Media Information, Flood Images, and Perceptions in Times of Flood

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript might have the noble aim of producing an overview of the application of different media sources when dealing with a severe natural hazard such as a flood.

However, this work has serious flaws, from the point of methodology up to ethical issues, accompanied by bad English and writing style.

The whole manuscript looks more like a critique of people’s habits of using social media than implementing the analysis of their usage in flood hazard management. Such an approach creates a mismatch between the title and the actual content.

 The methodology has significant deficiencies – nowhere has been stated the way the questionnaire was administered (only the period) but was it done in person or online. If it was done online, there is a significant bias on the side of people having the needed access versus the real victims of the flood. This issue has been detected in the number of victims – table 7. What is the point of table 7, since there is a noticeable higher number of people not involved in the tragedy itself? What is the structure of the Disagreed group, and why wasn’t that discussed? What is the meaning of df and p-value in table 6 – this can not be just left there without any mention in the text.

There are many discussions based on gender differences, which is incomplete since there should have been at least a third option – “Other.” This insinuates the potential vulnerability of “other” group during and after flood management that should not have scientific support. Furthermore, several comments on female behavior regarding social media (e.g. 266, 279) do not correlate with the study’s aim at best; what does it mean that “male respondents prefer to read social media content” as opposed to female respondents? In fact, in table 6 itself, male respondents have higher values in all of the “Items”, e.g. “I believe that everything presented on social media is true.”

Finally, what is the point of this gender differentiation, specifically lacking a whole section of “other” gender options.

Authors have to define a more concise “story” of this manuscript because currently, it is neither transparent nor scientifically structured.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The perception of the flood by different recipients is an important element in the flood management process. In my opinion, the perception aspects of disasters should be obligatory taken into account at the stage of the development of flood risk and management procedures. Therefore, I state that the issue described by the authors is an important part of the flood management research and should be published in the journal in order to enhance the needs in this aspect.  

 

The interesting aspect of the paper lies in the methodology approach where the authors have investigated the perception of the flood event taking into account the most important recipients and evaluated the influence of mass media information and flood images on flood perception elements.

 

In my opinion, the article is well structured, consistent, and well related to the literature. I have not evaluated the English language style, because I am not a native English speaker.  

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Editor,

Indeed the research article has documented in web-base without any significant results (Fig/Table). The manuscript can be English grammar and some places capital letter has to taken care. 

Thanking you

With best regards

 

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Very well, the lack of "other" option should be stated in the form of limitations of the presented methodology since such a questionnaire might have missed a potential audience.

Also, there are errors with p-values stated (lines 282-282 of the new manuscript); p=0.089 is not lower than 0.05. I hope that such is also academically oriented without prejudice.

Previous studies (e.g., reference 30, line 337 ) can not validate a survey done two years after. It may relate or be similar, but it can not validate. 

 

Author Response

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