – Grammer

There are more grammar issues which I didn't mark while reading and therefore cannot list here. You should submit the article to moderate editing in my opinion. 

 

Benkler, Y. (2012). A free irresponsible press: Wikileaks and the battle over the soul of the networked Fourth Estate. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 47(1), 311–397.

 

Hedman, Ulrika. 2020. Making the most of Twitter: How technological affordances influence Swedish journalists’ self-branding. Journalism 21(5): 670-687.

 

Molyneux, Logan. and Rachel R. Mourao. 2019. Political journalists’ normalization of Twitter: Interaction and new affordances. Journalism Studies 20(2): 248-266.

Author Response

Dear Dr./Mr./Ms,

 

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript “AGENDA-SETTING DYNAMICS DURING COVID-19: WHO LEADS AND WHO FOLLOWS? to the Journal “Social Sciences”. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of your suggestions. We have used Track changes tools to highlight the changes within the manuscript.

Here is a point-by-point response:

Comment 1: Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

Response: Agree. We have reconsidered the Conclusion section to address these concerns. The revision of the theoretical part has also helped to make our conclusions more accurate.

Comment 2: The Conclusion part is a bit too narrow and lacks some wider theoretical framing.

Response: Agree. We have put an extra effort to widen theoretical framing in the Conclusion part.

Comment: 3: I am a qualitative researcher, so if I am completely wrong please ignore this comment, but it seems strange that a graph with a flat line below the X axis represents a proof that Twitter posts predict new articles.

Response: We had some time to redo out data analyses and found more evidence that online news media articles can Granger-cause social media posts.

Comment 4: Literature review, Minor: The authors seem to be well versed in journalism theories, but I suggest that for readers of other expertizes a clear distinction should be made between agenda-setting and position affecting. The authors give the right definition when they write that the media affects the importance of topics (and not the public view of right or wrong concerning these topics) but later some of what the authors write suggests that the media is expected to set the public stance on subjects. As Mccombs and Shaw (1972) cite Cohen – “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its leaders what to think about”.

Response: We revised the theoretical part to address these concerns.

Comment 5: Characterizing all social networks the same is too general. Twitter does not act like Facebook, LinkedIn or Weibo. Benkler (2012), for example found that most news stories shared on Facebook originate in news organizations, and are not the product of “Citizens Journalism”. This is not my main field so I cannot give a more updated reference. I suggest the authors should relate specifically to Twitter as soon as possible in the article.

Response: We took into consideration your concerns and did additional steps to review Twitter data. We’ve removed all Twitter posts that were published by news media organizations to make our data more reliable.

 

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors of this paper used a very current and highly publicized topic of COVID-19 pandemic to verify (and confirm) new theories regarding agenda setting. They refer to new knowledge about the power of social media and its influence on the agenda of traditional media and on public discourse. They verify this by comparing the topics of social media posts and online news media articles.

It is necessary to appreciate the high erudition and research competence of the authors, which can be seen in their precise and up-to-date literature search, in their thorough methodological procedure and in the use of appropriate statistical methods.

The huge research sample (more than 45,000 news articles and more than 46,000 tweets) should also be appreciated. Ten percent of this sample was processed manually by the authors in preliminary research, with the rest they worked with computer software.

The conclusions reached by the authors are very clear, revealing and believable. It should be noted that the authors significantly contributed to confirming the predictability of the media agenda based on the public agenda. Their text is very significant in this sense and deserves wide professional attention.

The authors confirmed that the public agenda influences media agendas more than vice versa and that it is important to re-examine the foundations of famous media theories and to question how the public media and politics interact in the new context.

However, a follow-up qualitative research would be requested, which would further examine whether it is possible to talk about the "agenda setting power of social media". The question of whether social media only reacts faster to social movements and predicts the upcoming agenda of traditional media, or actually causes it, remains not fully answered.

I have a few small comments about the text:

-       - Line 183: the % character is missing at the number 0.03;

-       - Fig. 3: it would be better if the y-axis were not absolute numbers (n), but proportions (%);

-       - Line 294: p > 0.05 is written wrong way around (it should be p < 0.05);

-       - Line 338: the authors state a research period of 3.5 months, but from January 30 to June 10 is 4.5 months.

 

Author Response

Dear Dr./Mr./Ms,

 

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript “AGENDA-SETTING DYNAMICS DURING COVID-19: WHO LEADS AND WHO FOLLOWS? to the Journal “Social Sciences”. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of your suggestions. We have used Track changes tools to highlight the changes within the manuscript.

Here is a point-by-point response:

Comment 1: However, a follow-up qualitative research would be requested, which would further examine whether it is possible to talk about the "agenda setting power of social media". The question of whether social media only reacts faster to social movements and predicts the upcoming agenda of traditional media, or actually causes it, remains not fully answered.

Response: Thank you for your considerations. As we found strong evidence that traditional media posses power to set the media agenda and only to some extent the power has given to social media, the power balance has been unchanged.

Comment 2:

- Line 183: the % character is missing at the number 0.03;

-       - Fig. 3: it would be better if the y-axis were not absolute numbers (n), but proportions (%);

-       - Line 294: p > 0.05 is written wrong way around (it should be p < 0.05);

-       - Line 338: the authors state a research period of 3.5 months, but from January 30 to June 10 is 4.5 months.

Response: Thank you!

 

 

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your letter addressing my comments. This is a much improved chapter.

Reviewer 2 Report

The change in the results is a bit surprising, but again, I am not a quantitative researcher so I am not capable of judging the quality of the authors' statistical analysis or their use of statistical models. The authors present the results very clearly and the article as a whole is very clear.

One last suggestion that does not withhold publication - I would suggest using the same terminology in the literature review and discussion and conclusion sections to increase the article's cohesiveness and relatability to other works. I think the terms "first level agenda setting" and "intermedia agenda setting" can be easily applied in the discussion and conclusion section, please do so. For example, I think that RQ 1 and 2 compare "first level" agenda setting between social networks and traditional media in that they look at issues (and not their attributes). RQ3 deals with intermedia agenda-setting. Suggestion of future research can be to delve deeper into the content to study second level agenda setting. I.e. analyze attributes of same issues. This way your conclusions will be more clearly connected to existing research and your contribution will be easier to identify and use.