Dr James Dennis
Researcher at the Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (CICANT), Universidade Lusófona (Portugal), Co-Editor of Political Studies Review (UK), and Co-Convenor of the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group (UK).
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswilldennis/
Website: https://jameswilldennis.com/
Scottish Election 2026
Section 2: News, media and journalism
- News consumption in Scotland (Dr Camila Montalverne)
- TikTok’s For You Page recommendations during the Scottish Parliament election (Dr Dayei Oh, Dr Chamil Rathnayake)
- From participation to consumption? Youth engagement and “parasocial media” (Dr James Dennis)
- The battle for trust in the Holyrood election (Prof Catherine Happer, Dr James Morrison, Dr Lluis de Nadal)
- Polls over policy in UK-wide TV news coverage of Elections (Dr Maxwell Modell, Dr Keighley Perkins, Prof Stephen Cushion)
- Legacy news coverage of the election – Leaders debate and press coverage (Dr Steven Harkins)
- All right, own up, who let the woman in? (Dr Fiona McKay, Dr Melody House)
- Negotiations of the constitutional question (Dr Maike Dinger)
“That’s my worry, that people are gonna go, ‘what’s the point in voting?’ and just nae bother”
This quote, paraphrased from a TikTok video on youth engagement during the election, provides an insight into a concern shared by scholars and practitioners for decades. The John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow revealed the findings of its annual survey, the UK Youth Poll 2026, during the campaign. Its authors outline how “just a third of young people think their lives will be better than their parents”. Be it the impact of rising youth unemployment—with almost one million 16-25-year-olds in the UK not in education, employment, or training—or the climate crisis, young people face a range of challenges in their everyday lives that feel insurmountable. The result is often alienation from democratic politics.
One way that parties seek to engage young people is through social media. As campaigns in support of US Senator Bernie Sanders, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and, more recently, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani have shown, political parties tap into a youthful, digitally enabled civic language to boost support for their candidates. In this election, the Scottish Greens used the typography and lime-green design of Charli XCX’s acclaimed album, Brat, and a popular meme featuring Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants to raise awareness of their key policies.
Citizens also adopt this approach. Through the creation and amplification of culturally-relevant political discourse, self-organised citizens can give life to a candidate, as in #milifandom, or derail a campaign, like the memes highlighting then-Prime Minister Theresa May’s robotic and out-of-touch nature in 2017. However, drawing on an analysis of posts on Instagram and TikTok using relevant keywords and hashtags posted during the official campaign period (26th March to 7th May)—such as #SP26, #Scottishelection2026, variations of “Scotland” and “election”—I found limited evidence of such communication during the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections.
Posts followed trends from recent elections around the globe. This included some where the user adopted a glamorous pose while the text overlay contained serious political commentary, often an endorsement of the Scottish Greens or SNP. Combined with viral songs, these videos are designed to attract attention. Other, more popular, non-political topics are used as the focus of the video to be featured more prominently in algorithmically shaped feeds, such as the For You Page (TikTok) and Instagram Reels. This strategy helps creators bypass potential algorithmic deprioritisation of overtly political content, which some platforms have moved toward. Beyond these posts, critiques of Reform also featured prominently, often taking a humorous angle, such as a user filming a parent’s outraged reaction to the suggestion that they might vote for the party.
But most citizen-created posts were reminders to register to vote and other targeted information for young people. These typically abstained from explicit party advocacy, instead focusing on increasing turnout. Some used humour, adapting viral internet characters, like Triple T and Mr Chill, to highlight the voter registration deadline or the danger of older citizens, who vote in large numbers, determining the political agenda. Others combined their advice with other genres of content they specialised in, such as a makeup tutorial explaining the Additional Member System used to elect representatives.
However, unlike in previous elections I have analysed, I found more examples from social media influencers, celebrities, and high-profile activists than from citizens. This included examples of what Hurcombe describes as newsfluencers, “platformised creators who operate according to the economic and cultural logics of online influencers to produce news content for participatory audiences”. Some of these were practising journalists, like Beth Templeton, a journalist for The National, who independently produced explainers on a range of issues, including how parties were positioned on violence against women and girls and the cost-of-living crisis. Girls Who Talk Politics, a political organisation focused on making politics more accessible and inclusive for women and girls, clarified the differences between the Scottish Greens and Independent Green Voice and collaborated with the National Union of Students to create a vote-matching tool based on policy preferences. Other prominent voices were more explicit in their endorsements, especially for Reform, such as political commentator Bruce Unfiltered and Nathan King, who previously featured on the reality TV show Big Brother.
To some degree, these findings reflect how the norms and behaviours associated with social media use are changing. As fewer citizens post publicly and algorithms prioritise content based on its virality, rather than on a user’s connection to an account, news feeds look very different. Technology scholar danah boyd argues that platforms like Instagram and TikTok now resemble “parasocial media”. Rather than fostering social bonds among users, citizens use social media as tools for consuming content from high-profile accounts. While previous elections saw a surge in organic peer-to-peer discourse, in this election voices were largely displaced by influencer-created content. This change is bringing back into focus a critical issue that has been at the centre of British politics for decades: many young adults do not see themselves, their communities, and the issues that shape their lived experience reflected in electoral politics. While past examples of intense social media activity during elections have obfuscated this issue, the relative absence of youth voices on these platforms in this election brings it firmly back into view.
