Twits on Twitter? An Exploration of the Content of #indyref Tweets on the Scottish Independence Referendum Campaign and a Comparison with a more Moderated Social Media Forum

Social media's importance in politics is growing and Twitter is at the forefront of this communicative revolution. It is an important channel from a political perspective fulfilling an information and knowledge seeking function as well as a crucial agenda setting function. This shifts the focus to what kinds of interactions are taking place on twitter and by whom with respect to political matters. This paper explores the content of Tweets on the Scottish independence referendum campaign. Using a unique dataset compiled from a random sample of tweets associated with the '#indyref', the paper has two objectives. The first is to explore the sentiments expressed on issues such as Scottish constitutional preferences (independence/devolution max), parties and politicians, and stereotypes (e.g. opinions about Scottish/Scotland). The second is to compare the sentiments expressed on a less moderated site (Twitter) with data on a more moderated site, namely the BBC HYS Online discussion boards.