Risk Communication about COVID-19 in India: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Mainstream News Reports about India’s Wave I and Wave II Outbreaks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Taken as a series of scholarly vignettes, this paper is really excellent.  It's well-referenced, nicely written, and thoughtful.  It also employs an interesting a clear method to analyze and important body of work.

Where the paper is less good for me as a reader is in its linking together of the various threads that run through the paper.  With the exception of the background on India, the other themes do not all seem to be carried through clearly.   And this includes datafication, which is very ably discussed throughout.  It's just not fully stated how this relates back to material rhetoric. 

For instance, we begin with material rhetoric and datafication and end with hybridity. As a reader of these literatures, this all feels like it "goes" but it would be more helpful to have a few statements to carry the reader through the paper and to make more explicit the ways that the authors see these ideas and themes working together. It's the author's views that are of interest to a reader.  I'd be particularly interested in some statement about materiality, rhetoric, and embodied experiences, because that seems to be a main almost unstated tension in this work.

The most pressing things, from my vantage point, are: explaining the linkage between materiality, hybridity, and datafication; providing some explanation of how and why the results are structured in the way they are; and then also explaining more clearly how these methods relate to the introductory material.  Again, this all goes together well, so this is likely just a matter of a few "signposting" statements here and there.

Thank you for doing this study.  I'm honored to have been allowed to review this important work.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions, which help us to better position our study and elaborate on our literature review and discussions. Please see listed below our detailed responses to your comments: 

And this includes datafication, which is very ably discussed throughout.  It's just not fully stated how this relates back to material rhetoric. 

• We added some elaboration on risk communication on p.3-5.
• We elaborated on the connections between medical rhetoric, datafication, and risk communication on p.5 and p.13-14. 

For instance, we begin with material rhetoric and datafication and end with hybridity. As a reader of these literatures, this all feels like it "goes" but it would be more helpful to have a few statements to carry the reader through the paper and to make more explicit the ways that the authors see these ideas and themes working together. 

• We added some explanation about material rhetoric and hybrid spheres on P. 13-14.  

I'd be particularly interested in some statement about materiality, rhetoric, and embodied experiences, because that seems to be a main almost unstated tension in this work.

• We added some explanation on subjective experiences on p. 4 which addresses how materiality, rhetoric, and embodied experiences are interrelated. We also discuss the embodied experiences in the “people-focused” keywords section on p. 10-11 which further explicates this tension between materiality and individual experience during a crisis. In addition, this correlation between material rhetoric and embodied experiences is explained in the “Datafied material rhetoric in hybrid spheres” section on p. 13-14, as well as in “Unique materiality and socio-economic conditions in India” on p. 15.   

The most pressing things, from my vantage point, are: explaining the linkage between materiality, hybridity, and datafication; providing some explanation of how and why the results are structured in the way they are; and then also explaining more clearly how these methods relate to the introductory material. 

• We elaborated on the linkage between materiality, hybridity of spheres of argumentation, and datafication on p. 14-15. We also added a note regarding the structure of the results and its relation to the introductory material on p. 6.

Reviewer 2 Report

Review report

• The paper tries to cover all the key aspects of risk communication that can be related with that of health. However, a little more insight is required into the complexities of risk communication. The parallels of risk communication with that of crises communication can be drawn for bringing out the gaps of health communication attempted by the print media.
•  More literature review on risk communication could have been attempted.
• The concept of material rhetoric needs to be coherently correlated with that of risk communication. A link between material rhetoric and subjectivity could have been attempted by the author.
• The categories of discourse analysis that has been used are adequate and covers almost all the factors that determined the Covid pandemic.
• There needs to be clarity on differentiating between the rhetorics used to describe the human body which is termed as the locus of biomedical actants, treatment as well as the death a focusing on treatments.,
• Check for minor spelling errors.

• The manuscript is clear but could have been made much more relevant for future risk communication coverage, of what could be avoided. Why specific English dailies are covered alone needs to be justified?  
• The cited references could be more updated.
• The manuscript is scientifically sound and  the experimental design appropriate to test the hypothesis.
• The analysis through the assisted soft wares has been adequate.
• Since the conclusion refers to the selective reporting in particular areas, a theoretical reference could have been added to it

• The part relating to the hybridism of technical aspects could be made more clear.
• How post pandemic rhetorics can be used to bring in a semblance of health crises and the government’s response without focusing on the affect alone but countering the element of fake news can be discussed in details.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Check for minor spelling errors and avoid repetitive arguments

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions, which help us to better position our study and elaborate on our literature review and discussions. Please see listed below our detailed responses to your comments on the connections between risk communication and crisis communication, material rhetoric, and hybrid spheres: 

• The paper tries to cover all the key aspects of risk communication that can be related with that of health. However, a little more insight is required into the complexities of risk communication. The parallels of risk communication with that of crisis communication can be drawn for bringing out the gaps of health communication attempted by the print media. More literature review on risk communication could have been attempted.
• We added more literature review on risk communication and the connections and differences between risk communication and crises communication on P.3-4
• The concept of material rhetoric needs to be coherently correlated with that of risk communication. 
• We added some elaboration on connections between medical rhetoric, datafication, and risk communication on p.5 and p.13-14. 
• A link between material rhetoric and subjectivity could have been attempted by the author.
• We added some explanation on subjective experiences on p. 4 which addresses how material rhetoric and subjectivity are linked.
• There needs to be clarity on differentiating between the rhetorics used to describe the human body which is termed as the locus of biomedical actants, treatment as well as the death a focusing on treatments.,
• We add some discussions on p.9 
• Check for minor spelling errors.
• We copyedited the manuscript to get rid of mechanical errors. 

• The manuscript is clear but could have been made much more relevant for future risk communication coverage, of what could be avoided. Why specific English dailies are covered alone needs to be justified? 
• An explanation of why this specific English daily is covered is provided on p. 5-6. 
• The cited references could be more updated.
• We added a few references on risk communication and crisis communication 
• Since the conclusion refers to the selective reporting in particular areas, a theoretical reference could have been added to it

• The part relating to the hybridism of technical aspects could be made more clear.
• We added some explanation about material rhetoric and hybrid spheres on P. 13-14.  
• How post pandemic rhetorics can be used to bring in a semblance of health crises and the government’s response without focusing on the affect alone but countering the element of fake news can be discussed in details.
• An explanation of how this study can be beyond affect to addressing the elements of fake news is provided on p. 15-16.