Looking for the Sustainability Messages of European Universities’ Social Media Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor and Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled: Looking for the sustainability messages of European universities’ social media communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors approach a very interesting and trendy subject. Global awareness around sustainability issues increases, so universities play a crucial role in building a more sustainable society, promoting sustainable development. The increasing popularity of social media worldwide provides universities with an opportunity to understand social, cultural, and environmental issues about people’s perception of sustainability.

Overall, the topic of this paper is interesting and worthy of publication. However, there are several issues that, in my opinion, authors should necessarily address.

• The most important issue is the positioning of research questions and hypotheses. Research questions and hypotheses should be derived from the literature background and placed there. Also, the research questions should be related to the hypotheses (there are 6 research questions and only 4 hypotheses). I also suggest combining the results relating to the research questions and related hypotheses into one section. (section 4.1 According to the objectives of the research with section 4.2 According to the hypotheses of the research)
• In the literature review, the Authors explain many expressions: communication, promotion, social media, social networks in pandemic etc. also the term “sustainability messages” deserves a theoretical background in 2.4 section.
• Authors claim that “Regarding the use of social media tools as a way to engage stakeholders and internal public in educating and promoting the universities sustainable future and their role in building it, no researches were found”.Please consider adding below positions, the recent studies of article topic and make a discussion about it, in the context of your research (PS those are not mine, I just think that through them your paper will be more complete):

1. Elena Gori, Alberto Romolini, Silvia Fissi and Marco Contri, (2020) Toward the Dissemination of Sustainability Issues through Social Media in the Higher Education Sector: Evidence from an Italian Case, Sustainability, 12(11), 4658; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114658
2. Holly Ott, Ruoxu Wang &Denise Bortree (2016) Communicating Sustainability Online: An Examination of Corporate, Nonprofit, and University Websites, Mass Communication and Society 19 (5): CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY COMMUNICATION, 671-687 https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2016.1204554;
3. Ladislav Pilař,Lucie Kvasničková Stanislavská,Jana Pitrová,Igor Krejčí,Ivana Tichá andMartina Chalupová (2019) Twitter Analysis of Global Communication in the Field of Sustainability, Sustainability, 11(24), 6958; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11246958

• The theoretical implications of the research carried out should be developed. In the conclusions section, the authors write more about the practical aspects of their research than about the theoretical input.
• Technical issues. Please take a look at Table 4 correct word “Engagegement”

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachement.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript addresses an important and actual subject related to the different strategies in academic field in times of COVID-19 pandemic.  Even though I understand the importance of the study for the development of literature, after analyzing the manuscript, I have identified some aspects that need to be improved:

• the introduction does not discuss the importance of the study, the novelty and possible practical implications of the study;
• the methodology vaguely describes the sample selection process. The sampling part should be developed to demonstrate the relevance of the sample, the place in the academic rank that each of the selected universities occupy should be specified, and other relevant information on each university chosen.
• the results are presented in a less friendly form, I recommend creating graphs that present the comparative results rather than simple tables;
• a university analysis would be useful in a comparative approach - for example: analysis by universities in the same country or in the same region, analysis by universities located on similar positions in the academic top, etc. 
• the discussion should focus on identifying the strategies used by each university, or the differences between them, in a more comparative approach.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Well-achieved didactic characterization of concepts, such as social media, social networks.

The authors conveniently justify the choice of the networks on which they will carry out the empirical study

The authors are based on studies carried out (for example, Perez et al 2014; Alhabash & Ma, 2017; Knight-McCord et al, 2016), to identify reasons for students to use social networks

The authors use the conclusions of a study conducted in 2014 that allowed us to verify that the posts that used video were only 8%. The authors should keep in mind that the use of this type of post has evolved exponentially in the last 2 years, being a trend and that the study they use is about eight years old, which represents a long time. Therefore, the authors should warn the reader of this situation

The authors mention the advantages and disadvantages of communication and promotion on social networks. It is suggested that they distinguish them from the perspective of the user and from the perspective of educational institutions.

Line 389: for each hypothesis, mention the authors who support it.

Line 478 “the engagement is calculated by adding the numbers of likes, comments and shares of the posts divided by the number of page likes at the end of research”.
Correct: "the post engagement is calculated by adding the numbers of likes, comments and shares of the post" {not posts) or "the engagement is calculated by adding the numbers of likes, comments and shares of the posts divided by the number of posts (in the period of time under review) and page likes at the end of research".

Table 1 and table 2: it is suggested that percentages should also be entered

Table 2: Point 3, Univ. Ox.: correct the number 2.76 to 2,76

Table 4: correct the word "engagegement"

Table 6: insert the word “first“ in the title: (….) “for the first 10 universities (…)”

Table 7: correct the word “Ferquency”

Table B1: categories referring to the format posts, UCL we have 13 posts; categories referring to the type of content we have only 12 posts. The University ‘TU Mun’ has identical problems.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, thank you for taking into consideration my suggestions. In my opinion, your work is ready to be published. Good luck!