A Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Texts on the Science of Crude Oil Refining in Nigeria

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer’s report

1.       The author wrote: ‘Nothing contributes to Nigeria’s dependence on imported petroleum products than inadequate knowledge in the science of crude oil refining.’ This is misleading. Nigeria has four refineries. Their problem is squarely due to mismanagement. Nigeria’s dependence on imported petroleum products has nothing to do with “inadequate knowledge”.

2.     The author should replace such unscholarly terms like “hysteria”, “outrageous”, “disheartening”, “disgust”, “journalistic excesses”, etc         

3.     The sentence in Lines 27-42 is rather too long and quite stressful to follow. The author should break it into two.

4.       It is not clear what the question(s) that this paper aimed addressed. The authors should clearly outline the research problem(s) that undergirds this paper. I am not sure I deciphered what it is that this paper intends to address.

5.       I find it curious that there is no single citation in the introduction.

6.       The theoretical framework is not well developed to illuminate the issues that form the focus of this paper. In section 3.0, there is no theory as far as I can deduce;

7.       In line 271, the author cannot be talking about “emerging insights on how to write a qualitative paper” and his reference is a paper written in 2001, that is, 21years ago.

8.       The section on methods is quite undeveloped. The authors did not provide:

a.       justification for choosing 11 newspapers out of all the newspapers in Nigeria as well as justification for the particular newspapers chosen;

b.       the timeframe for the newspapers chosen;

c.       the criteria for choosing relevant texts and materials;

d.       explanation on the analytical method.

9.       Additionally, the author should provide rationale for their decision to choose only “…a reporter and insights from a study by an atmospheric scientist… .” Is one interviewee enough to develop insight on the subject matter? Is one scientist adequate to offer insights?

10.   The analysis lacks rigor even in the most basic form. The reason could be because the author did not extract robust data from the newspapers. Additionally, I did not see any evidence of interview purportedly held with a reporter or insights from as atmospheric scientist in the analysis.

11.   The author should improve the section on literature review by searching for, and including current works on artisanal refining. There are several of such works and they are not captured in this Paper.

Author Response

Please  find the attached file for our response.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1.      The abstract lacks the central thesis of the paper. After the preambles, thesis statement supposed to come. This should come before the beginning of line 9

2.      There should be the time frame of the study. The issue of oil exploration spans a period of over 50 years. Therefore, be specific of the time frame and justify it.

 3.      Line 62 Peoples Democratic Party, not People

4.      Since the emphasis on lines 62, 63, 64, and 65 are on the journalist, the name of the journalist should be cited not just the newspaper.

5.      The interview with the Scientist (line 472) not well cited and referenced. The same the editorial writer (Line 410).

6.      The instruments for data collection need to be properly described and explain the method of administration.

Author Response

Please find the attached file for our response.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer’s report – Journalism and Media

Title of Paper: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Texts on Science of Crude Oil Refining in Nigeria

1. Let me thank the authors for their efforts in revising the paper. However, the efforts are not yet sufficient to justify the publication of the paper. The weaknesses of the paper, as outlined hereunder, should be painstakingly addressed. There are two major areas that the authors must pay serious attention to.

2. The first is the literature review. I expected the review of literature to be in line with the focus of the paper as captured in the abstract. This is not the case. Therefore, I expect the authors to touch on critical issues in the literature review section relating to:

a. artisanal refining generally; 

b. government’s contradictory policies that oscillate between stopping artisanal refining through clampdowns by multi-agency taskforce, and unfulfilled promises to set up cooperatives for artisanal refiners; 

c. the lingering fuel subsidy; 

d. I could not find where the authors explained what they mean by “lay readers”, and “latent and manifest views”. These are important variables that must be explained and operationalized.

As the literature review is, I think it only reviewed issues relating to journalists and their seeming pandering to politicians and bureaucrats.

3. The methodology section is very weak.

4. The authors merely provided references without addressing the critical methodological issues raised. The authors should clearly address the following:

a. There are over one hundred online and offline newspapers in the country, including newspapers in indigenous languages. Yet the authors chose only four newspapers (Vanguard, Daily Sun, This Day and Punch). What informed this choice? A clear justification is required, including addressing questions of representativeness. 

b. The authors used 11 texts from these four tabloids. There is no distinction in the paper about whether these texts were extracted from news items, opinion articles, editorials, feature articles or special reports. This must be clearly stated and justifications provided.

c. How did the authors arrive at the 11 texts used? This should be unambiguously explained.

d. The texts appear to me as having been cherry-picked by the authors to support preconceived theses. This is not acceptable, methodologically speaking. There must be clear presentation about how the authors narrowed down to these texts among competing texts. And by the way, why select texts and not the whole articles or news items? It is possible that the authors could be creating strawman’s arguments. The only way to disabuse the minds of readers is to embrace methodological rigour.

e. Fuel subsidy and artisanal refining have been lingering national issues. For artisanal refining, it took a different dimension since the end of militancy and the introduction of the amnesty programme. The question is, what timeframe is the paper studying? This should be clearly explained.

f. There is no evidence in the paper to support the claims of the authors that they generated data from interviews. 

i. If the authors interviewed some people, there should be evidence in terms of information on the number of people interviewed and why. 

ii. There should be information on the level of their expertise and how well they are familiar with the core concerns of the study.

iii. There should be verbatim comments by these interviewees in the paper.

iv. The authors cannot talk about data saturation when their sources of data are unknown and there is no evidence of such data in the paper

5. The section on theory is still weak. The authors should explore any of the variants of framing theory

6. I will suggest that the section on Analytic Interpretation be broken down into subsections to reflect the questions in the abstract. This will pave the way for a clear evaluation of the questions raised in the abstract. As it is, I find it difficult to see how the readers’ understanding of the issues has been illumined. 

Author Response

Please find the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed the issues raised and the paper is now strengthened.