Linking for influence: Twitter linked content in the Scottish Referendum televised debates

Abstract

Twitter, the micro-blogging social media tool, has established a critical role in facilitating social engagement. Its low technical and economic barriers to uptake provide a readily accessible forum for public engagement with events such as televised political debates, and in this context provides a ‘backchannel’ to mainstream media, allowing users to comment on and engage in debates. Most recently during the 2014 Scottish Referendum, Twitter was used extensively by both ‘Better Together’ (pro-Unionist) and ‘Yes’ (pro-independence) campaigners. The aim of this research was to develop an understanding of the linked content present in tweets sent during three televised debates on the issue of Scottish Independence. Analysis of the linked content shows a broad subject proximity to the topics under discussion during the debates, but highlights the lack of specificity in relation to the peaks and troughs of Twitter traffic during the debates. The paper also highlights the use made of links to a variety of resources such as the mainstream media as well as more informal sources including user-generated image and video content to support political viewpoints, and argues that, while the use of such content is beneficial in terms of unifying perspectives, supporter activism and the gratification of the social need for connectivity, it does not act to convert political opinion.

E-Democracy: Conceptual Foundations and Recent Trends

“…Politics always involves some degree of contestation-struggle-in the societal world" (Dahlgren 2013: 3). Burnett and Bloice (2016) examined Twitter posts during three televised debates about Scottish Independence leading up to the 2014 Scottish Referendum, concluding that posts linking to a variety of resources did have positive effects on unifying perspectives and supporter activism, but did not change political opinions. This makes the impact of social media on the outcome of the 2014 Scottish Referendum questionable.…”

‘Opportunities have pretty much disappeared’: The Movement for Scottish Independence in Abeyance during Covid-19

“…The revised research design was based on a mixed-methods approach that combined semi-structured interviews (n -8) with members of key organisations and political parties to better understand the organisational dynamics of the movement and how it understood and adapted to the circumstances, with qualitative content analysis of Twitter data (n=10595). The rationale was that activity was shifting online, and that Twitter was the social media platform of choice during the 2014 Referendum (Burnett and Bloice 2016). We used interviews to get a sense of the day-to-day aspects of movement activity during the pandemic and to double check the Twitter data.…”

Ephemeral Journalism: News Distribution Through Instagram Stories

“…They have changed the way journalistic content is produced, distributed, used, and consumed (Kramp & Loosen, 2017; Newman, 2009), so being active on them is considered “by many news managers as an obvious and necessary step in journalism’s digital-first transformation” (Lewis & Molyneux, 2019, p. 2580). Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have turned into powerful channels for media to deliver information, find sources and story ideas, promote contents, and increase the traffic to their websites (Barberá et al, 2017; Hermida et al, 2012; Lee, 2016; Sacco & Bossio, 2017; Thurman, 2018), as well as another means to reach, communicate, interact, and engage with their audiences (Al-Rawi, 2017; Burnett & Bloice, 2016; Duffy & Knight, 2019; Holton & Lewis, 2011).…”