Emotionalization of the 2021–2022 Global Energy Crisis Coverage: Analyzing the Rhetorical Appeals as Manipulation Means in the Mainstream Media

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article sets out and follows a clear focus on the rhetorical appeals within energy-related issues. It fits well the scope of this journal and follows a profound and extensive literature review with a strong focus on the most recent academic work. Very commendable is, for example, pages 3&4 in this regard.

 

The topic is of high relevance. The article explains and reasons mostly well the theoretical framework applied, the method of discourse analysis, examples of the sample researched, and a conclusion. However, while the aim is of no question to contribute well to the currently existing body of research into an area linked by a focus on emotions, rhetorics, and a topic of high current relevance and controversy, certain parts of the journal article could be developed more.

 

In detail:

One of my main concerns is the from the beginning (in the abstract even) strong normative assumptions of considering rhetorical appeals as “emotional manipulation”. While this might certainly be true for some media outlets (with a strong agenda-based focus, or for media outlets relying heavily on commercial success), I believe it would pre-empty valuable results by attributing this intention to ALL media outlets considered mainstream.

May I suggest reasoning this strong normative assumption in a more convincing and conclusive way, or maybe design the phrasing of the journal article slightly more openly, before perhaps considering this based on the available material as a conclusion? I think it is maybe a too strong approach to generally consider rhetorical appeals as emotional manipulation.

Please rethink this approach to the topic throughout the article including the abstract.

 

Abstract (and partially main text):

Line 12: “the four major English…”.: If you declare these as the leading four global media outlets on English language – please reason the premise for this attribution here.

               This continues later – e.g., on page 6 – line 290 “the world’s major mainstream media” – again, you would need to explain how this conclusion came into being

               This also appears on page 6 – 295-297 – “most influential and reputable” -> requires explanation.

               Again on page 7 – line 307: four papers would not represent “mainstream coverage”

               Page 7 – line 337/345-7: Again, the explanation is missing of how the four selected papers qualify as “major mainstream” – this also in face that there are relevant and influential major global newspapers outside the English-language world

 

Line 16: The base for the distinction between “Western” and “Eastern” media is unclear to me. This is, first, in light of different concepts of global media dynamics (e.g. global North vs South; periphery vs core), and second, a sample consisting of one US and one UK newspaper can be merely generalized to “West”, while similarly the specific media markets of India and China hardly represent “the East”. A more nuanced approach would be helpful, despite it is highly commendable that the author(s) of the article do compare an often-neglected area of media studies – news media of not necessarily related geographies.

               This appears again on page 6 – line 296.

Line 18: “to motivate”: This relates to my general comment given above – that the authors attribute an intention to media outlets without given a wider and reasoned context for this.

 

Main article:

The article follows a clear structure and uses a very dense but accessible language.

Please make sure to use more paragraphs throughout the article, such as on page 3, line 144, after “news value”.

 

Conceptual Issues:

The introduction, however, starts in its first two (longer) paragraphs with outlining a debate about solely energy transition – however, a closer focus on media studies and media debates would be appreciated here.

The middle part could present the debate around emotions and audience reactions more nuancedly.

The final paragraph summarizes well the theoretical approaches – but leaves an open question to a reader of why the authors consider “politicization” as relevant without explaining it appropriately – especially how this relates to emotionalization and rhetorical appeals.

Also, here again a strong assumption is made of “manipulation” through journalistic coverage without explaining the base for this assumption.

 

Page 3 – Line 134: Habermas did not develop an “emotional public sphere” – on the contrary, he is known to have sidelined emotions. Please present this correctly.

 

Page 5 – from line 234 onwards:

Make clearer how the mentioned concepts link to your study. In addition, on line 248, “energy democracy” is introduced, but not explained. It is also not clear to me why you do not mention it together with the other concepts.

 

Page 6 – line 260: You introduce “framing” here – please explain the rationale for introducing another concept. Will you be drawing on this at a later stage?

 

Section Hypothesis (page 6): the third research aim is not sufficiently taken up in the conclusion, please rephrase

Page 7 – line 312/3: “distorted images” – please explain why;

“polarization” – how do you reason this argument here?

 

Section: Results and Discussion

Page 8 – Table 1: Here and earlier in the methods section it is not clear what the selection criteria and mechanisms of the selected articles are.

 

Page 10: word clouds: I wonder if it would be possible to re-examine the result by leaving out ambiguous vocabulary (such as “billion”, “expected”, page 11), which might not be contributing to a meaningful result?

 

Page 11 – lines 435-446: In what way do the authors justify a quantification of terminology, when a rhetorical analysis is a rather qualitative approach?

Would the concept of “framing” be applicable or useful here?

 

Page 12 – Lines 465-8: It would be appreciated if the authors could explain what the analysis of modal verbs – which could theoretically be applied to many other topics in a similar manner – contribute to this analysis specifically.

 

Page 12 – Table 3 – explanations f the individual types of mention not clear enough here.

 

Page 13 – 484 – in what sense differentiates references to statistics from references to authorities (potentially using statistics)?

Line 497f – Could you give examples for the mentions counted?

497-523: Again – it is difficult to quantify a primarily qualitative analysis, as the overall sample selection rationale is not entirely clear

 

524 – Appeals to Authority: This section belongs in my view to the literature review section prior. It is also potentially beneficial to consider further explanations of what exactly is researched (and how it relates to your topic and theory framework).

 

577 following:

I wonder given the examples cited here how the authors scrutinize journalistic news coverage citing (unnamed) “experts”.

As a second point – and relating to the ideas around “journalists manipulating an audience” – did the authors consider different models and/or cultures of journalism? This in particular when it relates to charged and extremely relevant topics such as climate change – I wonder if journalists stating a positionality here could immediately be considered as “manipulation”?

 

Page 16:

666/7: Could you please explain more in detail why you argue that “objective facts” matter less in a post-truth era (and how, again, this relates to the models of journalism the selected newspapers follow)?

 

Page 20 - 870: Explain more in detail H2 – polarization

 

Section Conclusion

This section is characterized by the same issues mentioned before.

However, overall, a comment about news images is missing (and given the relevance of visuals in any news report this should not be neglected) throughout the article.

 

Page 22 – lines 962 – evidence is missing for China and India shifting to greener energies faster than UK/US (I just saw an opposite statistics about this)

Lines 966 Concept of Patriotism: In how far did the authors consider the different nature of patriotism within the four selected countries (and the selected media outlets)?

 

Language:

p. 2

Line 55 please rephrase – as the global energy crisis started before COVID-19

Line 70: “engage a wider”

Line 71 “spendmore time on reading the emotion stories” – this is a very short version of the work of Nabi and others. A more profound explanation of the interactions between audiences and emotive news coverage (and what it actually means) would be beneficial.

Line 79: delete “the” before “mainstream media”

Line 80: “energy sources of information” – please explain what you mean with this

 

Page 3:

Line 101: delete “the” before “his”

Line 119: “used unintentionally” – please explain this assumption

Line 121: “journalist’s intentions” – this seems to be paradoxical with the prior claim – please explain

Line 127: “contagion” – please cite a literature reference for this concept here, as this has not been mentioned before

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to thank you for your valuable comments, your thorough and detailed analysis of the paper, your evaluation of its strong and weak sides as well as your qualified opinion and professional recommendations that will definitely improve not only this paper but my research in the field of journalism in the future. I tried to do my best and made changes in the manuscript, according to your comments, including:

1. Regarding your comment on considering rhetorical appeals as “emotional manipulation”, I absolutely agree with it and have revised all sections of the manuscript in accordance with your remark, including the section ‘Abstract’.
2. The study had no intention of attributing its results to all news coverage of the energy crisis and media outlets considered mainstream, which is mentioned at the end of the section ‘Introduction’ (limitations of the study): ‘the results of the present study can be applicable to the news coverage of the 2021-2022 global energy crisis only in the selected four mainstream newspapers’.
3. As for your comments on “the world’s major mainstream media” (lines 12, 290, 292-295, 297), I have reformulated the phrases and made necessary corrections in the sections ‘Methodology’, ‘Results and Discussion’ and other sections.
4. I also agree that the distinction between “Western” and “Eastern” media seems rather vague. Therefore, I tried to do my best to explain the particular reasons for choosing four mainstream newspapers taken from the key countries that either suffered or benefitted from the crisis.
5.  In accordance with your comment that ‘the authors attribute an intention to media outlets without given a wider and reasoned context for this’, I have updated all the sections of the manuscript by attenuating some of my claims about intentionality of the newspapers in taking a negative approach to the issues of the energy crisis.
6. I have tried to use more paragraphs throughout the article.
7. The introduction has been updated in accordance with your comments. It starts with outlining the background information about the energy crisis, then takes a closer focus on media studies of the energy crisis as well as presents the debate around the role of emotions in modern media which are also considered in the section ‘Theoretical context’.
8. I have also explained that politicization of the news coverage of the global energy crisis contributes to shaping public opinion and is relevant to our study which is aimed at tackling hidden ideologies and manipulation expressed by rhetorical appeals and emotional language means since emotions play an important role in political decision making.
9. I have revised the paragraph about the conception of the public sphere by Habermas and added some information on his conception of the public sphere.
10. I have tried to make clear how ‘energy dependence’, ‘energy transition’ and other concepts are related to the present study. I have also added information on the definition of “energy democracy” and linked it to other concepts.
11. The sections ‘Research aims’ and ‘Hypothesis’ have been updated in accordance with your comments.
12. In Methodology the selection criteria and mechanisms of the selected articles have been explained.
13. Word clouds have been updated by leaving out all the ambiguous vocabulary in accordance with your comment ('billion', 'expected')– now they contain only meaningful words.
14. I have also added information on the analysis of the modal verbs and their relation to the aims of the present study.
15. Furthermore, to identify certain frames in the news coverage of the energy crisis, the study also utilized media framing analysis, which is also explained in the sections ‘Methodology’ and ‘Results and Discussion’.
16. Appeals to ‘statistics’ (argumentum ad numerum') refer to claims based on number of people who think that something is true, while appeals to ‘authorities’ ('argumentum ad hominem') refer to claims based on the popularity and opinions of political leaders, business executives, scientific experts and energy regulators. These are logical fallacies identified by Copi et al. (2018)
17. I have given further explanations of what exactly is researched – hidden ideologies expressed by rhetorical appeals and emotional language means, which contribute to shaping public perceptions on the energy crisis and energy sources. I also explained how it is related to my research topic and theory framework through the section 'Results and Discussion'.
18. Citing ‘implicit’ experts is not considered as a way to manipulate public opinion. I have deleted this phrase. However, when experts' claims are supported by emotion-laden vocabulary and do not provide evidence but contain their own opinion, such claims can be considered as fallacies and can contribute to influencing public perceptions of the crisis and energy sources, which indicates their manipulative role in the news discourse.
19. The article primarily focuses on analyzing rhetorical and language means, therefore comments about visual framings seem to be irrelevant for the aims of the study 
20. As related to the concept of patriotism, it is considered as the feeling of belonging to the nation in the study. When conducting RDA, I didn’t delve into the specific nature of patriotism within the four selected countries since the study focuses more on the manipulative nature of rhetorical appeals. Nevertheless, to answer your comment, I added a comment about the differences in the nature of patriotism into the text.
21. A comment on the concept ‘emotional contagion’ has been added into the text.
22. Language has been revised and checked, according to your comments
23. Conclusion is re-written based on the revised aims, hypotheses and findings of the study.

Thank you once again for consideration of my manuscript and your detailed and thorough analysis of the study.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article addresses a current and pertinent issue (the energy crisis), adopting a new perspective on it (the news coverage of the issue from the perspective of emotionalization). The theoretical approach is complete and up-to-date and contributes to a full understanding of energy issues, as well as the theoretical contributions around manipulation and emotion in journalistic discourse. Also noteworthy is the effective synthesis of the main contributions of other authors, with similar and current studies, which guide the topic and help define the relevance of the object of study. The article is very clear and well written.

The methodology is clear, appealing and offers valuable contributions (particularly in terms of the software used to analyze the data and the relevance of the computer-assisted content analysis as a method) that can be applied to other journalistic studies. At the same time, it brings together a categorization that is more than 30 years old, which not only remains current, but also takes on a new relevance in the light of this study.

Despite all the qualities of the article presented, we leave you with some questions that deserve reflection.

It's not clear whether opinion articles or just news articles were considered for analysis. As we read, we realized that some of the excerpts belonged to opinion articles and not informative news, but the author only talks about news coverage and makes no distinction between information and opinion. The analysis of opinion journalistic genres could confirm or deny the media's editorial stance on the energy crisis, but it seems important that it is not confused with news coverage. In other words, from our point of view, both (opinion and information) are relevant, but the analysis should be made separately, since we are talking about different categories in journalistic genres.

Another issue that merited our reflection was the intentionality (or not) of the newspapers in taking a negative approach to the issue of the energy crisis.

For example, when the author says that “The results of the discourse analysis of the news articles showed high level of emotionalization in all four media with predominantly negative narratives about the fossil fuels and the effects of the energy crisis to induce anxiety and fear among the audience” (p. 18 lines 739-741) it seems to us that he is making a categorical statement, when in fact the data indicates this, but we cannot say, for a fact, that the media had a pre-established goal of using certain discourses with the purpose of inducing anxiety and fear in readers. What we can say is that this type of negative discourse in the four media can act as an inducer of anxiety and fear.

The analysis in this article and its conclusions assume as a fact that the news coverage has a common agenda and objective around the promotion of renewable energies and the energy transition and against fossil fuels and energy dependence. It seems important to us to assume some of the data in the hypothesis field, since there are other factors to consider, namely organizational issues, such as the use of news agencies as sources of information, the opinion columns analyzed and the lack of diversification of sources in the media. The use of news agencies as sources, for example, is a way of standardizing information in various media and the use of the same official and institutional sources stems from organizational factors (Tuchman, 1978), namely because better-organized sources have easier access to the media (Gans, 2005; Schudson, 2003). In addition, the mixture of genres (opinion and information) does not help to clarify whether the information coverage could have a pre-established purpose or not.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to thank you for the thorough and detailed analysis of the paper, high appraisal of the paper, your evaluation of its strong and weak sides as well as your qualified opinion and professional recommendations that will definitely improve not only this paper but my research in the field of journalism in the future. I tried to do my best to tackle the weaknesses and problems that you mentioned and reviewed the paper, paying attention to all your comments, including:

1. Regarding your comment on the database whether both opinion and information articles were collected as a sample for further content, rhetorical and discourse analyses, I would like to clarify this issue. The initial database included 738 publications (both news articles and opinion articles) that mentioned a ‘global energy crisis’ keyword. In order to limit the analysis to those news articles that had substantive news coverage of the 2021-2022 global energy crisis, I restricted my analysis only to 600 news articles in which a ‘global energy crisis’ keyword was mentioned at least twice and contained information rather than journalists’ opinions. These 600 news articles were further analyzed, using computer-aided tools. However, your comment is absolutely relevant that when providing examples on high level of emotionality in the news discourse, I mistakenly took some examples from the opinion articles that were in the initial database. Therefore, I have revised the Section ‘Methodology’, adding some information on the types of articles that were taken for further analysis. In the Section ‘Results and Discussion’ I have excluded the examples taken from the opinion articles, replacing them by the analysis of the examples taken from the news stories that contained information.
2. I absolutely agree with your comment on some categorical conclusions regarding the intentionality of the newspapers in taking a negative approach to the issue of the energy crisis since the analysis of the collected material does not show the presence of either explicit or implicit editorial bias in the negative portrayal of fossil fuels in the four analyzed papers. Therefore, I have revised the sections ‘Abstract’, ‘Results and Discussion’ and ‘Conclusions’ by reformulating some categorical statements.
3. I also took into account your important comment on the use of news organizations and agencies as information sources that journalists rely in the news coverage of the global energy crisis, adding some important information into the sections ‘Hypothesis’, ‘Results’ and ‘Conclusions’.

Thank you again for your excellent work.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf