Review Reports - Red Cross Presence and Prominence in Spanish Headlines during the First 100 Days of War in Ukraine

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of Social Sciences socsci-2193375 “Red Cross headlines in the Spanish press in the first 100 days of the war in Ukraine”

This study uses a content analysis of Spanish print media stories about the Red Cross role in Ukraine in the 100 days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The purpose as the authors present it is to understand the relationship between the media coverage of the Red Cross and the mission of the Red Cross as an impartial provider of emergency services and defender of human rights. In other words, does the media help to explain the work of the Red Cross in wartime? The authors conclude it does not, and that there are missed opportunities for the Red Cross to communicate its brand and activities (although the authors don’t explain how the Red Cross even has control over this outcome).

I see some value in this enquiry. The Red Cross is an interesting voluntary sector organization since it is the only humanitarian organization globally that is regularly written into international treaty law, so really enjoys massive brand recognition as well as unique status as a charity. A research article on the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems topical and of potential interest to readers.

However, there are some substantial weaknesses in the manuscript that should be addressed. I believe a full rewriting of the manuscript will be required. Specifically: (1) The needs for editing for grammar and clarity throughout the manuscript. I found it hard to follow the author’s meaning in many parts of the manuscript. (2) The “why should we care?” argument seems normatively driven -- both the argument that the media has a public service mission and therefore a public obligation to “get it right” and also the argument that Spanish charities have missions of human rights action. I don’t buy either of these claims. They seem like editorializing to me. Another example is on page 4 where the author argues that press has an “ethical” obligation to verify information. I don’t think I am being overly cynical in arguing that actually, great amounts of today’s media only have an obligation to their owners and shareholders to sell content, whether or not that content is accurate. Perhaps if the author feels differently they might identify those media outlets under analysis that they feel meet the ethical obligation of accuracy and also tell the reader if their analysis only covers this kind of media or instead, whether some of the outlets they analyze are more in the “Rupert Murdoch” family of commercial content sale.

I think there is a way to present the research question more objectively, by for example, tying the media behavior the author finds to probable outcomes. The author might argue that misleading use of a charity’s name has a moral hazard impact on both the charity in question and in the entire voluntary sector (because the public trust in charities will erode). It may also cause more and more of the media – including those parts of the media which do follow ethical practices of information accuracy – to be distrusted by the public. So the author’s argument becomes less normative and more instrumental – it’s not about the failure of media ethics but rather what happens when charity information is not accurate or focused on the charity’s purposes. This is a different approach than the one the authors take, which is focused on whether the media is using the “brand terminology” of the Red Cross in their coverage. More on this below.

A key question I have here is whether the author would find it helpful to separate how the charity engages with the media versus how the media (or its advertisers and consumers such as corporations) engages with the charity. After all, who has control over the content matters. Were some of the content originated in press releases? What part of the content involved original reportage? What part involved op/eds?

Finally, there is an enormous amount of over-generalizing throughout the manuscript but especially evident in the early, “framing” parts of the manuscript. An example is here, in the beginning of Section 2: Theoretical framework, where the author suggests that third-sector organisations are mostly organized around “the defence of human rights”. This argument is extended at the beginning of subsection 2.2, where “the third sector in Spain” is described as “a complementary means of actin …to reduce inequality… etc.”. That’s just not true, statistically. The third sector in Spain – if not globally – is much more diverse and includes a lot of non-human-rights oriented public benefit work alongside a lot of associational, mutual benefit (and NOT public benefit) work such as sports clubs.

Additional comments and questions:

First sentence of abstract ….why?? What’s the research gap?

Abstract generally could be edited for greater clarity. Example: “…the second focused on the description and interpretation of the informative development of the sample”. Also, method needs explaining, and also the focus on the Spanish context needs mentioning.

The major finding is that the name of the Red Cross is used for other purposes. Is that surprising? The author writes that “the relationship between the Red Cross and the written press has not served, to the expected degree, to explain the work of the institution in the war”. What was expected and by whom? Is this a normative expectation? Instrumental? It seems more normative than instrumental to me, because the author also argues the media has a public service function. This expectation of the media seems over generalized when we know some parts of the media do not view themselves that way at all, and are essentially producing content for money regardless of the public service value of that content (and “public service” is in itself a values-driven term on which good people may agree about what is public service and what is not).

I am not an expert in media studies, but for those who are, are the forms of media covered in this analysis inclusive enough to achieve the level of reliability and generalizability they would expect? They seem all to be printed press, rather than social media or televised/digital media.

Introduction: I would remove the first sentence.

Page 3, in the description of the Red Cross, the author accurately notes the “weight” the International Society of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies play as a “powerful agent of geopolitics”. This is an important point. But it would also help to observe the unique role (as a non-governmental institution) that the ICRC plays in international treaty signing. In many (most? All?) parts of the world, the Red Cross is unique in being able to participate in treaties by name. More here https://www.icrc.org/en/document/treaties-and-customary-law

In footnote 1, the term “notorious” in UK and North American contexts has a negative connotation rather than just meaning “famous”. Did the author mean to describe a negative connotation? If the author was just mentioning how well-known the Red Cross is, I believe there’s a marketing study somewhere that demonstrates the Red Cross logo is one of the most recognized globally (as much or more than Apple, Coke, IKEA, etc.

In the Material and Methods section, a number of potential selection biases could occur with this sampling approach and need to be discussed. Recency bias, same source bias, single source bias (does Onclusive cover all media outlets in Spain? What about social media?).

Why were publications in which only 1 or 2 articles appeared excluded?

Did the authors perform any kind of confirmatory analysis or other verification exercise to determine whether their exclusion of articles without “Red Cross” in the headline introduced selection bias?

What kind of “thematic content analysis” was performed? There are rules to content analyses, from both the qualitative and systematic literature review methodology experts. For example, there is a difference between a thematic content analysis using open coding (you describe what you find) versus purposive coding (you start with particular questions in mind, such as the timing of the article, the gender of the article’s author, or other specific goals). The authors here appear to be interested in purposive coding since they seem interested in matching the article coverage to the Red Cross mission and values.

But here, I am really stuck on why the authors decided to compare the media content against the Red Cross mission. I have written about the Red Cross several times in my academic career and don’t ever recall finding and (more importantly) purposefully USING the Red Cross’s own terminology in my writing. So I think the authors need to defend this choice better. Why is it important to verify that media coverage uses the charity’s own terminology? What does that accomplish?

The conclusion needs some additional work but succeeded for me better than the earlier material. There are many valid takeaways and suggestions here, but they need a little more effort. And the “Limitations” section also needs more effort.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your contributions to improve the text. Please find attached a report which addresses in detail all the questions or suggestions raised. We hope that the result will be as you expected.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript. I am attaching the manuscript with my comments to assist you in revisions. This is a very interesting topic, one that many people would be quite interested in. However, there are major issues in the paper that must be addressed during revision.

First, while you present quite a bit of literature in 2. Theoretical Framework, there are no connectors between the various literature you present. Moreover, you have not combined these in any way to provide for the reader how these work together as your theoretical framework.

Second, please provide for the reader reasons why coverage of the Red Cross in the media should be expected to spike during the first 100 days of the war, with a concomitant reduction in other types of coverage. In addition, why do you expect this coverage to be so prominent in Spain? This is not clear from your discussion.

Third, please provide more information on why you reduced the data set as you did. I have provided examples of this in the attached manuscript.

Fourth, what have we learned from your results? Please provide a more robust discussion section.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting, but the theoretical framework needs to be broadened, so that there is also a greater diversity of sources and references.

It is considered that the following sources should be included:

On the relation between the participation in political forums and blogs and the tracking of political information in professional media: Temporal analysis 2011-2016

Ana Castillo Díaz, Antonio Castillo Esparcia

El profesional de la información, ISSN 1699-2407, Vol. 27, Nº 6, 2018 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Información política y redes sociales (II)), págs. 1248-1256

ARÉVALO MARTÍNEZ, R. I. Y HERLINDA ORTIZ, H. (2018). Comparativo de modelos de relaciones públicas en organizaciones del tercer sector de México, Chile, Inglaterra y España. Revista Internacional de RelacionesPúblicas, Vol. VIII, Nº 15,85-106. http://dx.doi.org/10.5783/RIRP-15-2018-06-85-106.

Movimientos sociales y estrategias de comunicación. El caso del 15-M y de Occupy Wall Street

Antonio Castillo Esparcia, Damián García Ponce, Emilia Smolak Lozano

Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico, ISSN-e 1134-1629, Nº 19, 1, 2013, págs. 71-89

Ana Almansa-Martínez, Leticia Quintana y Antonio Castillo Esparcia (2023). Media and Citizen Mobilization: The Case of NGOs in European Union, en Communication and Applied Technologies. Springer

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

In this revised and resubmitted manuscript, the authors have performed what I would characterize as a “light edit” of the text overall. They have addressed some but not all of my suggestions. Most of my concerns expressed in the first draft remain, but I will repeat just one single central concern as a scholar of the voluntary sector: I found the treatment of the ”third sector” to be over-generalized and normative (meaning, based on assumptions about how the sector should behave rather than how it does behave). An example is on pages 4-5 where NGO activity is described in overly generalized terms regarding its public policy activities. Third sector scholars approach any research on the sector with attention to the enormous diversity of the sector – diversity in revenue streams, missions, orientation toward public policy, activities, approaches to public ethics, and approaches to media relations. The authors could fix this over-generalization by focusing only on those humanitarian NGOs similar to the Red Cross (such as in Section 2.2), and by bringing in the appropriate citations from third sector literature. The normative tone in sections 2.2 and 2.3 is especially strong. From my perspective as a Red Cross donor and observor (admittedly from another country) the only public statements I see my own national Red Cross making in the press regarding Ukraine relief is to ask for more donations. I do not (and have never, in my recollection) seen the Red Cross use the media to make statements about geopolitics. So I am puzzled about where this idea comes from. Perhaps it is country-specific? It certainly seems fundamentally contrary to the “neutrality” mission of the Red Cross or the way it wants to portray itself as a humanitarian organization that attempts to AVOID accusations of meddling in politics or any other form of political partisanship. Again, there are elements of this research that I like very much. It is timely and interesting. There is not much research on the Red Cross and media relations in my country. However, the limitations of the research outweigh the strengths. I hope the authors take the opportunity to use solid reviewer feedback to strengthen the manuscript further.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf