Lockdowns, lethality, and laissez-faire politics. Public discourses on political authorities in high-trust countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

Sara Grøn Perlstein; Marc Verboord

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253175

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 25, 2021
25 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Editor PONE-D-21-02692 Lockdowns, lethality, and laissez-faire politics. Public discourses on authority in high-trust countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Perlstein, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 11 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Commendable effort in conducting the study and putting this manuscript together. Perhaps, it could be better if the section on 'Data and Method' (i.e. line 224) and the section on 'Data' (i.e. line 232) could be combined as 'Data Collection' and placed as sub-sections under the section on 'Methodology' (i.e. line 266). Moreover, the section title 'Results and Discussion' should be changed to 'Results' as there is already a section on 'Discussion' later on. Please also revisit the References and try to be consistent about the style of referencing. It is an interesting study. Well tried. Reviewer #2: Comments: General - Needs a review for grammar/ punctuation. Introduction - The first paragraph merits many more citations - currently, there are none. Introduction - I think there is an important difference between trust in government and trust in authorities - the two ideas are discussed interchangeably here, but I think they merit teasing out if possible. For example, in the US there is a difference between mistrust in the CDC/ FDA and mistrust in the Trump/ Biden administrations. They’re connected, but also separate. Someone can have low trust in a political administration but high trust in a health authority. Line 36 - What are the specific dates of these phases? Would be helpful to understand your analysis periods. For example, what does “some time” mean? Line 45 - dangling parenthesis Line 61 - A citation for this statement is needed Line 65 - Personally, I don’t see the need for an entire “literature review” section, unless requested by the journal. I think much of this woudl be better placed in an introduction, before you state the aims of the paper because it sets the paper up to flow nicer. After I read the introduction, I had a few questions that appear to be answered in the literature review section. I also think the literature review section can be condensed quite a bit, with some of the sentences that aren’t specifically relevant (like the part on ebola in West/Central Africa) just included as a citation, and not given so much prominence. This will make it easier to merge the literature review section into the introduction. Line 91 - Skeptical Line 114 - This seems too drastic, and the sentence is a bit confusing following the previous one (which says the population is more forgiving of an exaggerated response): “but is bound to ultimately result in failed expectations.” This sentence seems out of order in the paragraph Line 160 - Are there other citations that you can use to support this paragraph? This and the one before only have 2 citations, but I imagine that there is a larger body of evidence that you can cite here, particularly if they are more relevant to the topic of the paper. Line 172 - Similar to above, I think you can condense this section quite a bit - especially given that you include more details in the appendix. Line 177 - I dont think that you’ve established how you determined that there is a high level of trust in each of these countries. Is this based on a citation? A hunch? I’d like to see more information about how you determined trust in each of the 4 countries, given the topic of the paper. Line 225 - Dates would be helpful in this sentence, to understand what your points in time were. Also, is there a justification for the separation into these points, or is it just based on your own intuition? There are also many appendices here - you can remove Appendix C in particular if you just put the dates in text. Line 232 - Do you have a citation for GetOldTweets? What kind of access to Twitter does this service have? 100% of publicly available tweets? Did the service provide you with metadata to geotag posts? Have other researchers used this service before? More information about the specific software platform would be useful. Line 253 - It looks like you searched for political terms - so my comment above about “health authorities” is not relevant - I’d just make that clear at some point here. When you are referring to “authorities” you are referring specifically to political authorities, not health authorities. Line 262 - How did you check to ensure that this method worked to geotag posts? Did you manually code a subset of posts? To say that it “should ensure” is not a strong enough justification for the methods. Line 263 - Do you have any citations of others who have adopted this approach and shown it to have merit, given its limitations? Likewise, did you rely on other research to help you create the search query, or to guide your analysis more broadly? Line 264 - Similar to above, Appendix E can be worked into the text and removed as an appendix. Line 276 - For the example here, instead of marshmallows can you provide an example that is drawn from the research? Line 283 - I don’t see an Appendix F in the materials submitted. Line 284 - Were all tweets required to have a sentiment? Were there instances in which you were unable to determine a sentiment and they were excluded from analysis? Were any tweets excluded from analysis? Line 291 - There is only one citation for the topic modeling analysis, but it would be good to see more - have others used this strategy before? What other work did you consult in creating this approach? I think that Tables 2 A - L are better suited for an appendix. Line 483 - I wouldn’t say that “it is clear” - In general, I think the conclusions seem to express too much certainty. I think your results suggest many of these statements, but particularly given that Twitter is not representative of the larger population, I think many of the statements need to be toned down. Line 502 - Capitalization / grammar error Line 504 - Do you have any citations - even news stories - that support these ideas? Either from the pandemic, or from previous examples? Similar question for the following paragraph. I’d like to see more citations support the findings, to place the findings within information that has already been published. Line 513 - “Playing fast and loose” seems too colloquial Line 517 - “May be less an expression” vs “is less an expression” Line 567 - Citation for this Line 584 - I’m not sure that you have sufficient evidence to say that conspiracy theories were not as impactful as existing literature - first I think you need to cite the literature, and then I think you need to dig into this more. Why do you say they aren’t as impactful? The following sentence does not provide any support for this statement. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. 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Revision 1
14 Apr 2021 Author Response Response to Reviewers First of all we want to thank the editor for the opportunity to revise the manuscript. We would like to thank the reviewers and the editor for their insightful and constructive feedback. This has helped us to improve the paper considerably. Please find the responses to the points raised by the editor and reviewers below. Editor 1.Style requirements RESPONSE: We have made sure the manuscript follows the style requirements. 2.Ethics RESPONSE: We have added an ethical statement in the methodology section. 3.Include captions RESPONSE: We have included captions for our supporting information. Reviewer #1 Commendable effort in conducting the study and putting this manuscript together. Perhaps, it could be better if the section on 'Data and Method' (i.e. line 224) and the section on 'Data' (i.e. line 232) could be combined as 'Data Collection' and placed as sub-sections under the section on 'Methodology' (i.e. line 266). Moreover, the section title 'Results and Discussion' should be changed to 'Results' as there is already a section on 'Discussion' later on. Please also revisit the References and try to be consistent about the style of referencing. It is an interesting study. Well tried. RESPONSE: We want to thank the reviewer for the compliments and the useful feedback. We agree with the suggested changes in the structure and have adjusted the manuscript accordingly. Structure in the Data and Methods section changed to: Methodology � Data collection � Method of analysis Results and Discussion section changed to “Results” and the “Discussion” subsection changed to a main section. Reviewer #2 General - Needs a review for grammar/ punctuation. RESPONSE: We have reviewed the manuscript on this and improved grammar/punctuation. Introduction - The first paragraph merits many more citations - currently, there are none. RESPONSE: We agree with the reviewer that more references are warranted. We have added multiple references, both with regards to COVID-19 and to the issue of trust. Introduction - I think there is an important difference between trust in government and trust in authorities - the two ideas are discussed interchangeably here, but I think they merit teasing out if possible. For example, in the US there is a difference between mistrust in the CDC/ FDA and mistrust in the Trump/ Biden administrations. They’re connected, but also separate. Someone can have low trust in a political administration but high trust in a health authority. RESPONSE: We agree with this comment. Our paper focuses on trust in governments or political trust, not trust in health authorities. We have clarified this. We have added “political” when we mention authorities throughout the article to ensure there is no misunderstanding. RESPONSES TO SPECIFIC COMMENTS PER LINE: Line 36: RESPONSE: changed “some time” to “a month”. Dates are added. Line 45: RESPONSE: we corrected dangling parenthesis. Line 61: RESPONSE: we added citations. Line 65: Personally, I don’t see the need for an entire “literature review” section, unless requested by the journal. I think much of this woudl be better placed in an introduction, before you state the aims of the paper because it sets the paper up to flow nicer. After I read the introduction, I had a few questions that appear to be answered in the literature review section. I also think the literature review section can be condensed quite a bit, with some of the sentences that aren’t specifically relevant (like the part on ebola in West/Central Africa) just included as a citation, and not given so much prominence. This will make it easier to merge the literature review section into the introduction. RESPONSE: We see the point of the reviewer that the current literature review is strictly speaking not a literature review and might therefore be confusing. At the same time, we think it is relevant to provide theoretical background and it appeared difficult to fully include this in the introduction. We have followed the example of Wicke & Bolognesi (2020), which is cited, and changed the section name to “Theoretical background”. We hope this is acceptable for the reviewer. Furthermore, we followed the advice of the reviewer to take out certain parts (incl. parts on ebola) which were not specifically relevant. Line 91: RESPONSE: we changed ‘skeptic’ to ‘skeptical’. Line 114: This seems too drastic, and the sentence is a bit confusing following the previous one RESPONSE: we changed “is bound to” to “may”. If we understand the reviewer correctly, they felt like the statement that “the population may even be more forgiving of an exaggerated response than an insufficient one” was contradicted by the statement that “too much confidence may actually be harmful in the long run”. Since response refers to actions and confidence to attitude (the word rhetoric is mentioned in the subsequent section as well), the intent was to signal that these statements refer to different aspects of the crisis response. In order to highlight the difference, we changed the word “response” in the former statement to “strategy”. If we misunderstood the comment, we are, of course, open to change this. Line 160: RESPONSE: we added more references. Line 172: RESPONSE: We have shortened this section a bit, although we do want to highlight a couple of substantial characteristics of the contexts in various countries. Line 177: I dont think that you’ve established how you determined that there is a high level of trust in each of these countries. Is this based on a citation? A hunch? I’d like to see more information about how you determined trust in each of the 4 countries, given the topic of the paper. RESPONSE: We base ourselves on background literature. The reviewer is correct that more references are needed to support this statement. In the new version the description of trust has changed: “Statistical data consistently shows these four countries to have a high level of population trust in their authorities (OECD, 2020; Eurobarometer, 2015; Mungiu-Pippi et al., 2015; Our World in Data, 2018; The World Bank, 2020); as such, these four countries provide a valuable case study of the effects of different containment strategies on public opinion in high-trust countries.” Line 225: RESPONSE: We added dates by bringing Appendix C into the main text (table 1). We provide an argumentation for these dates. Line 232: RESPONSE: We have added a more detailed description of GetOldTweets, incl. sources on the software as well other researchers using it. Line 253: RESPONSE: Thank you for the observation. Indeed, it may not have been clear that we were referring specifically to political authorities throughout the paper. We have corrected this throughout, and it should be clear now. Line 262: REPONSE: We have added more details on geographical allocation. Line 263: RESPONSE: We think the additional details should cover this point but let us know in case more information is needed. Line 276: RESPONSE: “Marshmellows are healthy” is changed to “Merkel is a competent leader”. Line 283: RESPONSE: Apologies, the appendices were not correctly named. We adjusted this. Line 284: RESPONSE: Details on no-sentiment tweets have been added. In short: they are included and simply have a value of 0 when calculating the avg sentiment. Line 291: RESPONSE: Some more info on topic modelling on short texts have been added. Some extra references and a little more detail at the beginning of the “Method of analysis” section have been added. Line 483: RESPONSE: We agree that the conclusions at times express too much certainty. We have rewritten the conclusion. “it is clear” has been changed to “it seems to be the case”. Line 502: RESPONSE: We have corrected this; ‘of’ added after regardless Line 504: RESPONSE: We have added sources. Line 513: RESPONSE: We agree and have changed “playing fast and loose with citizens’ lives” to “treating citizens’ lives with recklessness”. Line 517: RESPONSE: We changed ‘may be less an expression’ to ‘is less an expression’ Line 567: RESPONSE: We added a citation. Line 584: RESPONSE: We agree and have the conclusion on conspiracy theories removed as not really central to the main thesis of our article. Appendices moved around according to the notes of R2. Appendix B -> A Appendix D -> B Appendix A -> C Appendix H -> D Appendix G -> E Appendix with TM results -> F (indeed, this was missing from the uploaded data – our apologies) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_april2021.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253175.r002
11 May 2021 Decision Letter - Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Editor PONE-D-21-02692R1 Lockdowns, lethality, and laissez-faire politics. Public discourses on political authorities in high-trust countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Perlstein, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 25 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Prof. Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The authors have adequately addressed comments from the previous round of review of this manuscript. It would even be better if the authors could briefly introduce the study design and also highlight ethical considerations about the study (this may be inserted in line 235). Other than that, this is a good paper to publish ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253175.r003
Revision 2
27 May 2021 Author Response We are delighted that our revisions in round 1 have met with approval and that only small adjustments are considered needed in this stage. Once again, we would like to thank the editor for the opportunity to revise our manuscript and the reviewer for their insightful suggestion. Please find the response to the point raised by the reviewer below. Reviewer #1: The authors have adequately addressed comments from the previous round of review of this manuscript. It would even be better if the authors could briefly introduce the study design and also highlight ethical considerations about the study (this may be inserted in line 235). Other than that, this is a good paper to publish RESPONSE: We agree that an introduction to the study design at the beginning of the ‘Methodology’ section would improve the coherence of that section. We have thus added an overview of the research design under line 235 as suggested by the reviewer, which also includes ethical considerations about the study. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_May2021.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253175.r004
31 May 2021 Decision Letter - Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Editor Lockdowns, lethality, and laissez-faire politics. Public discourses on political authorities in high-trust countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. PONE-D-21-02692R2 Dear Dr. Perlstein, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Prof. Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253175.r005
Formally Accepted
4 Jun 2021 Acceptance Letter - Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Editor PONE-D-21-02692R2 Lockdowns, lethality, and laissez-faire politics. Public discourses on political authorities in high-trust countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dear Dr. Perlstein: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Prof. Anat Gesser-Edelsburg Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253175.r006

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