| A referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country took place on18September2014. There were a multitude of discussions about the event in Scottish and English press. Do the Scottish press and English press cover the event from the same angle? Is the press coverage the same before and after the event?The paper sets to compare the press coverage of the2014Scottish independence referendum in Scotland and England. The Scotsman and the Guardian are selected as the subject of investigation because of their respective prominence in regional agenda-setting and news coverage. Using quantitative content analysis, the study identifies how the Scotsman and the Guardian portray the upcoming2014Scottish referendum from the aspects of the focus of coverage, the tone of coverage and the quotation of sources.Quantitative results show that both the Scotsman and the Guardian prioritize elite topics and employ elite sources in reporting. Neither the Scotsman nor the Guardian holds a positive tone towards Scottish independence in the news coverage.Yet the Scotsman and the Guardian have their own native concerns when detailing the news topics. The Guardian is found to hold a more derogatory tone towards the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) than the Scotsman.The quantitative research results coincide with the editorial positions of the two newspapers. The editorial positions are expressed directly and indirectly using a number of editorial techniques:one-sided news account, coinage of headlines, elaborate choice of coverage theme and the skillful quotation of news sources.Time divergence also exists in the news coverage. The coverage focus changed with the passage of time. Before the referendum, discussions about Scottish independence and coverage about the voting procedure dominate the press agenda. But after the referendum, these topics gave way to the discussions about the possibility of a second independence referendum and further devolution. |
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