The flow of social media on the subject of the scottish referendum and the catalonian sovereignty consultation

Abstract

Since the origin of the Internet in the late 60’s with ARPAnet (Gromov, 1995; Braman, 2011; and Lukasik, 2011), this digital environment gradually started to gain social space. However it was with the appearance of social media -such as Facebook and Twitter- when it was truly a turning point (Carrera et al., 2012; Casero Ripollés, 2013; Farrel, 2013; Kietzman et al., 2011; Masip et al., 2010; Pérez-Latre, 2011).
In the last few years, has been widely discussed how the emergence of social media and its subsequent profound evolutions have served to dramatically widen the range of journalistic practices (Benevuto et al., 2009; Canavilhas, 2011; Chadwick, 2011; Del Fresno et al., 2014; Domingo, 2006; Elola, 2010; Feenstra and Casero-Ripollés, 2012; Gallagher, 2014; Kerrigan and Graham, 2010; Lee and Ma, 2012; Meyer, 2012; Schulz, 2004; Waters et al. 2010; Wilson, 2008).
However, what has not been demonstrated is to what extent Facebook and Twitter –the most popular social media platforms– have impacted among political processes and also how media outlets have dealt with this.
In order to determine it, a comparative study-review has been carried out which deals with journalism and social media during two political processes which underwent intense media exposure: the Scottish Referendum (September, 2014) and the Catalonian Sovereignty Consultation (November, 2014).
Through a literature review in this research the main features of both political processes (Scottish and Catalonian) are going to be explained: what happened in Scotland and in Catalonia; how the behaviour of the audience was and what they searched for on social media; the flow of messages on Twitter and Facebook and how the media outlets dealt with those events on social media and finally, what are the political media systems upon which Catalonia and Scotland are based.