This publication is made freely available under ______ __ open access. AUTHOR(S): TITLE: YEAR: Publisher citation: OpenAIR citation: Publisher copyright statement: This is the ______________________ version of an article originally published by ____________________________ in __________________________________________________________________________________________ (ISSN _________; eISSN __________). OpenAIR takedown statement: Section 6 of the “Repository policy for OpenAIR @ RGU” (available from http://www.rgu.ac.uk/staff-and-current- students/library/library-policies/repository-policies) provides guidance on the criteria under which RGU will consider withdrawing material from OpenAIR. If you believe that this item is subject to any of these criteria, or for any other reason should not be held on OpenAIR, then please contact
[email protected] with the details of the item and the nature of your complaint. This publication is distributed under a CC ____________ license. ____________________________________________________ Page 1 of 42 Aslib Proceedings 1 2 3 Members of the Scottish Parliament on Twitter: good constituency men (and 4 5 women)? 6 7 8 9 Abstract 10 11 Purpose – To explore the use of Twitter by Members of the Scottish Parliament 12 13 (MSPs) for the provision of constituency-related information, or in support of their 14 15 constituency service work. 16 17 Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis of 10,411 tweets sent by the 18 For Peer Review 19 105 MSPs on Twitter during four weeks in early 2014. 20 21 Findings – While there was some evidence of MSPs on Twitter acting as a promoter 22 23 of local community interests and as a conduit for information on local policy issues 24 25 and events, their tweets were dominated by the wider, national, political agenda and 26 27 by the Scottish independence debate.