Social Media Publishing Strategies of German Newspapers: Content Analysis of Sports Reporting on Social Networks by German Newspapers—Results of the 2021 Social Media International Sports Press Survey

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Summary:

The presented study shows how German newspaper outlets use their social media channels Twitter and Facebook for sport reporting. Against the backgrounds of changing media usage patterns, the transformation in the media landscape and the difficult economic situation of media outlets the authors study the potential and the strategies of social media usage. The topic is relevant and important. As far as I know, there are no results that are based on such a big amount of data yet. However, from my point of view, almost all section (the theoretical background, the description of the methodology, the results and the discussion) need further work. The overall structure of the article could be improved. Contents could be more precise as I’ll describe in specific comments.

 

General concept comments:

-       From my point of view the theoretical background is currently not a continuous argumentation that leads to the implementation of the study. The parts about agenda setting, gender in media and quality and diversity seem to me as the separate ideas that are not brought together in a coherent argumentation. Maybe an argumentation that is based on changes in the media landscape, economic concerns of media outlets, challenges in marketing and distribution and the economic role of sport reporting (i.e. battering ram) on the one hand and the specifics of the usage of social media by recipients and the potential for media outlets on the other hand may be frame for an argumentation. The current ideas might also fit in this frame.

-       The argumentation in the literature section must result in hypothesis or research questions. These would guide the presentation of the results and further structure the discussion.

-       A short paragraph about Twitter’s and Facebook’s relevance as well as usage patterns in Germany might be helpful for the discussion about the strategies of the media outlets. How big are the user groups, do they have specific characteristics (i.e., journalists on Twitter), and what does that mean for the publication strategies of the media outlets?

-       At some points there is reference to the ISPS results (i.e. when it comes to gender). References for other results i.e. the focus of reporting could also mark specifics for social media strategies in comparison to print coverage.

-       Can you give further information about audience engagement? What kind of posts do get likes? Are there any relations to the kind of content?

-       Are there differences between the investigated media outlets? For me this would be crucial when we talk about (different) social media strategies?

 

Specific comments:

-       L26: “In Germany, the sports departments of newspapers are reacting to this change by expanding their offerings on social media by using a variety of publishing and engagement strategies.” -> Can you give examples for these publishing and engagement strategies? What do they contain? In how far can you use elements of these strategies for your following study?

-       L34: “In this constantly changing media environment, it is important to understand how newsrooms are utilizing social media to inform and engage with their audiences.” -> why is this important? For Whom?

-       L49-61: I would replace this paragraph. For me it rather fits in the introduction section than in the theoretical background

-       L80-81: I would not describe social media as a tool for journalists for information and sourcing. For me this distracts from the core of your study.

-       L174-193: This is general information on ISPS. For me this distracts from your study and should not be part of your section on methodology. I would rather read about your methodology: what is the period of data collection for your study? Please also describe your variables in more detail: what is meant by “content of the posts” and “content”. You describe the intercoder reliability for the ISPS. What are the values for the eleven variables you use in this study?

-       Can you please also specify how you treated posts that contained a link to an article on the homepage. Did you follow the link and analyze the article in addition i.e. when you give information on the sources?

-       L 214: “In addition, the study examined the impact of the current corona pandemic on sports journalism (Finneman and Thomas 2022).” -> For me this statement is too general. How does it examine the impact? Maybe you also like to discuss this issue further in the discussion section?

-       Figure 1 and figure 4 are in German. Please translate to English

-       L281 – 292: This paragraph would rather fit in the discussion than in the results section because it gives explanations for the results.

-       L293: I do not understand why you show one post as an example. What is the benefit for the reader in terms of strategies? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

We saved all answers to all three reviewers in one document attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this research article. I am always intrigued by the statistics from sports media organizations when it comes to content and reach. That being said, I believe this article has major conceptualization issues that need to be addressed.

The biggest issue is how you frame the paper. You need to frame the overall study in a better way. In the conclusion, on lines 353-355, you say the main purpose of the study is to demonstrate the influence of digitization on sports journalism. Based on the findings you have and data you show, I think this paper is more about audience engagement on social media and what content appeals to readers and sports fans.

Just as important, the theoretical framing of the study is an issue. In the intro, you never say that you are going to use agenda setting or focus on gender in this study. That needs to be explained in the intro because although you say mention them in the abstract, you need to talk about them in the intro to better set up the rest of the paper. And then as you move through the lit review sections (and this is something that I’ll touch on more later), you have a section on agenda setting, but you spend most of that section on audience engagement. And then you go into gender in media (again, I’ll touch on more later), but most of the gender issues you refer to in the findings are surface level findings on the gender are the journalists and athletes featured. In my opinion, you would need a lot more findings about gender in sports media to justify an entire lit review section on gender in media. Then you talk about “Quality and Diversity,” but you touch on diversity very briefly in the results. It seems to me that you’re trying to shoehorn topics of gender and diversity into a data set that contains very little about gender and diversity. I believe the paper would be better by narrowing your focus (whether that is agenda setting, gatekeeping, audience engagement or something else) and sticking to that instead of saying you are going to touch on certain issues, but then referencing them only tangentially.

You also never give hypotheses or research questions. If other researchers have conducted similar studies using this data set, you should have some idea about what the data will say and can make hypotheses on what you think you will find.

You need to better justification in the intro to set up why people should care about this study. I think once you reconceptualize the focus of the paper, this may be easier to do. Why should a reader care about your findings? Where does this study fit in the larger sports media and journalism field? What does this study add to the field?

For the lit review, as I stated earlier, the lit review needs revising, if not an overhaul, to truly fit what you do and discuss in the findings and discussion sections. Your section titled “Agenda setting and audience engagement” doesn’t really work as constructed because you hardly touch on agenda setting. I realize that audience engagement is part of this section, but the two topics should not be combined in one lit review section. You focus mostly on social media and the different studies that scholars conducted on social media and sports. You need to have one section on agenda setting and add more lit on agenda setting, and a second section on audience engagement.

I’m also wondering if agenda setting is the best idea for a theoretical construct. I’m wondering if gatekeeping may be a better option for the theoretical construct. Based on what I’m seeing, your focus on sharing and what content is shared fits with audience engagement, but I also feel like it fits with gatekeeping. The editors and reporters decide what to cover and social media analytics about what content audiences engage with probably plays a big role in story selection.

Whatever you go with, you need to better explain what the theoretical concept is. You don’t really explain much about agenda setting. I understand that agenda setting is one of the most prominent mass comm theories out there, but you still need to explain what agenda setting means, even if you take only a few sentences or a paragraph to do that.

The “Gender in media” section comes out of nowhere because you don’t mention gender at all before that section. And you rarely touch on it later in the article. As I stated above, I think you are trying to shoehorn gender and diversity into this study without the data being there to support the inclusion of gender and diversity.

In the “method” section, you need to explain why and how you chose the newspapers that you did.

Lastly, I think you need to revise the findings sections and look beyond basic descriptive statistics. You should consider some statistical tests to compare data from different outlets or different sports that are covered to see if the differences are significant.  

Author Response

We saved all answers to all the three reviewers in one document attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for considering my comments. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Kudos to the authors for their work on revising this paper. I believe it is much stronger in its current form. My one comment would be to check for missing Oxford commas before the "and" in a simple series. I saw a few series without that comma, but that is it. Good job.