Informing voters in the Scottish Independence Referendum: how successful was Twitter as an information source in comparison with other forms of media?

Abstract

This study examines how successful the social media application Twitter was in
informing voters in the Scottish Independence Referendum, in comparison with other
forms of media. I created a survey which recorded the respondents’ self-attested
media use and tested their knowledge of the Scottish Independence Referendum
through a series of factual questions. Respondents’ answers to these knowledge
questions were then combined to create a knowledge index ranging from 0 -11, which
was the dependent variable used in the statistical analysis. Two dependent variables
were used; Information source used most frequently and campaign activity. The
relationships between these variables were tested using ANCOVA, with gender,
education and age acting as control variables. As expected, a statistically significant
relationship was found between referendum knowledge and both independent
variables. Results showed that when Twitter was the information source used most
often, respondents’ knowledge scores were higher than when other forms of media
were used, the exception being blog users. A knowledge gap between respondents
who had actively campaigned in the referendum and those who had not was evident
for every type of media tested; the exception being Twitter. This study demonstrates
that Twitter, and social media generally, were on average more successful in
informing voters in the Scottish Independence Referendum than other traditional
media.