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

Twitter Networks and the Characteristics of the Campaigns

In this section, we analyse Twitter data from the key period of the referendum campaign: January to September 2014. By comparing data for the Yes and No campaigns, we are able to show how their use of a key social media platform played out in practice, in particular in relation to key groups in the assemblage. Previous research has shown that Yes Scotland was overall more successful in terms of number of friends, followers and engagement both in Facebook and Twitter (Shepard and Quinlan, 2016). Our macro analysis based on measures of centrality in Figure 1 also shows that the Yes side dominated the conversation in Twitter: the blue nodes coded as Yes were more central, and heavily outweigh the red No-aligned nodes. ⁵

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Figure 1.

Top 0.1% of Nodes by Betweenness Centrality (January–September 2014).

In line with our research question, the objective is not to delve into markers of success. Instead, our focus of analysis is on the networks, and specifically on the ways in which different nodes interacted with each other and what this tell us about levels of centralization and autonomy of the official campaigns vis-a-vis key groups in their assemblages.

To uncover the general characteristics of the official Yes and No overall networks, we identified all the Twitter accounts that the official campaigns interacted with, that is, by retweeting them or mentioning them directly, which is known as their outbound ego-network. ⁶ The first striking difference is numerical, suggesting a different degree of engagement and inclusiveness: 291 versus 160 nodes (or accounts) for Yes and No, respectively. Second, there are significant variations in the prevalence of different types of actors. For Better Together, of the 10 accounts they most often retweeted or mentioned, only 3 belonged to supporter groups, while 6 were accounts of leading members of the campaigns, and 1 a media outlet. In contrast, for Yes Scotland, 7 out of the top 10 belonged to supporter groups. Furthermore, all top five accounts were supporter groups for Yes Scotland, whereas only one of the top five for Better Together was a supporter group.

To further explore these differences, in Figures 2 and 3 we specifically visualize the connection between the official campaign accounts and the accounts of key groups aligned with them. ⁷ Given our aims, and accepting that only a small fraction of the findings can be visualized in detail, we selected a subset of accounts from their ego-networks. The selection criteria for the visualization were as follows: the accounts had to have a reciprocal relationship in Twitter with the official campaign; they had to support the official campaigns side of the debate: they had to be organizations or websites that identified as a collective, rather than individual political actors (e.g. politicians and journalists); and they had to hold some importance in the network. We quantify importance here using three criteria: their betweenness centrality, the frequency of interactions with the official campaigns and their own level of out-bound activity. Finally, only groups that were not directly controlled by Yes Scotland/Better Together were included, that is, groups that the official campaigns either created, or whose communications they exerted significant control over (e.g. sectoral groups such as Academics for Yes, NHS Together), are excluded.

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Figure 2.

Better Together and Intermediate Nodes: Extracted (Subset of 6 Nodes) from Out-Bound Ego Network, Original Size: Nodes = 161, Edges = 2014.

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Figure 3.

Yes Scotland and Intermediate Nodes: Extracted (Subset of 9 Nodes) from Out-Bound Ego Network; Original Size: Nodes = 288, Edges = 8192.

These visualizations consist of a circular node representing each Twitter user account, where the size of the node represents the number of connections that account has. ⁸ The connecting lines between the accounts are representative of the amount of activity (represented by the thickness of the line) and the source of that activity (colour of the line ⁹ ). For example, in Figure 3 we can see the strong connection between National Collective and Yes Scotland, represented by the thick blue line that indicates a large volume of traffic (i.e. retweets or mentions) from National Collective (@wearenational, the source) directed at Yes Scotland (the target). To the lower right of the National Collective node, a smaller red edge can be observed representing the traffic that passes from Yes Scotland to National Collective.

Overall, the analysis suggests that Yes Scotland’s twitter engagement with key groups is more hybrid, that is, less centralized, and combining autonomy and control, a blend that is essentially absent for Better Together. The key difference is that in Figure 2 there is a lack of interconnections between the No-aligned accounts, in a way that most closely resembles the hub-and-spoke or star structure associated with centrally managed hierarchical networks (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013). In contrast, although the Yes subnet in Figure 3 also has a dominant official campaign node at its centre, the breadth of interconnections and levels of activity between intermediate nodes shows a higher degree of decentralization.

Regarding differences in the degree of autonomy, Figure 3 also shows that a number of Yes-aligned accounts were at times creating more output on Twitter than the official campaign; National Collective is the most active of these accounts. There is also an indication that a different pattern of engagement is taking place. In a heavily centralized campaign, we would expect traffic to largely use the official campaign as a conduit in order to communicate with other parts of the network; however, there are multiple interactions happening between the intermediate group nodes. For example, the patterns of traffic between the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC; @radical_indy) and other nodes such as Women for Independence (@womenforindy) and Bella Caledonia (@bellacaledonia), contrast with the low traffic between RIC and Yes Scotland. On the No side, the predominant pattern is linear, corresponding to a broadcast model where information is relayed downwards. On the Yes side, the pattern of transmission is more complex with multiple interactions, and a key role for the grassroots groups. This is also supported by Figure 4, which visualizes the connections between Yes Scotland and supportive local groups: ¹⁰ Many groups active on Twitter on the Yes side developed their own organic connections, often bypassing the central campaign account. Furthermore, the interaction between the pro-independence groups is polycentric in character, and shows a much greater number of twitter-engaged local groups compared with the No side (not shown here), whose network of local groups is sparsely populated and has again a hub-and-spoke structure.

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Figure 4.

Yes Scotland and Local Yes Campaign Groups: Extracted (Subset of 35 Nodes) from Out-Bound Ego Network; Original Size: Nodes = 288, Edges = 8192.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge and delineate the limits of the official campaign’s openness. The absence of some prominent Yes supporting accounts in Figure 3 tells us something important about the attitude of Yes Scotland towards different organizations. The most striking example is Wings Over Scotland, an influential blog, which is absent from Yes Scotland’s active connections. This was discussed in our interviews as a decision taken not to engage directly with aspects of the wider Yes campaign regarded as problematic and potentially counterproductive to the main message: ‘Wings –we never engaged with, ever’ (Interview 5, Yes campaign).

Long Live Command and Control?

The analysis of the Twitter networks, and especially the relationship between the official campaigns and key groups, shows revealing differences between the two sides. However, this analysis is for us a window into the broader characteristics of the official campaigns, their networks and how they used social media, and DCTs. The interviews with key campaign staff and associated groups are an essential complement to understand continuity and change with the control and command model, and especially the reasons for the differences and similarities between the campaigns. This is discussed in the next two sections.

The interviews reveal that digital tools enabled some innovations in their campaign practices, but their disruptive impact on the command and control model was limited; instead, there is strong continuity especially, but not only, for Better Together. Both official campaigns highlighted the usefulness of a range of DCTs for recruiting volunteers, briefing them, and coordinating and monitoring their activities, both online and offline. They also referred to their usefulness for fundraising, especially for small donations, and to the promise of crowdfunding initiatives; but these capabilities were exploited only to a limited extent, in part because of UK campaign funding regulation (Anstead and Chadwick, 2008). Social media were also regarded as having facilitated new forms of networked peer-to-peer persuasion and a degree of self-organization among groups on both the sides. Furthermore, the interviewees explained that the content, form and targets of the official campaign messages were influenced to some degree by email and social media metrics, especially Facebook’s, which were monitored regularly – although in a rather amateur fashion – to calibrate which issues were of greatest interest, by whom, and which messages, both in terms of content and presentation, got the most positive responses.

However, there is little evidence from the interviews that the capabilities of digital tools, or information obtained from them, were major influences on campaign strategy by either side. First, established techniques such as focus groups and polling were mentioned as much more important tools in this regard. Second, the emphasis from both the official campaigns was on transmitting campaign messages rather than two-way engagement. Attention focused on ensuring that there was coherence across media messages and with activities on the ground, with campaign managers playing a key role in coordination and monitoring. Moreover, social media, and Twitter in particular, were highlighted as a key tool that could be used to try to influence the mainstream media and thus ‘the agenda’. In short, many of the dimensions of the control and command model remained in evidence with DCTs bringing new, but not deeply transformative dimensions to it. Crucially, however, there were also significant differences between the two campaigns, which were a result of the interplay between contextual, strategic, organizational and cultural factors.

In terms of strategy, the most important difference lay in Better Together’s concentration on uncommitted voters as the key to winning the vote. Campaign messages were relentlessly aimed at this group, pointing out the risks associated with separation, to the extent that the campaign was dubbed (initially by Better Together staffers) as ‘Project Fear’. Yes Scotland, while also targeting uncommitted voters, gave more weight to addressing and mobilizing their own supporters. Crucially, these differences were reflected in, and in turn reinforced by, the respective campaigns’ digital strategies.

Better Together: Top down, On Message

Despite recruiting the services of Blue State Digital, famously associated with the Obama campaigns, Better Together’s digital strategy placed little emphasis on self-expression, empowering and mobilizing. Instead, the interviews revealed a remarkable accent on control and discipline; the use of ‘we’ firmly restricted to campaign professionals at the centre:

We were fairly disciplined in our approach to that … our local groups had their own Facebook groups which were largely there to advertise local meetings and things like that, and to, sort of, amplify what we were doing nationally. The truth is that in a campaign as heated as this was on both sides, people freelancing was a problem, because you had deeply unhelpful things being generated … I think, luckily for us, because we were more tightly controlled, let’s … say than the other side, you know, there was … whether it was, you know, boycott campaigns or attacks on people who were … who had come out in the debate. That, sort of, thousand flowers bloom approach to it caused them trouble and actually diluted their message (Interview 2, No Campaign).

For Better Together, social media were used mostly to distribute top-down, carefully controlled messages to supporters, the public and especially ‘public opinion formers’, including media elites, in line with their overall strategy:

Both Facebook and Twitter were broadcast rather than necessarily engagement. Because we didn’t want to dilute the message (…) but also we were not building something to last, you know. We always were conscious we weren’t going to exist the day after [the vote], so we could be more, I guess, mechanical and have a more, kind of, instrumental approach (Interview 2, No Campaign).

Collective action repertoires – whether digitally enabled or not – were tightly managed. Supporters recruited as volunteers via social media were treated as brand advocates, restricted to institutional modes of participation where there is ‘little initiative, creativity, or control on the part of individuals’ (Flanagin et al., 2006: 37). Systems were put in place to control any ‘over-enthusiasm’ which Better Together campaign managers felt could be wasteful if not directed: ‘they [activists] wanted to leaflet everyone’, rather than restrict themselves to the target groups identified by the centre, based on research data and Mosaic groups. ¹¹ This control from the centre created tensions with those on the ground, many of whom were new to campaign volunteering: ‘for a lot of people that was a big struggle, they were getting frustrated’ (Interview 7, No Campaign).

Only staff could post events to the Better Together website, whereas anyone could create and advertise events on the official campaign website for Yes Scotland. There were less stringent controls over social media; many pro-Union groups were ‘given’ an account and some were allowed to create their own social media identities. But campaign managers made it clear that ‘nothing with the Better Together brand would be run without a degree of editorial control by staff members’ (Interview 2, No Campaign).

In sum, the use of social media, and DCTs generally, by Better Together was not transformative either within the official campaign organization or in its relations with supporting groups. There was little openness and decentralization or ‘blending’ of the more entrepreneurial participatory modes associated with DCTs in cutting-edge contemporary campaigns. This was not a result of lack of resources. It was a consequence of the campaign’s strategy, which in turn related to the political context, the characteristics of the coalition, and the organizational structure and culture that underpinned it. First, and crucially, it played to what the interviewees saw as the objectives and strategy of the No campaign. It was a short-term coalition with the single objective of winning the referendum vote. It avoided ‘emotional messages’ related to identity or other issues that could help mobilize but would have exposed differences between the uneasy coalition of political parties; instead, they focused on using polling combined with Mosaic data to identify undecided voters concerned about the economic risk of independence and then hammered away at this theme. Second, Better Together was the front-runner, until almost the end of the campaign comfortably ahead in the polls. Moreover, although campaign managers recognized that Yes was dominating social media, they felt they could rely on the support of the press and much of the mainstream media. In this context, from an instrumental point of view, it is not surprising that control of the message and targeting was regarded as vital, and ‘freelance’ participation as a liability that they could do without. Third, their use of DCTs was associated with a highly centralized structure, which heavily relied on the existing expertise, infrastructure and collective action repertoires from the political parties that formed the pro-Union coalition. Thus, Better Together operated essentially like a conventional political party in its media handling and attempts to canvass public support. Moreover, the campaign brought together political parties that, according to the interviewees, had not yet mastered digital for campaigns. Finally, it was underpinned by, and in turn further promoted, an organizational structure where ‘Digital’ was subsumed under ‘Broadcasting’, with staff across different sections ‘chipping in’ (Interview 2). Moreover, internal staff (not the Blue State Digital consultants) were mostly political campaign – rather than digital – specialists which meant that they had, in line with traditional party campaigns, norms, values and expertise associated with the command and control model and thus were less likely to be innovative in their use of DCTs (Baldwin-Philippi, 2015; Chadwick, 2013; Kreiss, 2016a).

Yes Scotland and the Key Role of ‘Online Allies’

Yes Scotland was more clearly a hybrid organizational type. It had elements of a more decentralized structure and some movement-like dynamics blended with traditional party campaigning characteristics, enabling – or at least not discouraging – more autonomous bottom-up participation and entrepreneurial modes of engagement. As with Better Together, this was a result of the interplay of contextual, strategic, organizational and cultural factors that affected how DCTs were used, which in turn reinforced pre-exiting dynamics.

There are two important contextual factors that shaped Yes Scotland’s overall strategy, which in turn affected their use of DCTs: their trailing position in the polls and the weak support in the mainstream media. Regarding the latter, social media was deemed particularly important as it gave Yes Scotland an alternative channel to what they regarded as a hostile press and broadcast media. But it was not the only purpose; social media communication was also seen as a means of motivating and expanding the activist base:

So apart from being the counterbalance to the mainstream media, to the anti-independence media if you like, it [social media] was also one of the more obvious means through which we could communicate the kind of campaign that we wanted to run and begin to create that national movement’ (Interview 1, Yes Campaign).

Moreover, considerable emphasis was laid by the Yes campaign on training and educating, not just so that activists could relay official messages, but also with an emphasis on self-expression and peer-sharing, encouraging supporters to make their own contributions and to develop personalized networks:

We trained a hard core [of volunteers/’ambassadors’] to just be online regularly and to help promote our material, but also to train other people and to encourage other people to behave in the way we behave. And also, the behaviour thing was less important for us than the getting people to understand the message and understand where we were at that point in the campaign and what to do, and how to produce their own content (Interview 3, Yes Campaign).

This mobilizing strategy was facilitated and reinforced by several factors, which might be overlooked if one focuses exclusively on Yes Scotland position as ‘challenger’. First, there is the prominence given to Digital in the official campaign organization. Unlike Better Together, it had a dedicated team, with its Director – a respected figure in digital publishing – one of the very first hires. Moreover, he reported directly to the Chief Executive – who himself came from outside the election campaigns field – and was put on an equal footing with the other Directors. Second, Yes Scotland was able to draw not only on the size and enthusiasm of the SNP’s membership, which was also much younger in average, but also on its digital expertise and culture:

The SNP has actually got a good understanding of how digital works and a commitment to it. So these people were pre-prepared (…) that was very useful in terms of establishing just a culture of digital as part of what we do (Interview 3, Yes campaign).

At the same time, the interviews highlighted the importance of the fact that this was a referendum. First, that there were greater incentives and opportunities to innovate outside the party structure and routine election environment:

The SNP is … even from an organisational level or other social media, it is very rigid and very … in a sense, they have to be a lot more, because they’re a membership organisation, whereas we were never a membership organisation which meant we … you can’t impute responsibility for anyone’s actions, although many people tried. Whereas with the SNP, they’re far more often responsible for the actions of councillors or anything like that. So theirs is a very controlled … our message was still very controlled. Our … what we put out in the core things we’d put out, they were always the same themes. But the SNP, you don’t know anything unless they tell you. Whereas there was so much information and research on … the independence campaign was so broad (Interview 5, Yes Scotland).

Second, and crucially, there were important differences in the degree of grassroots support each campaign could tap on and how they chose to interact with pre-exiting and new groups. In fact, it is in the relationship of each campaign vis-a-vis other groups that the differences between the Yes and No campaigns are most striking (as illustrated in the Twitter analysis above). Both campaigns created some local and sectoral groups, whereas a number of other were formed independently. But there were many more for Yes Scotland (circa 350 vs 80) and their online presence was subject to less control and interference from the official campaign. Most crucially, for Yes Scotland there was a further assemblage of highly vibrant grassroots groups and individual bloggers, which they defined as ‘online allies’, that were all but absent for Better Together. Some were SNP members and others not, but most of them worked in a decentralized and mostly autonomous manner from the official campaign: ‘They set up themselves, self-motivated, and our engagement with them on social media would mostly be to share their posts or retweet a particular, kind of, campaign message or part of their momentum as well’ (Interview 5, Yes campaign).

Moreover, within the Yes campaign hierarchy and among the key supporting actors, there was a strong emphasis on the importance of reducing dependence on the SNP and building a broader inclusive movement, the latter term being mentioned by almost every interviewee from the pro-independence side. And in doing so, autonomy and decentralization were regarded as key values:

Well, it’s just an umbrella term [movement] to describe lots of disparate groups working for the same goal. It wasn’t an organization because it wasn’t organized, so what else do you call it? […] people didn’t wait for instructions or permission, they just got on with doing whatever they thought needed done (Interview 6, Yes supporter group).

For these grassroots groups, social media played an important, and often crucial, role although most of them undertook offline activity as well:

So National Collective, for instance, online linked people talking on Facebook chat. It then developed into offline meetings. It then developed into organisational structures that then developed into local groups, that then developed into live public events and campaigns. Those people would never have been connected or would have been far less likely I believe to have been connected. People would have been far less confident about sharing their voice and sharing their thoughts if they hadn’t first had that platform of social media to put them together (Interview 8, Yes supporter group).

And social media were also important in developing relationships between these groups and Yes Scotland, enabling the official campaign to benefit – if not directly control – from the broader pro-independence assemblage. It meant that different groups could develop content for – and indeed by – a range of audiences, and the central campaign could choose to ‘leverage’ (Kreiss, 2009) these networks and their creative and sharable content, by amplifying these messages through their own digital channels:

I would say that National Collective were a huge part of the effort in terms of producing some really, really good content. They had a lot of fun during the campaign and it showed in the material they produced, which we were then able to on-share and expose to a really enormous audience. Bella Caledonia as well. We would re-tweet Women for Independence, Business Scotland material as well, and Labour for Independence (Interview 3, Yes Campaign).

Moreover, although the regulations governing the conduct of the referendum were the same for both campaigns, they adapted to them differently. Better Together assimilated groups within their own campaign and funding structures, ensuring greater control:

We took the decision that Academics, Women Together, all these groups, we would bring in house, they’d be in our funding, we could then work together, but in terms of the work they did it would be independent, it was just they were part of Better Together (Interview 7, No Campaign).

Yes Scotland’s different approach to external groups was in part pragmatic, simply because they had limited influence over a number of organizations. But greater autonomy was considered acceptable because this wider base was seen to add both energy and breadth to the campaign. It fitted with what Yes Scotland defined as their strategic objectives, which included developing into a ‘movement’.

In fact, according to one senior source, ‘we very much had to be not like a political party’ (Interview 1, Yes campaign). Being too closely identified with the SNP, or more generally with the collective action repertoires of political parties, was seen as an impediment to broadening support for independence. Hence Yes Scotland’s less hierarchical structure and encouragement – or at least tolerance – of ‘different centres of activity and creativity’ (Interview 1, Yes campaign). Moreover, as direct coordination of organizations outside the funding umbrella was not legal, it enabled, and in some ways necessitated, more entrepreneurial (Flanagin et al., 2006) modes of engagement. It is thus clear that the role of grassroots groups on the pro-independence side, in combination with contextual, strategic, organizational and cultural factors, influenced how the affordances of DCTs were enacted. In turn, this challenged traditional campaign hierarchies, dragging both Yes Scotland and the wider Yes campaign along the spectrum of hybridity, away from exclusive reliance on traditional party campaign organizational practices and hierarchies.

However, we should not exaggerate either the differences between the two campaigns nor the impact of the use of DCTs on the command and control model. Better Together did take some steps to encourage participation and develop supporter groups, even though its key priority was maintaining control over message and activity, which was reflected in its digital strategy. For its part, the Yes campaign was hardly a hybrid participatory ‘nirvana’. Although the independence movement at large had more horizontal and participatory characteristics, and these influenced the official campaign, there were tensions, especially with the SNP. Not only there was in Yes Scotland a strong continuity with the professional model, but the campaign managers remained nervous about their inability to control, and specifically about the risks associated with the way social media was used by some of its ‘online allies’ and individual supporters.

First, although DCTs facilitated greater participation, some of that activity was regarded as an inefficient use of resources, and on occasions as a distraction with potentially damaging repercussions (e.g. protests against ‘BBC bias’). Second, they feared the central campaign message was sometimes drowned out because:

There was so much information [out there and the] independence campaign was so broad with Radical Independence [etc.] putting out their own ideas so we had to repeat, repeat, repeat, messages in order to make sure that they were the ones getting through’ (Interview 5, Yes Campaign).

Finally, there was great frustration with trolling by what became known as the ‘cyberNats’: ‘We distanced ourselves from that as much as possible and we issued guidelines, we got our supporters to stamp on that behaviour as much as possible. But it did hurt us’ (Interview 3, Yes Campaign).

At the same time, there was a recognition within the official Yes campaign that because of how the affordances of the technology were enacted and the values that underpinned this – it was ineffectual to try to achieve full control: ‘you are in a canoe on the rapids and you can’t stop moving but you can avoid the rocks’ (Interview 3, Yes campaign). Trying too hard to enforce control was considered potentially ‘enormously counterproductive’ and had the potential to ‘stifle initiative’ (Interview 9, Yes campaign).

The best approach in the Yes campaigners’ view was to develop ‘an ability to just try and accept’ that bottom-up autonomous participation, much of it digitally enabled, was a key element in generating and sustaining the passion of the pro-independence campaign. A number of the interviewees also highlighted the importance of self-expression, and even enjoyment and fun, something that was almost entirely absent for Better Together. The official campaign did not accept all groups – or arguably any groups – as equal partners, but they were prepared to relinquish some of their ability to command and control to try to harness the creativity, enthusiasm and effort of local and sectoral groups and the ‘online allies’ that had sprung up, even where that resulted in the official campaign being bypassed and, on occasion, eclipsed.