Analysis of Twitter responses indicates a preference for diversity in televised political debates

In autumn 2014, during the last few weeks of the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign, researchers at Robert Gordon University explored the Twitter response to three live televised political debates, each of which involved high-profile participants. Graeme Baxter shares their findings

A below par performance? Donald Trump’s golf resort development and government openness and transparency in Scotland

As Donald Trump’s US presidential candidacy campaign continues to cause controversy, Graeme Baxter reflects on the impact the building of ‘the greatest golf course anywhere in the world’ has had on the openness and transparency of Scottish public authorities

The communication and exchange of information between state and stakeholders.

This thesis presents a critical review of the candidates Portfolio of Public Output, which is based on research conducted in the period November 2000 to date, and which consists of 21 peer-reviewed, publicly available papers published since 2001. The subject area which forms the basis of the thesis is the communication and exchange of information between the state (i.e. parliaments and governments at the local, devolved, national and European levels, as well as those who aspire to become part of the state during parliamentary elections) and its stakeholders (i.e. citizens, businesses, interest groups, etc.). Within this overarching theme, the thesis focuses on three distinct but interrelated sub-themes: 1) the provision and communication of information by, and within, parliaments; 2) the use of the Internet for information provision and exchange by political parties and candidates during parliamentary election campaigns; and 3) the exchange of information between government and stakeholders during formal public consultation processes. Within all three sub-themes, the thesis demonstrates the candidates contribution to the advancement of knowledge in two key and closely linked areas: the investigation of users information needs and informationseeking behaviour; and the critical evaluation of information service provision. The thesis begins by placing the Portfolio of Public Output in an historical, political context, by discussing the various parliamentary and government openness, transparency and consultative agendas that have influenced or driven the research on which the 21 papers are based. It continues by describing some of the candidates earlier research work, to illustrate his long-standing interest in state-stakeholder information provision and exchange, before outlining the various research projects from which the Portfolio outputs have emerged. In the core part of the thesis the 21 Portfolio outputs are synthesised and considered as part of a narrative whole, which reflects critically on their contents and which illustrates the candidates empirical, methodological and theoretical contribution to the field of library and information science (LIS). Here, the candidate argues that he has contributed significantly towards developing a better understanding of the information behaviour of stakeholders when engaging with the state, and a greater awareness of the ways in which government and parliamentary information systems and services might be more responsive to their stakeholders information needs, thus theoretically enabling a more informed, engaged and participatory body politic. In terms of the candidates empirical contribution, the thesis demonstrates that his papers have largely been unique, relevant and timely additions to the literature, written in a conscious effort to address gaps in our knowledge of: parliamentary information services and the ways in which citizens, elected members and officials engage with parliamentary information; the nature and the extent of online information provision and exchange by political actors during parliamentary election campaigns, as well as the online behaviour of voters when attempting to determine their democratic choice; and the accessibility and communication of information during government consultative processes. With regard to the candidates methodological contribution, the thesis records his key role in the design of innovative and effective data collection and analytical techniques, including: a series of protocol analysis codes to record citizens use of parliamentary websites; frameworks and schemata for the content analyses of political actors election campaign websites and social media sites; the use of covert research to measure politicians responsiveness online; and, perhaps most significantly, the interactive, electronicallyassisted interview in a roadshow setting. In terms of his theoretical contribution, the thesis discusses the candidates part in the development of the theory of Information Interchange, which considers the roles and aims of both the information provider and the information user in assessing the effectiveness of the information communication process, and which is built upon the dichotomy that appears to exist between the two perspectives. The theory recognises the significance of the different agendas and objectives of the actors involved in information interchange, in what can be a complex interaction between two or more parties with potentially conflicting conceptions of the purpose of the interchange process. Throughout the thesis, the candidate considers the actual and potential impact of his work on the LIS academic and practitioner communities. His 21 Portfolio outputs have created considerable academic interest internationally, and have been discussed and critiqued in numerous text books, journal articles, conference papers, research reports and doctoral theses; although there is only minimal evidence of others adopting, or adapting, his data collection and analytical techniques. While interest has been most significant amongst those in the LIS field, the multidisciplinary relevance of the candidates work has resulted in it being cited by authors from a wide range of other disciplines, from business administration to computing, and from engineering to public relations. In terms of the more practical impact of the candidates research work, on government and parliamentary information services and practices, the picture has been mixed. Research commissioned by the European Parliament has had the clearest and most significant impact, on its Librarys marketing and service strategies. In some cases, although a number of the candidates recommendations - relating to parliamentary public information services in the UK, and Scottish Government website deficiencies - have subsequently been addressed by these bodies, no direct causal relationship can be established. In other cases - particularly in relation to Scottish Government consultative processes, and the online electioneering of parliamentary candidates in Scotland - his recommendations have been ignored completely, and information practices have remained idiosyncratic, inconsistent and flawed. The thesis concludes by considering some of the candidates future research plans and opportunities in the specific field of state-stakeholder information provision and exchange

Rough justice? Information access and environmental justice relating to two controversial coastal developments in North East Scotland.

This proposed paper will explore the relationship between information access and environmental justice through an historical comparison of two controversial coastal developments in North East Scotland: the construction of a gas terminal by the British Gas Council and Total in the 1970s, and the current development of 'the world's greatest golf course' by the American property tycoon Donald Trump. Both projects have had potential or actual impacts on Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), but, separated by forty years, they have taken place during periods when public access to information and citizens' influence on major planning decisions have been significantly different, at least theoretically

Hooray for Holyrood?

This presentation was delivered at a seminar that formed part of the "Informing the Good Society (InGSoc)" project (https://www.informingthegoodsociety.com/). The presentation provided an overview of the key results of a longitudinal series of studies (conducted since 2003) that have examined the use of the Internet by political actors in Scotland. The studies discussed included: those conducted during the Scottish Parliament Election campaigns of 2003, 2007 and 2011, as well as the 2010 UK General Election campaign; a study of MSPs' use of Twitter in early 2014; and a study of Internet and social media use by the main campaign groups, political parties and individual politicians involved in the Scottish independence referendum campaign in 2014

Scottish Parliament election preview: continued SNP dominance in the North East, but who will pick up the scraps?

The Scottish Parliament elections are upon us, with the SNP expected to consolidate their current dominance over Labour and the Conservatives. Here, Alistair Clark looks at the contest in the South Scotland region, an area which has had a recent history of four party politics but may be seeing its political profile shift

Exploring the benefits of user surveys.

This conference paper discussed the methodologies that might be used in investigating citizens' European information needs. In so doing, the authors shared their own experiences of using large-scale surveys, interviews, focus groups and observation in exploring the European, citizenship and parliamentary information needs of the UK public

Citizenship information research at the School of Information and Media.

Discusses recent and current research into citizenship information needs at the School of Information and Media, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Reviews the most important results from two large-scale, nation-wide surveys (funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre) of the citizenship information needs of the UK public, highlighting those occasions where the response in Scotland differed significantly from national trends. Outlines a current project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, studying the impact of the use of information and communication technologies on the communication of parliamentary information in the UK, with particular attention being paid to the situation in the three new devolved legislatures - the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly of Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The paper summarises the aims and objectives of the current project and provides a preview of the methodologies to be used, including the development of a novel interactive, electronically assisted interview technique

Image indexing and retrieval: some problems and proposed solutions.

Image processing technologies are offering considerable potential for library and information units to extend their databases by the inclusion of images such as photographs, paintings, monograph title-pages and maps. Discusses problems and potential solutions in a structured fashion based on categories of thesauri (text and visual), hybrids, description language and automatic content analysis, with state-of-the-art examples

Information search engagement and 'fake news'.

This conference paper presented the emerging results of research which explored the relationship between fake news and Scottish citizens' information behaviour. The research consisted of two key elements: an online survey (538 responses) that gathered citizens' opinions on the reliability of five images containing various 'facts and figures' that had been posted on social media by Scotland's five main political parties; and 23 extended interviews with citizens that explored their response to information explicitly presented as 'the facts' on the websites of the five main Scottish parties. This paper also presented the authors' evolving taxonomy of information seeker engagement in a political context