Social media

Independence impact on media

Stephen Richard — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 14:58:48 +0000

Independence impact on media Stephen Richard Thu, 10/28/2021 - 15:58

Author or Creator

Common Weal

Does independence impact on the media?

Mostly the media is entirely independent so won't be affected by independence. There are two areas where there will be changes; regulation and broadcasting and those will need to be set up.

What is the issue with regulation?

There is no public regulation of the print media in the UK – it is self-regulating other than on legal issues (like defamation or contempt of court where Scotland already has its own laws). If a future Scottish government wanted to introduce statutory regulation that would be a matter for the Scottish Parliament at that time. But broadcast does need to be regulated for a number of reasons. At the most technical end, broadcasting uses part of the radio spectrum and that has to be controlled and allocated on behalf of the public. In addition, broadcasting does have statutory cuties to ensure fairness and balance. Just now both these functions are carried out by Ofcom which answers to the UK Government. Scotland will therefore have to set up an Ofcom equivalent to take over those functions and answer to the Scottish Parliament.

What needs to be done for broadcasting?

The regulation and 'spectrum allocation' aspects will be covered by the 'Scottish Ofcom'. But Scotland will want to maintain public service broadcasting and so at least one Scottish public television channel will need to be set up. This will probably be based on transferring a lot of the personnel and asses from BBC Scotland but there are many models for how it could work. Equally it really is a matter for political decision the nature of the channel – how much it wants to invest in drama, how much it wants to invest in news and so on. Suffice to say that currently Scotland does not have spend on Scottish programme-making proportionate to the amount of money collected by the TV license of Scottish viewers so there will be more Scottish content – but without the UK content there is a strong case for more public funding for Scottish public service broadcasting.

So what about the BBC?

The BBC has a commercial arm which licenses BBC programming outside the UK and Scotland will simply have to negotiate on what kind of broadcast content it wishes to buy from the UK. This could range from entire channels (maintaining all of BBC One's service for example) to picking and choosing which programmes it wishes to license for showing on a Scottish channel. Of course, a lot of the BBC's current affairs programming will no longer be directly relevant to Scotland as it will relate to politics and policy in London.

Will that give Scotland enough of an effective media?

At the moment investment in media in Scotland has been in decline for a long period and many newspapers have a fraction of the staff they did even ten years ago. This is a problem at the best of times but so much will be happening in the transition to independence that it is very important that the media has the capacity to scrutinise and report on this work. There is therefore a good case for at least interim public funding to make sure that the media is properly able to fulfil that function.

Keywords

news media

Social media

Broadcasting

Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use by the Scottish Electorate

Stephen Richard — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 19:10:02 +0000

Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use by the Scottish Electorate

Primary Author or Creator

Jamie Mahoney

Stephen Richard Fri, 09/24/2021 - 20:10

Additional Author(s) / Creators

Tom Feltwell, Obinna Ajuruchi, Shaun Lawson

Date Published

Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:00

CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use by the Scottish Electorate. Pages 3339–3351

A paywall is in operation

Resource Address (URL)

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2858036.2858160

Keywords

Instagram

2014 independence referendum

Social media

Language English

Online Allies and Tricky Freelancers: Understanding the Differences in the Role of Social Media in the Campaigns for the Scottish Independence Referendum

Stephen Richard — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 11:36:08 +0000

Online Allies and Tricky Freelancers: Understanding the Differences in the Role of Social Media in the Campaigns for the Scottish Independence Referendum

Primary Author or Creator

Ana Ines Langer

Stephen Richard Fri, 09/24/2021 - 12:36

Additional Author(s) / Creators

Michael Comerford, Des McNulty, University of Glasgow

Date Published

Fri, 11/01/2019 - 12:00

Category

Media

Type of Resource

Research article

Length (Pages, words, minutes etc...)

Political Studies, Volume: 67 issue: 4, page(s): 834-854

Fast Facts

some campaigns – like Better Together – selectively adopt digital tools that fit with the command and control model; in other cases – like Yes Scotland – the application of digital communications technologies and the dynamics created by linking to other (digital-enabled) grassroots organizations can have transformative effects.

More details

Using the 2014 Scottish independence referendum as a case study, this article asks first, to what extent is the use of digital communications technologies, in particular social media, associated with fundamental changes to campaign organizations, specifically to the command and control model? Second, under what conditions are challenges to the model more likely to emerge? Using mixed methods, our analysis of the case demonstrates that radical organizational or strategic change is not inevitable, nor is there a one-size-fits-all approach. Technologies are not ‘just tools’ that any campaign with enough resources will adopt in similar ways. Instead, depending on a number of interdependent factors (i.e. context, resources, strategy, organizational structure and culture), some campaigns – like Better Together – selectively adopt digital tools that fit with the command and control model; in other cases – like Yes Scotland – the application of digital communications technologies and the dynamics created by linking to other (digital-enabled) grassroots organizations can have transformative effects.

Paywall access

Resource Address (URL)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0032321718811252

Keywords

Social media

Believe in Scotland

Yes Scotland

Independence campaign

Language English