Title: Breast cancer on social media: a quali-quantitative study on the credibility and content
type of the most shared news stories
Version: 0 Date: 06 Apr 2021
Reviewer:  Pia Vra#ko
Reviewer's report:
The manuscript needs several minor revisions:
- Be consistent in using comma (,) or dot (.) in decimal numbers. Check the journal’s guidelines.
- In general, language could be further improved by a native speaker’s revision (not compulsory).
- Line 17: replace “are” with “can be” to read “…about breast cancer can be propagated
rapidly…” as in the background
- Abstract, Methods: Add what were the data sources (which traditional media and SNSs were
screened for the study).
- Line 24: mentions prevention or early detection/screening.
- Line 40: delete “it” and replace “recurring” with “frequently occurring” to read “Breast cancer
is one of the most frequently occurring types of cancer…”
- Background section: Add a short mention (1-2 sentences) on breast cancer awareness month,
to set the stage for the research question 4.
- Line 113: References 22 and 23 are not needed.
- Line 124: the sentence “In the period of one year, we found 9811 news stories” should be
moved to the Results section.
- Line 126: delete “(n=1594)” – this goes to the Results section.
- Lines 161-164: The sentence “It is important to mention…” could be reformulated into
inclusion criteria and put before the sub-section Credibility analysis and types of rumors.
- Line 176: delete “it refers to” (typo mistake)
- Line 196: Title of the sub-section suggestion “Mentions prevention and early detection /
screening”
- Lines 209-210: delete “, because t-test require a normally distributed sample population. A
p-value less than 0.05 is considered statistically significant”. These are well known facts not
needed to mention in the manuscript.
- Start the Results section with “Screening the media for breast cancer news stories, published
between June 2019 and June 2020, resulted in 9811 hits. Of these, 1594 news stories had at least
1000 total shares. 69,7 % were not included in the analysis, as they do not address science, risk
factors, prevention, treatment or other aspects that can be addressed for scientific accuracy.”
Continue with sub-title Credibility and type of rumors.
- In the Results section, a sub-section on “Source of news stories” is missing.
- Line 246, Table 2: consider to present the % of news stories as a pie-chart.
- Lines 251-252, Table 3: To the News story title, add “(web page)”, to be clear even if only
looking at the table, that same news was shared on several different web pages. Add two
columns: “verified or rumor” and “content type”
- Line 261: The title of sub-section should read “Mentions prevention and early detection/
screening”
- Lines 279-280, Table 5, and lines 279-298, Table 6: It is not clear, what “month2” stands for.
- Line 356: “…as well as the symptoms of the disease, as screening is the most… ….at an early
stage and thus decrease mortality.”
- Line 357: delete the sentence “Symptoms include …”. It is not relevant for the purpose of this
manuscript.
- Line 360: delete “(BSE) – used only once.
- Limitations section: add a short sentence on how does the first limitation impact the results
of the present study.
- Conclusions section: the first sentence should be a better-defined and more accurate inference.
The word “improved” can mean anything. What exactly do you mean by “improved”?
- Line 438: Revise the authors of the reference No. 4.