PONE-D-21-31236Information sharing practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study about face masksPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baker,

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

Reviewer #3: No

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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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: Dear Author(s)

Thank you for the opportunity to read this interesting piece of work. The manuscript is well-written. However, I feel the manuscript is rather long and descriptive falling short of critically engaging with previous research. three major issues need to be addressed. First, the research gap your study attempts to address needs to be expressed more explicitly. Second, the conclusions section failed to engage with previous research. Do your study findings confirm/refute previous research? Finally, the manuscript falls short of discussing the theoretical and practical contributions/implications of study.

Good luck with revising your manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript presents a very interesting topic, of global scope and likely to interest the world of academia, including sociologists, medical staff, marketers and social media experts, but also people not associated with the scientific community (eg., influencers). It has a universal character, which, however, is not a disadvantage, but deserves recognition. It is not written at a high level of generality, on the contrary, the article is very carefully prepared. The manuscript is presented in an intelligible fashion: the language is clear, correct, and unambiguous. No typographical or grammatical errors were found. The research was well thought out and well designed. The manuscript describes a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. The authors have fully provided all data on which the conclusions in the manuscript are based. These data have been provided both within the manuscript and its supplementary information.

Reviewer #3: Review of

Information sharing practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study about face masks

Submitted to PLOS ONE

PONE-D-21- 31236

The paper investigates the sharing of information about face masks during the COVID-19 pandamic in the UK.

In a general sense, there is much to like about the paper. The paper is well written, and the overall argumentation is well crafted.

Nevertheless, I have three substantial issues with respect to the paper that limit the scientific contribution substantially.

MAJOR ISSUES

(1) CONTRIBUTION:

a. I think that you have an interesting story. However, I was not really convinced about the contribution of the paper. I believe your findings are important, but I really suggest coming up already in the introduction with the main findings. It takes much too long to see the results.

b. When reading the abstract, I was wondering about findings and what I can learn from this. You need to be much more specific to “sell” your results.

c. I also suggest focusing on findings that are (a) new and (b) impactful. For example., I think that it was interesting to discuss the relevance of outdated scientific results (page 32 in the manuscript). This is a key finding! I have no problem if you decide shortening the paper and focus on less but interesting findings.

d. Many findings that you report are not so surprising and lack (causal) support. You report sharing behavior, but you do not control for many drivers that might lead to specific sharing behavior (e.g., discussion of a news issue on TV, sharing of content by a celebrity etc.). Thus, I wonder if you should reduce the storyline and focus on the really new insights.

e. Please add a new table that shows in a top-down fashion an overview of all your studies (data, method, and the subsequent findings).

(2) THEORY: The paper is basically free of theory. While I do not believe that you must add theory to the paper, I suggest presenting insights that are either supported by theory or that substantially challenge theories. Currently, I think your findings are in line with agenda setting theories. Thus, what can we learn? If we cannot learn much for theory testing and building, then I suggest focusing on the managerial impact of your results.

(3) ROBUSTNESS:

a. I would like to see your findings contrasted to google trends.

b. Please also show your trend over time and clearly discuss the events that occurred during that time. This allows the reader to better understand confounding events that might drive search (via Google) or tweeting.

c. Please report the reach of the newspapers when discussing the popular domains.

d. I think it would also be interesting to discuss why some other relevant posts have not been shared as much (discussion of non-findings).

Overall, I am supportive towards this paper – but the authors need to streamline the paper to better show their contribution.

I thank you for the opportunity to read this manuscript and I hope that the authors will find the comments helpful and that they will continue to follow this research stream.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Information sharing practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study about face masks

PONE-D-21-31236R1

Dear Dr. Baker,

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.

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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,

Chi Ho Yeung

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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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

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: Dear Authors

Thank you for addressing the concerns I have raised in the review report.

The issues were addressed in full and I, therefore, recommend accepting your manuscript for publication.

Good luck

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No