This is the tenth in our series on mentions of Scotland and Independence in Social media and online news.  As before, the posts collected have been classified as “pro”, “undec”, “anti”, and “news”, and the chart below tracks these through the week.

The chart shows that both pro-Independence and anti-Independence posts have been reduced this week, with “undec” and “news” taking a larger proportion of the volume.

In the “pro” category, there is a continuation of a series, with Liz Lochhead, the current Scottish Makar, or National Poet, giving her views via the @Celebs4Indy account, which was retweeted a number of times:

RT @Celebs4indy: LIZ LOCHHEAD ‘if there was a referendum tomorrow I’d vote yes-I don’t see why Scotland & England can’t remain friendly co-operative equals.[ http://twitter.com/DanSmatterings/statuses/200254164721344512]

My question is whether her sentiment adds up to a valid motivation for voting “Yes”.

Tweets like

RT @albagubrath_61: The Labour/Tory Govt’s did this to Scotland. #McCrone http://t.co/H8Ak0jjE and this http://t.co/S2C0ar3p Please vote Yes For Independence.[ http://twitter.com/ivanelrick/statuses/199428773232386050]

suggest that problems of Scotland are the fault of the English, but forget that Labour have been the majority party representing Scotland in Westminster for a long time.

In the “undec” category, the comedians and satirical twitter accounts were, once again, well represented, with:

Alex Salmond rang, asking if I’d be Chancellor for Scotland after independence. Trump & Murdoch both suggested me. Said I’ll think about it. [http://twitter.com/OsborneDrunk/statuses/201622605118193664]

And

100 Celtic fans were asked if Scotland gained independence should we change currency?98% said NO we should keep the giro [http://twitter.com/delb1978/statuses/201248758288236544]

Both of these were retweeted quite a bit.

As the title above may suggest, the news category this week was dominated by the news that the Scottish National Party intend to hold a referendum after independence on the future role of the Monarchy in Scotland:

THE Queen may not remain head of state in an independent Scotland after one of the Scottish National Party’s most senior MPs confirmed it is party policy to hold a referendum on the monarchy. Christine Grahame, the convener of the Scottish Parliament’s … [http://www.devonporttimes.com.au/news/world/world/general/queen-could-be-ousted-as-scotlands-head-of-state/2554343.aspx]

As with the quoted example, a large proportion of the posts on this subject were from Australian and New Zealand new outlets.

Another important topic was the future of Scotland’s historic regiments, with the SNP now claiming that the military would be safer under an independent government:

 RT @theSNP: Independence opportunity to save Scotland’s historic regimental tradition http://t.co/wKHPSsJx #IndyRef [http://twitter.com/cusackandrew/statuses/201761417173532673]

I would imagine that those people who have actively been posting pro and anti messages on social media in the past are reconsidering following the local elections, or are posting news articles and links rather than direct comment.

From now on we will produce this post on a fortnightly basis, as the referendum is going to be some way off.  We will be producing reports every few months, combining data across the period, and will let you know, here and on twitter, when these are available.

We have continued our search across social media and online news for “Scotland” AND (“Independence” OR “Referendum”), and here present our analysis of the conversations found in the week from 30th April to 6th May, 2012.

There were local elections across the United Kingdom on Thursday May the 3rd, to elect local councillors, elected mayors, and, in ten cities, referendums on whether to have an elected mayor. As part of the campaign for these elections in Scotland, Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party (SNP) attempted to claim that the local elections were an important step on the road to independence, and that a vote for the SNP on the 3rd would be a sign of support for independence.  This campaigning explains the large peak in “news” posts on the 2nd of May.  The fact that the party was largely unsuccessful – they did not take Glasgow council, their main target, and the only city they held on to was Dundee – accounts for a lot of the news posts on the 4th of May.

The lack of electoral success for the SNP lead also to the peak for “undec” on the 5th of May, with the comment

So, the SNP were going to control all of Scotland’s cities on the road to independence. They actually control……Dundee.

being retweeted frequently (as a comment frrom a memeber of the public, which does not demonstrate a voting intention, this was classified as “undec” or undecided).

The large peak in “undec” posts on the 30th of Aperil was accounted for by photographs of the opening of “Democracy for Scotland: The Referendum Experience” being posted by the Scottish Political Archive to Flickr on that date.   I would not wnat to try and guess which side of the debate the organisers of this exhibition, made up it seems of archive material from past and future referenda, take.

The pie chart below demonstreates the continuing low level of posts that are straighforwardly anti independence, when compare to the undecided and pro categories.

The table below presents the data for the week.

Continuing our weekly series looking at the social media and online news around the Scottish Independence debate, in the last week there were 1,139 posts, which we classified as pro, undecided, anti, and news, as before.

Thus News is by far the majority category (see table below).  This includes posts about the Economist’s front cover from April 13th, posts regarding an Independent Scotland’s membership of NATO:

The SNP’s NATO u-turn: In its drive to sell independence to middle-Scotland, the nationalist leadership is negle… http://t.co/H6BQtowe

This lead to a number of retweets, commenting on the direction the SNP are taking, so on the one hand there were posts like

RT @OpenUnionism: “In its drive to sell independence to middle-Scotland, the nationalist leadership is neglecting the Scottish left”: http://t.co/GpDxsowk

While on the other there were posts such as:

SNP will ensure an independent Scotland stays in NATO. The correct decision if you want the oil fields protected! http://t.co/8qcBFvZj

The news category also included considerable comment regarding the local elections on May 3rd, and whether these would be seen as a dry run for the referendum, though there was also a fair amount of comment along the lines that people who supported independence did not necessarily support the policies of the SNP:

@PeatWorrier ie “Future policy for Scotland is for future Scotland to decide at that point, not the SNP, pre-referendum”

The pro camp retained it’s lead over the anti’s, though there were reports of an opinion survey which I found interesting:

THE majority of Scots believe the Queen contributes nothing to their sense of national pride, according to a new survey of national identity, calling into question support for the monarchy if Scotland becomes independent. (http://www.scotsman.com/scots-take-more-pride-in-billy-connolly-than-the-queen-says-survey-1-2250061 – and the URL says it all.)

The data:

The debate this week contained within the results of our search (“Scotland” AND (“Referendum” OR “Independence”) largely revolved around news items.  It seems that activists on both sides have grown quieter in the time since we started this series of posts.

As you will see from the chart, there was a big peak in news coverage on the 13^th of April, last Friday.  This was caused by reports and discussion of the Economist’s satirical cover image, a map of Scotland renamed as Skintland, Edinburgh as Edinborrow, and so on, with an accompanying article saying that the economics of Independence would not work out:

The front page of its latest edition shows a map of Scotland with puns instead of place names such as “Glasgone”, “Edinborrow” and the “Highinterestlands”. It is followed by an article concluding that independence would come at a high price and could … (http://www.granthamjournal.co.uk/news/sturgeon-challenges-skintland-map-1-3736576 )

Other news stories that boosted the proportion in this classification included the suggestion by a Conservative MP that

RT @ScotonSunday: Scottish independence: Scotland “needs UK to set up trade missions”  http://t.co/6vOT3Mjk (http://friendfeed.com/kilsally/415cd1a2/rt-scotonsunday-scottish-independence)

It seems that the trend towards more analytical reporting on the subject from politicians, pundits, and journalists is continuing, with some discussion around funding of renewable subsidies after independence:

Scottish households could be left with higher power bills after independence to fund subsidies for wind and wave farms, the country’s major energy companies and the Government have … (http://shamwag.com/2012/04/12/energy-companies-deliver-independent-scotland-power-bill-warning/)

This was posted after an energy company made a presentation to a select committee in Parliament in Westminster, and could call into doubt the proposed energy and economic policies of an independent Scotland – leading back to the Economists article.

At the same time, the pro-Independence politicians and activists claimed that the articles questioning the economic basis for Independence showed ignorance about the realities of Scotland, and anti-Independence activists posted updates along the lines of:

RT @xAwkwardTurtlex: Scotland will be absolutely fucked if it gets independence. (http://twitter.com/hosty96xD/statuses/189310697463758848)

While I am inclined to believe economists over politicians, I would not want to make a judgement.  All I can say is that, among those who care, the debate will continue with new issues coming up each week.

From the data, note:

1. The proportion of the posts classified as “news” has increased.  A large number of tweets and other posts were found reposting news content.
2. Since last week, we have updated our software, and so the “Microblog” category is currently broken down into posts from Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter.  I note that both the Yes and No campaign facebook pages have more posts on them than are shown in the table.  We will be looking into this in coming weeks.

I would class this as “History week” in terms of the pro-independence campaigns statements and posts on social media.  The first event to be celebrated was the anniversary of the 1320 signing of the Declaration of Arbroath (see Wikipedia for details):

RT @StatueLibrtyNPS 4/6/1320– Scotland declares independence with the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath.

Taken Up by many more news outlets (including the New York Times) is the link between the timing of the referendum in 1214 and the celebrations of the 700^th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in the same year:

Scottish Leader Pins Hopes for Independence Vote on a 700-Year-Old Fervor: http://t.co/iFV2TOmy #history #scotland

This is quite triumphant, and has given the supporters of independence something to talk about, though at the same time doubts have been raised about the viability of an Independent Scotland by defence experts:

Professor Malcolm Chalmers, policy director at the Royal United Services Institute, today warns that “in a world in which the security of states is increasingly interdependent, it is hard to imagine why the prospect of having independent armed forces could, in itself, be a good reason to support….. (full text)

And

Alex Salmond is under growing pressure to set out his plans for Scotland’s defence forces under independence after a leading defence expert raised questions over the the SNP’s flagship policy to quit Nato.(full text)

Pressure has also come in the area of economic policy, for example,

By Dean Herbert ALEX Salmond will launch an extraordinary bid to snatch almost £70billion-worth of assets from Britain as part of an independence settlement for Scotland, it was revealed yesterday. But the move has been slammed by critics, … (full text)

I assume that all of these news reports will make at least some of the electorate reconsider independence, though at the moment, judging purely from social media posts in the last week, the “pro” lobby seems to be making the running: