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Facebook Twitter Scottish Independence Referendum

Facebook and Twitter saw a massive 5.4m and 3.6m Indyref engagements as Scotland chose its fate

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By John McCarthy | Opinion Editor

September 19, 2014 | 3 min read

The Scottish independence referendum saw record-breaking levels of voter turnout across Scotland with 3,623,344 people having their say. Precisely 84.6 per cent of those registered to vote.

Facebook and Twitter played vital roles in the debate

The digital realm also reported a similar story with Yes and No voters taking to social media to engage in discourse on both Facebook and Twitter on an unprecedented scale.

For the 24 hours following 6am on Thursday there were an astounding 2,603,497 Scottish independence referendum tweets sent using Twitter. Following the first televised debate on 5 August, there were a reported seven million tweets.

At 6.11am on Friday, as the result was announced, the site saw its highest volume of tweets per minute - with 5,212 relevant tweets being released in those 60 seconds.

The most retweeted comment was from Britain’s number one tennis player, Andy Murray, who said he was disappointed with Better Together’s negative campaign and expressed excitement for the results.

The tweet was retweeted 19,373 times and favourited by 4,760 accounts.

Facebook also served as a significant platform for debate, with the site seeing a massive 5.4m referendum interactions on polling day - with the UK accounting for over 3.3m of the posts.

Scotland was responsible for over half of these engagements, raking in 1.9m, a substantial volume of posts considering there were only 10 million interactions worldwide in the five weeks leading up to the vote.

The top topics in order of popularity were: #voteyes, #indyref, #yes, #scotland, #bettertogether, #voteno, #scotlanddecides and finally #independence.

Furthermore, Glasgow was the most socially engaged social media debating area although it was followed closely by capital city Edinburgh. Oil-rich Aberdeen came next followed by Dundee and Falkirk.

And finally, to finish on something both sides can probably agree on... one Scottish independence referendum social media highlight was when Twitter went nuts over an Better Together ad about an undecided woman, which was widely mocked for being sexist. It later became a widely-used meme.

Facebook Twitter Scottish Independence Referendum

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