The campaign for and against independence is fairly heating up. Tempers are flaring. Threats are being uttered and Twitter accounts have been trumpeting their rectitude.
I have no pretence at impartiality. I am for YES, unreservedly and whole-heartedly. Without an ounce of doubt. For the benefit of younger readers that is a very small amount indeed.
Nonetheless, partiality and the zeal of the true believer means that I at least try to pretend that my position is based on verifiable fact and supporting information (discounting the notion that these are one and the same).
The above is not even six tweets worth at 140 characters a tweet. Funny how microstyle affects ones writing even when there is no limit. Twitter’s 140 characters and the SMS limit of 160 characters has changed how people write.
While it is customary to deprecate the effect of social media on the young in particular and society in general, one thing it has done has been to get people writing again. When I was young it was entirely possible to go through a whole post-educational life without writing a single thing that was not work related.
Facebook, Twitter and email has done away with that. People write. That might not be appreciated. Their readers might have concerns about the content or the spelling or the grammar.
People are writing now, whose parents would never have written. People who would never now (or then for that matter) write a letter are now emailing, Facebook status updating, tweeting and texting. They are communicating in a way that was inconceivable even two generations ago.
There lots of good things about that. There is more chance of engaging with the lives of others if we at least even try, however imperfectly, however incoherently to try to tell other people about ourselves. About our beliefs, about our lives however immaterial and irrelevant we may appear.
Everyone today is a writer. Nothing now can change that fact. Technology now helps us to enrich our lives by communicating with and to others. If we have an opinion or a thought, nothing is now easier than to share that thought with our peers.
Social media has refined what we mean by friendship. I have many Facebook friends that I am sure I shall never meet in the physical world. Even more so, the folks I follow on Twitter are from all over the world.
To follow someone on Twitter implies no endorsement or approval or friendship. I follow plenty folk on Twitter whose views are repugnant to me.
Searching on a hashtag gives me access to all sorts of views and news on a topic. Attaching a hashtag gives my tweets a presence beyond the paltry few hundred followers that I have.
Being fair, much of it is shite. Maybe most of it is shite, but every so often as you dip a toe into the Twitter timeline, a gem comes up. A tweet that makes you wish that you had written it. A thought that you had committed within 140 characters.
It could be a link to a blog. If could be and often is a picture of your breakfast. So what?
One day you will just hit the right shade of Instagram filter that will make everyone who sees it think “wow!”
All this free speech comes at the price of wading through a whole load of shite from people whose communications you wouldn’t or couldn’t tolerate unless they were your friend, your family member, your workmate or your fellow enthusiast for a cause or interest.
Just as sooner or later you will come across gems and share them, so too it is certain that you will give birth to a gem yourself. One that will be worth sharing by your peers.
You need to get out there though and have a life and make that life interesting and worthwhile.
Just now, lots of people are expending lots of energy and passion trying to build a better country. That’s an interesting thing to talk about, to write about, to photograph and share images about.
Last weekend the Sunday Herald became the first mainstream media publication to support the YES campaign. They scored an immediate extra 30,000 circulation at a stroke. Other publications will no doubt see the writing on the wall and follow suit.
Don't forget though, that in this age, everyone is a journalist. Everyone is a pundit. We don’t need to inflate the importance of the print media anymore.
The popular “Wings Over Scotland” website reaches more people every day than the Scotsman newspaper.
The battle for a YES vote won’t be won online, it still needs people on the streets. That is one of the great strengths of YES. YES is a real grassroots campaign. One which genuinely has thousands of volunteers promoting its ideas in the streets. That grassroots passion can be connected by social media. Where YES scores is realising that social media in itself is not a campaign.
Look at the Radical Independence Campaign groups popping up all over the country. Every one with a facebook page organising local events, debates, leafleting, canvassing and whatever. Political campaigning is no longer the fiefdom of political parties.
Ordinary people can and are shaping the future and participating in its design. Social media is a tool for organising that project, for connecting these volunteers.
That project will not end on the 19th of September. A YES vote (and I am increasingly confident in the outcome) will mark only the start of the process of negotiation. This newly awakened army of citizen activists will have a taste for continued involvement.
Lets crowdsource a constitution! Lets build a movement which on the one hand strengthens the negotiators hand and on the other lets them know that we will not tolerate a deal done behind our backs.
That we will not tolerate treaty ports for Trident. That we expect a country with a commitment to justice and equality. That austerity politics are a thing of the past. That attacks on the poor and disabled will no longer be tolerated.
That machine politics which confined our participation to a cross on a bit of paper every five years will no longer be tolerated. That a society based on social justice is the goal and the outcome of public policy.
That is the project.
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