Evolution of the Digital Attention Market in the Pandemic: A Comparative Study of Young Spanish University Students (2019–2021)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Interesting findings! There are some places to improve, but not so many. There is an inconsistency between the methodology, goals, and results. For example, it is not clear why the longitudinal study was carried out if the results are about students' self-perception of mobile app use. Also, the results demonstrate that the discourse was disclosed by students and them, justified the indiscriminate and non-transparent use of people’s data by platforms". Would be useful to state in the beginning that the researchers had the goal not only to disclose the self-perception of the media platforms but also and the data collection issue et. ct. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your comments, we appreciate you taking the time to review our work. We are also glad that you find it interesting.

We have realised that the word longitudinal was used incorrectly in the cover letter of the paper, which may have led to confusion. For this reason, we have clarified in the paper that the intention is to provide a comparative study between two study years, not a longitudinal study. In this sense, we have also emphasised that the self-perception of social media consumption is extracted from the focus groups carried out with the participants, and that this information is contrasted with the actual consumption figures extracted from the smartphone monitoring technique. Thus, we have clarified in the text that we have two types of data in this respect.

On the other hand, we agree with you that it would be better to say from the beginning that the issue of data collection by platforms is also addressed, so we have added this element. This gives greater coherence to the objectives and results obtained.

As you will see, we have tried to improve the wording of the methodology, goals and conclusion in order to make the whole article more coherent and to avoid possible inconsistencies or misunderstandings.

We reiterate our thanks and hope that the changes we have made have helped to clarify the errors in the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for an interesting paper. I was very curious of it and I asked to review it myself because it is partly my scientific topic.

I like your paper a lot. It was written in a reasonable way. It has good structure. I would suggest some corrections to make it look better. I hope all my comments you will treat as advices to improve your work. I think this is my task as a reviewer.

1. Introduction: Lack of clear reason of the topic and also lack of clear aim of the paper, authors should better emphasize what was done and their contribution to science. Try to compare to statistical data to all EU also. It would be more objective. Add also sources of data. What about the fact that we were forced to move our everyday living to Internet. In case of students, we have all classes online. At my university students, expect the normal lesson, always got some activities to do (which offline they would not have to do). Also shopping in many cases, especially at the beginning of pandemic was moved to Internet. For example in my country many shops which had to be closed, started to offer their product online. So it was the only way to get some staff. We can say that we were able to pass this time easier thanks to the Internet.
2. If there is 1.1, where is 1.2?
3. Point 2: there is something missing. I did not get the methodology till the end.
4. Point 3: I would suggest in comments also add something about main reason - covid19. For sure this is also a reason, if not the main reason.
5. All tables: use dot not comma in tables to divide integer from fraction.
6. Point 4: emphasize differences or similarities between countries.
7. Conclusion: limitations and future directions of research

Besides these errors, I think your paper is very valuable. Good luck in your future scientific work.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

We appreciate the time you have taken to review our work and the comments you have made, as they help us to improve our article. We are glad that you found it interesting, despite the errors which we have already tried to correct.

In the Introduction, we have clarified the justification of the topic of study and emphasised the objective of the article, as well as the contributions of the paper, since, as you have noted, there was a lack of these elements. On the other hand, in this section we have also added data from the European Union regarding the consumption of social media, since, following your advice, this provides the article with greater objectivity and allows us to add a context close to the Spanish case, while complementing the global data.

Furthermore, we have also added more information about confinement that forced many tasks to be carried out online, as well as pointing out some of the potential of social media for teenagers. With this we think that the explanation is more coherent and balanced.

Regarding the small title we wanted to point out in the Introduction section (1.1), we believe we have followed the style of the journal by heading it that way, but it can nevertheless be removed if that is not the right way (perhaps the Editors of the Journal can help us on this particular point).

Regarding your comments on the methodology, you will note in the article that we have reworded some parts of it to make it clearer and to make it easier to understand how the research was carried out. We think it is very important that it is well understood, and we hope that the rewording has made it clearer.

In the Discussion section we have added more information about COVID-19 as a possible factor in the growth of social media use among young people, as confinement forced a transformation of almost all daily activities.

Moreover, we have fixed the tables and used dots instead of commas, as you suggested.

In the final part of the article (Conclusion), we have tried to compare the data obtained in the Spanish case with some global data, however, it is beyond our scope to make further comparisons between countries. Nevertheless, we have added the limitations of the work and possible future lines of research, as this contributes to improve this final section, as you have suggested.

In this way, we have tried to incorporate your suggestions for improvement. We hope that we have done so correctly, and we reiterate our thanks to you for your help.   

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

thank you for taking into consideration all my comments. I am very satisfied with all changed you did. I think your paper should be published in present form.

Congratulations and good luck in your future scientific work. I hope to see you paper online as soon as possible