Together against “the Truth Gap”: A Proposal to Fight Invisibility and Misinformation Affecting Women

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

I am not a native English speaker, but I regularly read and write in English and I have noticed some ungrammatical sentences.

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for the care and attention you have put into your analysis. I believe that not only is it accurate, but with your help it has improved the text considerably and is in line with what I really wanted to show.

I would also like to apologize for the wording of my first version. I´m not a native English and the writing had many gaps. In this revision I had the help of a native professional who helped me to make the expression more rigorous. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The premise of the paper is really good. However, I am unconvinced about the data and the reason for the choice of the two reports. The analysis is brief and does not address how misinformation is impacting young women. A third study is then introduced in the conclusion of the essay whereas at that point you should be explaining/assessing the results of your analysis above that. I wonder if it might be better to expand on how the reports have changed (or not) over the years, and how misinformation has been handled in each report, going more in depth in each of the reports.

There are a lot of qualifying words used throughout the writing that can be avoided. For example, in the abstract a report is qualified as "devastating," there is the use of the phrase "so-called." In my opinion, as an academic writer, you'd want to avoid some of those words and try to maintain an objective line of thought throughout.

The language is understandable, but a few sentence structure changes will be good. For example, "Says the study, 36% of respondents worldwide consciously avoid news." is an abrupt sentence to start a paragraph. There is a lot of "And"s starting sentences, you could change that. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

As disinformation has grown, so has the clamour among professionals, educators, academia and civil society to accelerate media literacy. --> I will ask for specific examples: legislation, academic articles, and thematic conferences. Also, the term "media literacy" should be clarified.

"In fact, disinformation is almost as old as the profession of journalism." --> It is older, already written about by Sun Tzu. In ancient Rome, there were so-called subrostrani, from whom one could order gossip on a particular subject. Vide: https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004188839/Bej.9789004187757.i-439_007.xml 

Overall, the introduction and presentation of the State of Art is very chaotic, the authors should do a more comprehensive literature review and embed the adopted definitions in the literature (most importantly, how they understand the concept of disinformation).

line 96 "Disinformation is doubly - or even triply - punishing for a specific group: young women living in the Third World." What is the nature of this statement? Is it a hypothesis? Or simply a statement of fact? If a statement of fact - on what basis?

line 156: In this article, we have carried out a case analysis of the reports... Analysis is not an end in itself. It is only a means to an end. What is it? What purpose does the analysis in this article serve? What question do the authors want to answer? What do they want to clarify? 

I'm afraid that the article is strongly descriptive and secondary. It adds nothing new to the state of knowledge. The comparison of reports itself is an interesting idea, but it would have to be more methodologically structured. I don't see the point in publishing this article in its current form.

Author Response

PLEASE SEE THE ATTACHMENT

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Author Response

Thank you for your input, I have reviewed the text and sent it for review to an official translator, who has done some changes to improve. I have also revised the typo according to your suggestions, and I hope now everything is correct.

Reviewer 2 Report

I am satisfied with the changes.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your agreement. With my best regards

Reviewer 3 Report

I must admit that I am positively surprised. At the first review, I didn't see any chance of bringing the article to a state where it could be published. However, you have to appreciate the work done by the author. 

There are still a few corrections missing to make it complete:

1. Adoption of the author's definition of misinformation and media literacy, or a clear indication of which of the definitions he cites the author accepts as appropriate for his deliberations.

2. A clear indication in the introduction of what value the article adds, according to the author, to science. This section should also include an explanation of whether this is a research article, whether it is exploratory in nature, what is the main objective and the research question(s) posed. Perhaps I missed it (because the typescript is in the form of shredded fragments with two-colour text, which does not make it easy to read). Surely, however, such a passage visible and highlighted is needed in the text.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your contributions, I have incorporated to the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

I thank the author for his/her work. Now in its present form, the text can be published.