But when I was in Edinburgh this weekend with Ashlyn and Brittany, we met up with a friend of Ashlyn's, who is Scottish. Brittany asked him an offhand question about the queen, and he said, completely deadpan, "I hate the queen."
It had something to do with football club alliances, which I won't pretend to understand. But talking to him got me thinking about the relationship between Scotland and England. After doing a little research, I stumbled on the website for -- what else? -- The Guardian. Their online paper has a whole section for Scottish independence with news articles and a roundup column every week. The tone of the weekly column is, unsurprisingly, pretty irreverent. The columnist swears, cracks jokes, and overall doesn't seem to give a lot of weight to the issue. In fact, in the most recent column, she references and embeds a video of a Scottish parody news segment claiming that recently translated portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal that Jesus himself was a unionist.
Now, as the columnist mentions, the men who appear in the video have actually made a film about Scottish independence. So clearly they aren't taking themselves too seriously, but they do have some serious views on the issue. When I looked at Scottish news sources, I found the topic of independence handled a little differently. Here is the blurb under the "independence referendum" category of the Scottish Daily Record website:
Scots will be asked to decide on the future of our country in this year's independence referendum on September 18. The historic question will be: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" If Scots say yes, First Minister Alex Salmond will begin negotiations which could see Scotland becoming an independent country by March 2016.In comparison, the weekly roundup column mentioned above was the first item displayed under The Guardian's Scottish independence category. There's apparently a referendum coming up next month in Scotland. Would I know that from reading The Guardian? Well ... maybe. Or maybe I would hear about Scottish independence and think about the weekly blog that told me nothing major is happening.
These examples are specific. I haven't searched every news website in England and Scotland. But I think this small, informal bit of content analysis might indicate a bigger-picture issue. I'm not saying that English media is totally unionist or that all Scottish media is separatist. But if a Scottish newspaper treated independence the way The Guardian does, I don't know how much I'd think my vote in the referendum is going to matter. How important is Scottish independence, and how much of a say do Scots have? I think it depends whose media you ask.
Erin,
ReplyDeleteYou raise a lot of interesting points. I think it’s important to note that every Scottish person who is 16 and older will be allowed to vote in the referendum, so younger people, who usually wouldn’t be allowed to vote, are going to be voting for the first time. Media probably influences these younger voters the heaviest, because they haven’t previously been allowed to vote. And it is important for them to know that their vote matters.
These articles are good examples on how framing can change a story. I would assume that most English publications are framing the referendum as something that isn’t really important, while Scottish media outlets are framing the issue as extremely significant (they can potentially become a separate country – which is a pretty big deal) and these publications more likely to encourage people to vote, especially young new voters.
I agree that the view on the referendum does depend on whose media you ask. I’m sure there are Scottish media outlets on both sides of the issue, and they are providing information about the pros and cons of both potential outcomes. I think that people will get a better idea of this story – and others – when they begin to compare and search different sources.