REVIEWER 1 - COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW
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**Review of "Mapping Moral Visibility: Communicative Credibility in Reporting the 2023–2025 Palestine–Israel Conflict"**

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### **📄 Step 1. Summary of the Paper**

This manuscript examines how credibility is constructed in conflict reporting during the 2023–2025 Palestine–Israel conflict, using the ACLED dataset of 9,427 events. The authors argue that data collection under asymmetric power becomes a form of "moral communication," where institutional collapse and power disparities shape whose testimony is trusted. The paper employs a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative analysis of event data with qualitative thematic analysis of textual narratives. Key findings include systematic disparities in verification thresholds (e.g., Palestinian accounts face higher scrutiny), a correlation between empathy language and perceived credibility (r = 0.64), and the concept of "courage of enumeration"—where documenting casualties becomes an act of resistance. The paper claims to extend frameworks of epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) and moral witnessing (Margalit, 2002) to data-driven testimony in conflict zones.

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### **🔬 Step 2. Evaluation Criteria**

#### **1. Originality / Novelty**  
**Score: 8/10**  
The paper’s integration of epistemic injustice theory with quantitative conflict data is innovative. While studies have examined media bias or asymmetric reporting in the Palestine–Israel conflict, few have systematically analyzed credibility construction using mixed methods and large-scale event data. The concept of "moral visibility" and "courage of enumeration" adds theoretical novelty. However, the core idea—power asymmetries shaping credibility—is not entirely new, and the paper could better distinguish its contribution from prior decolonial and critical media studies.

#### **2. Scientific Rigor / Methodology**  
**Score: 6/10**  
- **Strengths:** The mixed-methods design is appropriate for capturing both statistical patterns and narrative depth. The use of ACLED data is rigorous, and the sampling strategy for qualitative analysis (1,000 narratives) is justified.  
- **Weaknesses:**  
  - **Causality vs. Correlation:** The correlation between empathy language and credibility (r = 0.64) is presented as evidence of moral framing’s influence, but no experimental or longitudinal analysis establishes causality.  
  - **Selection Bias:** The ACLED dataset may underrepresent Palestinian-sourced events due to communication blackouts, but the paper does not fully address how this biases findings.  
  - **Missing Controls:** The regression models lack discussion of confounding variables (e.g., media access, source diversity).  
- **Ethics:** Ethical approval for secondary data use is appropriately addressed.

#### **3. Clarity & Presentation**  
**Score: 7/10**  
The paper is generally well-structured, with clear sections and theoretical grounding. However:  
- **Jargon Overload:** Terms like "hermeneutical injustice" and "communicative action" are used without sufficient explanation for interdisciplinary audiences.  
- **Figure/Tables:** Tables are informative but lack contextual interpretation (e.g., Table 7’s verification rates need clearer links to epistemic injustice).  
- **Abstract/Conclusion:** The abstract accurately summarizes the paper, but the conclusion overstates policy implications without evidence of feasibility.

#### **4. Reproducibility & Transparency**  
**Score: 5/10**  
- The methods section describes data sources and coding procedures but omits critical details:  
  - How exactly was "empathy language" operationalized and measured?  
  - No access to raw data or code is mentioned, despite ACLED being public.  
  - The qualitative coding process (e.g., codebook, inter-rater reliability) is inadequately described.  
- Statistical analyses (e.g., regression, correlation) are reported but lack robustness checks (e.g., sensitivity analysis for missing data).

#### **5. Significance & Impact**  
**Score: 9/10**  
The paper addresses an urgent, high-stakes problem: how credibility asymmetries perpetuate epistemic injustice in conflict zones. Its findings could influence humanitarian documentation protocols, media ethics, and policy frameworks. The emphasis on Palestinian testimonies fills a critical gap in conflict studies and aligns with growing scholarly interest in decolonial approaches. Experts in media studies, human rights, and political science would find this work provocative and impactful.

#### **6. Ethics & Integrity**  
**Score: 8/10**  
The authors transparently acknowledge limitations (e.g., reporting biases) and avoid sensationalism. However:  
- **Positionality:** While researcher reflexivity is mentioned, the paper does not disclose whether the team includes scholars with direct ties to the conflict, which could affect interpretation.  
- **Conflict of Interest:** No conflicts are declared, but given the contentious topic, explicit disclaimers would strengthen integrity.

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### **🧪 Step 3. Specific Suggestions for Improvement**

#### **Major Flaws**  
1. **Causal Claims:** Replace causal language (e.g., "empathy language influences credibility") with correlational framing unless supported by experimental design.  
2. **Methodological Transparency:** Provide a codebook for qualitative themes and details on inter-rater reliability. Share regression model specifications (e.g., variables, goodness-of-fit metrics).  
3. **Bias Addressing:** Quantify and discuss the potential impact of underreporting Palestinian events during communication blackouts. Use imputation or weighting methods if possible.

#### **Minor Flaws**  
1. **Clarity:** Simplify jargon in the introduction and theoretical framework.  
2. **Tables:** Add footnotes explaining how verification rates were calculated (Table 7).  
3. **Copyediting:** Fix formatting inconsistencies (e.g., "C OMMUNICATIVE" in the title).

#### **Additional Analyses**  
1. Conduct a sensitivity analysis to test how missing data (e.g., unreported Palestinian events) affects the correlation between empathy language and credibility.  
2. Compare verification thresholds for Palestinian vs. Israeli accounts using a matched-sample design (e.g., pairing events with similar characteristics but different sources).  
3. Incorporate sentiment analysis or NLP tools to validate the "empathy language" metric.

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### **📊 Step 4. Final Decision & Justification**

**Overall Score: 7/10**  
**Recommendation: Borderline**  

**Justification:**  
This paper offers a timely, theoretically sophisticated, and socially significant analysis of credibility in conflict reporting. Its mixed-methods approach and emphasis on epistemic injustice are strengths, and the findings could inform both scholarship and practice. However, methodological gaps—especially regarding causal inference, transparency, and bias mitigation—undermine its rigor. The correlation between empathy language and credibility is compelling but not conclusive, and the lack of reproducibility details limits its utility. With major revisions (e.g., clarifying methods, tempering causal claims, addressing biases), this paper could meet the high standards of a journal like *Nature* or *BMJ*. As it stands, it is not yet acceptable for publication but has strong potential.

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