An Analysis of Online Newspaper Framing of the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout in Nigeria

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a very nicely-designed and insightful study of the framing and valence of Covid-19 vaccines in three key Nigerian publications from 2020 to the present. The analysis covered 911 articles derived from thousands of issues of these newspapers.  The methods draw on framing theory and valence, which is are appropriate for such an analysis.

It is very impressive work and much needed in the context of Nigeria as well as an indicator of the kinds of work that can be done to address regions where print journalism remains important die to limitations of access to the internet. 

I have a few minor conceptual comments:

• The future actions and suggestions could be expanded beyond this type of analysis. For instance, the authors remark on editorial policy and other factors that could have influenced the newsworthiness of Covid-19 vaccines.  It might be interesting, if the researchers could interview or survey journalists and editors to explore this question.
• Another table of examples (perhaps as a supplement) of language would be interesting, if possible.
• It would be helpful to have more information about the code book, perhaps in an appendix (apologies if I missed that as a separate file)

I have two minor textual comments:

Page 4, line 18- the font is different and looks pasted from another source.

Page 6, line 258- parentheses are incorrect

Author Response

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on our manuscript. We have done the following in response to your comments.

1. We have edited the whole document for writing. In fact, we have edited it for clarity and for conciseness. In total, we cut about 600 words from the manuscript.
2. We have included a codebook as Appendix 1. 
3. It is too late to interview the editors and journalists working on this project for this piece. However, we have added a suggestion that for future research this would be a good project for content analysis to incorporate interviews along side content analysis (p. 23). 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please, check out the enclosed attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please see review comments

Author Response

Thank you for your in-depth comments on our manuscript. We have done the following to respond to your comments. 

1. We have defined quantitative content analysis and discussed the six steps on pages 9-10.
2. We recognize that QCA may overlook other elements, as all methods are limited. Thus, we have added a call for future research on pages 22-23 for more qualitative analyses.
3. We agree that analysis of social media systems would be fruitful and have called for this work on pages 22-23.
4. This study does not address audience responses, as it does only focus on how the media framed the vaccine. Thus, we have called for future research to explore how the audience responded, as that would be a separate study on pages 22-23. 
5. We have called for researchers to replicate these findings in other nations on page 23.
6. These articles are from 2020-2022 and do not capture ongoing developments. Thus, we have suggested follow-up studies on pages 22-23.
7. We have rewritten the full document for clarity. 
8. Overall, we believe that many of the ideas you have posed are very interesting for follow-up or additional studies that we believe would be very fruitful.