Summary of project findings

Our initial proposal was to examine representations of national identity in the news media in Scotland and in England in the immediate aftermath of constitutional change, combining a systematic analysis of media content, supplemented by a study of the news media production process, analysis of media reception, and an historical analysis of changing patterns of national representation in news reportage over a more extended period of time.

During an early stage of the research process we revised our objectives, in the light of the realisation of how little of the existing social scientific theory had, in fact, any form of established empirical basis. Consequently, we started out by examining existing accounts of the role of the print media in facilitating and reproducing specifically national forms of consciousness (e.g. Billig, Anderson), and subjecting these to systematic empirical examination. The finding from this comparative study of newspaper content were used to inform subsequent in-depth interview research with producers, as well as experimental studies of the reception process (this latter set of studies being still ongoing). Having established a set of findings with respect to the print media, we have collected a corpus of data comprising news bulletin transcripts from both BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland to extend the analysis.

Our results confirm some existing assumptions,

• The prominence of national flags in newspaper headlines and article content

• The use of banal reference to the nation

• The use of deictic language to position the reader as member of a nation

• Editorial alertness to 'national' sensitivities (at least in Scotland, less clear for England)

And fail to substantiate others

• The pattern of explicit nationally-marked terminology across different newspaper sections does not correspond to that suggested by Billig. In particular we did not find the sports pages any more 'nationalistic' than other pages. Nor did we find the wide extent of unambiguous national deixis that Billig describes: such language was almost exclusively found only in the reporting (and, usually, direct quoting) of political rhetoric.

• There is considerably less correspondence - between state; nation; imagined evoked community; and rhetorically evoked and empirical audience - than Billig and Anderson assume.

• Markets are much more important in the production of newspapers and their content than existing accounts allow. These markets frequently take non-national or political-territorial forms (e.g. the international market for the Financial Times; the cross-state market in Ireland and Spain for 'British' daily titles).

• The distribution of readerships across national territories, and the organisation of production and content, does not correspond to neat national categories. Rather they demonstrate the complex and problematic nature of national boundaries within a multi-national setting. This calls into question Anderson's notion of nationals imagining their community through 'shared' newspaper readership. For example, it makes little sense to talk about the Sun or the Express when these titles exist in several 'national' forms.

• The pattern of explicit national reference is radically different in papers in England and Scotland and varies according to type of paper edition. Whilst 'British' flags are found to be relatively common in all newspaper types surveyed in Scotland and England, we find that 'Scottish' flags are more common in Scotland, at least with regard to 'indigenous' titles and specific Scottish editions of Fleet Street newspapers. By contrast the terms 'English', 'Welsh' and '(Northern) Irish' are conspicuous only by their relative absence.

• Within radio broadcasting 'national' and 'state' issues are directly relevant to the production of content, but producers may struggle with a post-devolution lack of fit between imagined national community and state structure. Principally this relates to constitutional 'asymmetry' where there are definable political institutions/agendas for Scotland (and Wales, Northern Ireland and London) but none corresponding to the territory of England. This is exacerbated through the demographic weight of the audience located within England.

• The use of language allowing readers/listeners to infer the national content or context of discourse may not function in the way imagined by Billig. Rather than inferring a national message from prose in which explicit national categories are absent, readers may infer 'non-national' types of message, or indeed infer a 'national' content at variance to that intended by the author.

Other findings / conclusions

There is substantial evidence that devolution has been associated with a 'home-nationalisation' of news within both England and Scotland, such that newspapers increasingly report events based on that country alone (with the exception of the 'high' politics of Westminster). Similarly, network radio news broadcasts may well be caught between an implicit Anglifying process (in that it comes to regard routine news stories from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland as 'properly devolved' to the relevant regional news bulletins) and the BBC's commitment to a UK-wide audience.

Journalists are convinced of the importance of what might be called 'social proximity' - what people might be expected to be familiar with, or interested in, from their everyday experience - in predicting the relevance of news to their imagined audience. The boundaries of this proximity may have national or state elements (Cornwall is 'nearer' to London than Calais; Lerwick 'nearer' to Glasgow than Belfast) but may have other ones too. One journalist told us that the salmon industry (whether in Canada or Norway) is a 'Scottish' story because of the importance of salmon-farming to the economy and image of Scotland. In that specific context, Newfoundland is 'closer' to Edinburgh than London. Alternatively, there is a newsworthiness of stories which reach beyond experience and may be of interest as the 'exotic'.

Print journalists may have an explicit interest in the national dimension in Scotland because it is seen as an economic resource. Put bluntly, it sells. In England almost the reverse is true. In both countries journalists' national consciousnesses and their (lack of) awareness of them are profoundly banal. Broadcast journalists in public service broadcasting have more of a sense of 'national' obligations, but still driven primarily by what they imagine their audience to be interested in. We found no evidence of a labour market pushing journalists south.

Output: we have had one article published (see cd-rom "sore-490"), another under consideration (cd-rom "Where is the British"), and others in preparation. In November Pille Petersoo successfully defended her thesis and has begun work on several articles derived from this.

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