How Twitter is Changing Scotland’s Online Political Debate
Written by: Conor Magowan, Moray MacDonald and Thom Whatt
For full report, please click here.
Politics has always been a hot topic of debate in Scotland, whether that was in the coffee shops, the bars, “the steamie” or indeed at Holyrood.
If anything, politics and political debate has intensified in the last decade, with the introduction of more and more places to debate and discuss. Our study into Scottish social media habits in 2016 showed that politics was the single biggest topic of debate on Twitter.
This year we wanted to delve deeper into this area, specifically looking for trends and topics amongst those who discuss politics most often — your elected representatives in Holyrood.
We conducted a social listening exercise between January and the start of December of this year, looking at the Twitter accounts of every MSP and trying to understand the debate. Using a variety of digital listening tools, we analysed their followers, their interactions and looked at the most prominent keywords.
Below you will find our findings. We’ve listed the size of following, gender split and the ten most relevant keywords for each account, based on our research.
It’s proved for some fascinating results with regards to who we are reaching online, how we are reaching them, and what we have been debating in 2017.
From Moray MacDonald: Managing Director, Scotland
Political news coverage can sometimes seem rather depressing and basic. Not because the news outlets are doing a bad job, but because the way we debate politics has changed and become increasingly fraught. There is no doubt that the world of social media and 24 hour news channels has had a major impact on how politicians react, and how the rest of the world engages with them.
You need only look at Donald Trump’s Twitter feed to see how political language has developed in such a short time. The days of long form press releases have gone — maybe partly because our attention spans have reduced so much. Many of our local politicians will be quick to criticise President Trump, but the reality is many of them use very similar techniques on social media.
However, if you lift the bonnet on social media and political commentary you can begin to see why this world feels so angry. Twitter discourse is not representative of the real world, but politicians and journalists increasingly think it is the place to make their views known or to gather the views of the public. Just look at the gender split of twitter followers of Scottish MSPs in the Weber Shandwick research — on average 70% are male. That clearly isn’t anywhere near representative of society. It is only when we look at the data behind things, and not just the words on the surface, we can start to understand how valid they are. Just one small example of how data is so important for any PR campaign.
From Conor Magowan, Director, Public Affairs, Scotland
The ability to connect directly and almost instantaneously over social media has added another layer to the political communications toolkit.
The First Minister is particularly effective on Twitter. She often uses her account to correct inaccurate stories or articles ensuring her 800,000 + followers know her views. Her tweet following Theresa May’s difficult conference speech was the perfect example of her prowess on Twitter.
When used well, politicians can resonate with voters, demonstrate empathy and inspire action. It’s highly unlikely that Twitter will ever be the place for an in-depth policy discussion but the need to communicate the big ideas in a snappy way has never been more important.
That is why understanding who you are speaking to, what motivates them to follow you and how you can reach out and appeal to other potential voters is an opportunity that politicians should be looking to grasp.
Sure, politics is a rough and tumble business and attacking your opponents is a part of the environment. But what is striking about the Weber Shandwick research is how much politicians talk about their opponents on their own channels.
It reinforces the impression of a political ‘bubble’ where it is as important to kick your foes as it is to defend your own side. We don’t see businesses, charities or civic groups engaging in this sort of tactic — it would most certainly lead to a decline in sales or damage their reputation.
In a time of increased political polarisation, the ground for responsible and measured output is there for the taking.
From: Thom Watt, Associate Director, Digital, Scotland
Social listening has revolutionised the way we look at data, allowing us near instant access to the kinds of sociological insights that were previously only available in census. Not only can we look at the trends of the day (on the day), but we can plot their rise, fall and influence.
It also allows us to look at the human side of Big Data, which is where it becomes fascinating. We’re not zoning in on individual’s conversations, but collating them to see what makes them tick. In previous years, we’ve looked at Scotland as a whole, but this year we wanted to be
a little more specific. Where better to start than with your elected officials?
We used a variety of social listening tools to audit the Twitter accounts of MSPs with active accounts to make this report, so we could look at the size of their following, the gender split of that following, and perform a keyword analysis. All of this was performed on data collected between January and November 2017.
So what of the results? It’s hard to know where to start. There are obvious examples of confirmation bias, stereotypes, and of the “social media bubble”, but there are far more troubling findings.
The small group of female followers across the political spectrum should be of concern to everyone — there’s a huge section of the population who are not being addressed by their politicians. Social media now shapes the news cycle as much as it reviews it, and a wider variety of voices must be heard in 2018.
3 Key Findings:
· Twitter is the social media platform of choice for politicians in Scotland, with 120 of the 129 MSPs being personally active on the platform
· Scottish politics in Scotland is overwhelmingly dominated by men with the average MSPs Twitter following at 70% male
· There’s plenty of evidence in the keyword analysis to confirm the idea that political social media is an “echo chamber”, a theory that suggests people follow the accounts of news outlets, reporters and politicians who best reflect or reinforce their existing belief system, rather than challenge it.
View the full results here.
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