From the archives: two Scotsman articles on pornography in newsagents

To celebrate the new 'The Lose the Lads' Mags' campaign by UK Feminista and Object (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22674928), here are a couple of older articles on why the campaign is important:

The Scotsman July 20, 2000, Thursday

BARE FACED CHEEK

BYLINE: Linda Watson Brown

SECTION: Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1336 words

Jennifer is 17, but looks much younger. She is described as a "sex pixie" but looks tired, small and lost. She has an obsession with the Yorkshire Ripper and is photographed with traditional pornographic props in cliched scenarios.

You'd think you would find the pictures in a top-shelf publication - but this is GQ and it is available in your local supermarket and garage. It is one of the new batch of lads' mags which are read openly by young men who would feel some degree of embarrassment about gaping at Hustler or Playboy on a bus. This month GQ focuses on "the Lolita Syndrome" - the main interview is with Jennifer Ellison from Brookside.

Ellison is not underage, but is dressed in revealing beach and underwear, and is described as part of a tempting band of adolescent girls who should make every man ensure he asks for proof of age. The message is clear - although these young girls are not yet legally sexually available, they are irresistible.

By manufacturing a "syndrome" from the Lolita myth, GQ is entering dangerous territory. The content of men's magazines has been disturbing since their inception, but the way in which boundaries are being pushed back and taboos questioned is particularly evident in recent months. These publications have been accused of airbrushing thongs and knickers from images of celebrities who have posed for photospreads. Women are constantly reduced to sexually available objects .

"There is very little difference between the content of loaded and the more obvious pornographic titles on the market," says Catherine Harper of Scottish Women Against Pornography. "But there is much more dishonesty in how it is dressed up. The covers alone are pushing things every month: it has been crotches in your face for a while. Now the content is taking things to a completely unacceptable level. There is stuff here that would not be allowed elsewhere. What is particularly worrying is that a large number of young men get their information about sex from sources like these."

Despite the fact that there has been little debate about the ways in which men are negatively affected by this type of material, the immediate concern has to be with the messages which are being sold - and this month's commodity is underage sex. GQ summarises instances of desirable young women who have only been made more tempting by the fact that sex with them would not only be illegal, it would be rape and abuse too. Jennifer Ellison is photographed half -naked enjoying childish pursuits - on a slide holding her top off, eating ice cream, and, in one particularly questionable image, on a bike surrounded by "real" children. The text raises still more issues: a ten-year-old girl whispers to Ellison that she looks lovely. Is this what we want our daughters to aspire to? A ten-year-old boy suggests that she show her breasts, and we are expected to snigger at the precocity of his early interest rather than be appalled.

Liz Kelly of the Child & Women Abuse Studies Unit at the University of North London believes the links between pornography - in its many forms - and child abuse are clear. "Child pornography is not a separate and distinct genre," she says. While we can all claim to be horrified by such images, the boundaries are not as clear as we may think. " Playboy is particularly devious - the centrefold is depicted from childhood onwards with captions like 'Age one - Playmate material already'; 'Age three - anytime dad'. Children are sexualised in pornography and women are 'childified' by being made to appear as if they are children."

This is certainly the case in mainstream men's magazines - this month in GQ sees a glorification of pubescent images and full-frontal shots of women without pubic hair who are represented as innocent and angelic.

The sexualisation of children, and the ways in which society has become desensitised to the danger this can cause, has been researched in-depth by Michele Elliot of the children's charity Kidscape. "Children's images are being sexualised because they sell. Without our knowing, soft-core child pornography has crept into our everyday lives and most of us are unaware that this has happened."

The availability of magazines such as GQ and loaded has contributed to that development. They are full of breasts-out, legs-open shots, and generally feature "celebrities" who are put in their place by being reduced to nothing more than tits-and-bum commodities. These images of availability and accessibility may be the choice of the individuals involved - although that too can be debated - but what they contribute to our stock of ideas about sex and sexuality is much more threatening.

"What we are seeing," says Catherine Harper of SWAP, "is the undermining of women - and now children. They are saying: 'It's OK lads, go for it - adolescent girls are tempting, how can you help yourselves?' They are openly advocating abuse. The messages undermines and debases real lives and real experiences, and people need to realise what's going on."

The fact that these publications are so widely available may make many think they must be acceptable. Major supermarket chains have removed "top-shelf" publications but regularly feature lads' mags at checkouts and petrol kiosks. All of those contacted said it was up to consumers to complain. A spokesperson for Asda says: "We always put these magazines out of the reach of children. That's the rule. If customers or shop colleagues complain about something they find offensive, we will act on it immediately. We will not censor magazine selection, but we will give customers what they want. We have boundaries, and we will act on anything people feel strongly about."

Safeway takes a similar position: "We review on a three-monthly basis. If the front cover is explicit, we would put the magazine on the top shelf where children couldn't get at it. If the content is complained about, we would review the situation. We are aware that these magazines can contain issues which are explicit or contentious, and we need to avoid kids browsing through them. We have family shoppers and if there was a serious complaint, we would take immediate action. In the last three or four years, there have been less than five complaints."

It is clear that many people are not complaining because they do not know what is being sold, and yet retailers say that only a few comments are enough to make them review the situation. The lack of control and regulation in this area is startling and the removal of straightforward pornography from major stores has only gone some way toward removing sexually explicit and offensive material from the high street.

Pornography is, and always has been, big business - yet again it seems as if the only way to have an effect will be to make a financial impact, rather than anything as irrelevant as public concern.

This month's mags

GQ devotes over 20 pages to "The Lolita Syndrome" focusing on pubescent full -frontal shots, "reasons why you should always ask for ID", the "nubile innocents" featured in David Hamilton's photography, and overt references to the "indecently young" Brookside actress who has the "face of an angel on a bod made all for sin".

Loaded has a "Pornalikes" features in which readers select their favourite images from pornographic publications featuring celebrity lookalikes. A naked Angelina Jolie is described as "wanting it like a thirsty mule." There is the usual list of B-list celebs naked or in poses clearly taken from pornographic imagery. One TV presenter is asked how much money it would take for her to have sex with convicted paedophile Gary Glitter.

Maxim relies on the usual half (or completely) naked images of women with headlines screaming "Do you want some?" Women are asked whether they would consider lapdancing, innumerable questions about their breasts, and it all ends with six pages of ads for pornography and sex lines.

The Scotsman November 24, 2000, Friday

YOUR CHANCE TO OBJECT AS WH SMITH BRINGS BACK THOSE MAGAZINES

BYLINE: By Linda Watson-Brown

SECTION: Pg. 15

LENGTH: 757 words

I HAD completely forgotten how modern and entertaining pornography could be. Until recently, I had considered it insulting, dangerous and degrading. Thankfully, WH Smith has put me straight on that outmoded perception. Three years ago, it decided to stop selling glossy pictures of women's genitals in its high-street shops. It still distributed the magazines. It still profited enormously from them. But in terms of its family-friendly consumer projection, they disappeared.

Partially. In terms of the somewhat spurious distinction made between top -shelf magazines and other material, well-known names such as Playboy, Hustler, Men Only, Razzle et al were consigned to the dustbin of unmarketable misogyny. Of course, all that really happened was that they continued to be bought elsewhere - generally provided by the same suppliers - and high-street retailers sold harmful images under other guises, such as lads' mags and photography literature.

Now, WH Smith says it is going to reintroduce pornography to its stores. Apparently, in the three years that we have been without gynaecological illustrations of dehumanised women, things have changed. Pornography is now a heterosexual haven of consensual, post-modern relationships.

Does that make those who find such depictions offensive feel a lot better about its renaissance? The next time you go to the Gyle or the Braehead shopping centres in Edinburgh or Glasgow and you see their awards for family -friendly initiatives, will you have any lingering concerns? Previously there may have been a few worries. After all, "novelty shops" stock bondage tape beside their cuddly toys; Marks and Spencer sell bras for girls who should still be wearing vests; major supermarkets peddle paedophile imagery as they punt GQ and Loaded alongside their groceries and two-faced consumer equality strategies.

But now, how will you reconcile buying your children their Barbie and Action Man comics as they stand next to someone perusing a catalogue of exploitation which ensures the buyer that models are "barely legal"? You could justify it in the same way that you will have to if you are a Daily Express reader, for now its new owner will promote his pornography catalogue alongside OK! and the children's comics he has also founded his empire on.

Or, you could realise that something is intrinsically wrong here. And yes, even if it is boring and unfashionable, you could also wake up to the fact that it is morally reprehensible.

If you agree, I am clearly preaching to the converted. If you disagree, there is probably little I can do until you send me the intellectually-challenged letters raising the same, stultifying points which pro-pornographers always rely on. However, if you're not sure, there are a few things for you to think about.

Pornography is not about simple pictures of naked women. It is central in creating and maintaining sex as a basis for discrimination. It is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex, and it harms women, men and children. It produces bigotry and contempt. It justifies aggression and hatred. Like other media messages, pornography reinforces and helps create the idea that women are second-class citizens, and it reinforces distorted notions of women's sexuality.

There will always be women who say that they are not exploited by pornography. Personally, I couldn't care less whether every other woman in the world thinks pornography is great. It offends me and it affects me. As such, I have a right to try to do something about it. WH Smith does not believe I, or anyone like me, will exercise that right. The company has stated that it does not believe any of its customers will protest. Indeed, it has said it thinks the publications will be welcomed. I have been told by most stockists of pornography - whether top-shelf or lads' mag in nature - that people simply do not complain. I have also been told that unless those who do write in give their name, address and telephone number, their letter will go straight in the bin. For many people, this is just another effective way of silencing dissent.

I am happy to act as the conduit here. Send me your letters and your petitions, and I will pass them on to WH Smith on your behalf, with personal details made anonymous. If that seems a bit extreme, perhaps you would rather spend your time preparing the best way to explain the joy of iconoclastic pornographic imagery to your five-year-old next time you go shopping.

Howarth's Aggressive Homosexuals

One problem with twitter is that, if you don’t check it often enough, all the good jokes are taken and then everyone moves on too quickly for me to contribute. Here is what I would have come up with on the hashtag #aggressivehomosexuals (following Gerard Howarth MP’s speech, which included the phrase: 'There are plenty in the aggressive homosexual community who see this as but a stepping-stone' ) if someone had just given me the chance to think, then go to bed, then go for a run the next day and listen to ‘Gay Bar’ by Electric 6 . Even then, it’s all a bit tenuous:

• Something about Howarth regretting getting all his information from a few seconds of Radio 1 that he put on by accident in his car (‘let’s start a war, let’s start a nuclear war, at the gay bar’)
• Now tell me do ya, a do ya have any money? I wanna spend all your money, implementing same-sex marriage and then civil partnerships for heterosexual couples
• I've got an amendement to put in you, at the report stage

This is How You Set Targets

As fans of the UK Government know, it is important to set targets. For those targets to work, they need to be measurable. In other words, you have to know when they have been met. There should also be safeguards so that people don't game the system and meet targets at the expense of the underlying aim of the policy. Finally, when those targets have been met, the policymaker should be congratulated for the aim, the effort and the outcome.
It is in this context that I would like to present one of my personal targets: to get more Twitter followers than my daughter within a year of joining Twitter. At the time, this felt like an ambitious target, not least because she had benefited from an artificial bump in her figures after being tweeted by minor celebrity Chipmunk (I think his tweet was ;) or something like that). However, I then benefited from the short attention spans of Evie's followers, and her score has fallen to a highly achievable 537. Tonight, after 11 months on Twitter, I reached the heady heights of 538 followers. I don't think that I gamed the system. I am being followed by someone selling boxes and one or two people selling some dodgier looking things, but I did not invite those organisations to follow me. I might have once made a plea for more followers, but only to level the Chipmunk field (and I think I only got 20 followers from the appeal). Otherwise, I have developed a small but good quality following with a triple Twitter strategy: blogs for students/ academics, vague complaints about Scottish politics and more general inane drivel as it occurs to me. So, congratulations are in order. I hope you will understand that, although I love my children very dearly, I am also a very petty person who likes to wind up close family members on a regular basis. This fits the bill nicely.

Please note: if you want to wind me up by following my daughter, to get her numbers above mine again, you should know that we are one of those trendy families in which our children share the surname of their mother, not father. So, you will have to make quite the commitment to the joke.

UPDATE 8th June 2013 -  I have now been on twitter for a full year and have 661 followers. I now need a new target. I reckon it should be: go from 9 tweets per day to 8.

What is ‘Evolution’? What is ‘Complexity’? [and How does it inform the study of policymaking?]

There is a long history in the social sciences of using the natural sciences as a source of comparison. Much of the comparison is based on little more than the (often very useful) metaphor. There is now an equally important but shorter history of trying to draw more direct parallels; to say that this process in a social system is directly comparable to a process in a natural or living system. The study of evolution provides the potential for that sort of direct comparison, and we can find the use of terms such as ‘complexity’ (or ‘complex systems’) employed partly to that end. However, there are two major obstacles to this sort of direct comparison (and indeed to the use of evolution-based metaphors):

1. We may not agree about the meaning of evolution. For example, when it is used loosely in everyday language, ‘evolution’ tends to refer to a very long term, gradual process of change. However, evolution can also refer to the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in which long spells of gradual change are interrupted by relatively short but profound bursts of activity and change. Consequently, the study of evolution is instantly confusing because it can refer to the *opposite of* and/ or the *same thing as* revolution. There are also some other sources of potential confusion about, for example, the nature of evolution (does it necessarily refer to advancement?) and the nature of ‘selection’ (do species simply respond blindly to their environments or help create them?).

2. Some people have really ruined evolution for the rest of us. We can blame so-called ‘social-Darwinism’ for the racist/ sexist idea that some people are more evolved than others. In other words, ‘evolution’ comes with a lot of baggage when we apply it to social science discussions.

This sort of confusion can be found in the study of public policy where evolution can refer to a wide range of things, including:

• the cumulative, long-term development of policy solutions;

• major disruptions in the way that policy makers think about, and try to solve, policy problems;

• the maintenance *or* radical reform of policy-making institutions;

• ‘emergent’ behaviour within complex systems

• the trial-and-error strategies adopted by actors, such as policy entrepreneurs, when adapting to their environment

• the coming together of multiple factors to create the conditions for major policy change (which can be a creative, ‘window of opportunity’ style process, or a destructive, failure-related ‘perfect storm style process).

This range of understandings may not put us off evolutionary discussions completely, but it shows us that we should be super-clear about our meaning of evolution when we seek to make these sorts of comparisons with evolution in nature.

I suppose this has been a roundabout way for me to advertise the fact that I have just published a journal article about this very topic (if you can't access it, I can send you a *non-final* version or you can try getting it through a free trial). It compares the most prominent theories of politics and policymaking which draw on references to evolution in different ways. For example:

Multiple Streams Analysis (Kingdon) – uses the term ‘policy primeval soup’ to suggest that, although policymaker attention may lurch from one problem to another, problems will not be addressed until policy solutions have evolved sufficiently within a policy community and policymakers have the motive and opportunity to adopt them. ‘Evolution’ describes the *slow progress* of an idea towards acceptability within the policy community.

Punctuated Equilibrium theory (Baumgartner and Jones) – suggests that that ‘incremental’ policy change in most cases is accompanied by ‘seismic’ change in a small number of cases – an outcome consistent with ‘power laws’ found in the natural and social worlds. Kingdon’s picture of slow progress producing partial mutations is replaced by Baumgartner and Jones’ *fast, disruptive, pure mutation* (in some cases).

Then there is complexity theory, which I have discussed in my blog here. The relevance to a discussion of evolution is that complexity theory may help us understand processes in which people, institutions and their environments are interacting constantly to produce rather unpredictable outcomes (or, at least, outcomes may ‘emerge’ locally, in the absence of central control). This might be broken down into three steps:

1. Institutions, as sets of rules and norms, represent ways for people to retain certain ideas and encourage particular forms of behaviours.
2. Complex systems represent (partly) a large number of overlapping and often interdependent institutions.
3. New behaviours and rules arise from the interaction between multiple institutions and the actors involved.

In other words, different ‘worlds’ are in constant collision, producing new ways of thinking and behaviour that ‘emerge’ from these interactions. They are then passed down through the generations, but in an imperfect way, allowing new forms of thinking and behaviour to emerge.

To describe these processes as ‘evolutionary’, we really need to use the language of evolution - variation, selection and retention - to describe and explain outcomes. The idea in the natural world is that living things want to do at least two things: (1) pass on their genes; (2) cooperate with others to secure resources and share them out to their kith and kin. The idea in the political world is a bit different and perhaps a bit of a stretch, but here goes:

• The equivalent of passing on genes is passing on ‘memes’, or ideas (beliefs, ways of thinking – as described in the 70s by Richard Dawkins before he moved onto God).

• ‘Variation’ refers to the different rules adopted by different social groups to foster the collective action required to survive.

• ‘Selection’ describes the interaction between people and their environments; particular environments may provide an advantage to some groups over others and encourage certain behaviours (or, at least, some groups may respond by adapting their behaviour to their environment).

• ‘Retention’ describes the ways in which people pass on their genes (memes) to ensure the reproduction of their established rules (we might call them ‘institutions’).

The key difference in the study of evolution and policymaking is the idea of passing on memes through the generations. We think of passing on genes through the generations as a process that takes hundreds, thousands or millions of years. Passing on memes through the ‘policy generations’ is more like the study of fruit flies (months), viruses or bacteria (days or weeks). In other words, ways of thinking, and emerging behaviour, change constantly as people interact with each other, articulating different beliefs and rules and producing new forms of thinking, rules and behaviour as they interact. Big jumps in ways of thinking may be associated with key generational shifts, but that can take place, for example, as one generation of scientists retires or, more quickly still, one generation of experts is replaced (within government circles) by another.

Complexity theory may be used to capture, describe and explain that sort of interaction on a grand scale. We can zoom in to see individuals interacting with each other, or zoom out to observe mass behaviour and the sorts of outcomes that emerge from them. For me, this means that the field is wide open when it comes down to research methods. If we are interested in people understanding this complex process of interaction, we can study those individuals using interviews and/ or various forms of observation. If we are interested in the whole system, we might adopt mathematical models and computer simulations. There is nothing to stop us combining such methods (and more) if we avoid the sort of people that adhere slavishly to one fixed understanding of the world and, therefore, one method to help us understand it.  

I don’t hold out much hope of this sort of discussion capturing the public imagination. However, the chances are that this sort of discussion of evolution (and its relationship to complexity theory) is taking place in a wide range of disciplines without much exchange between them. So, if you see a blog like this written by someone else in some other field, please let me know.  

Cairney, P. (2013). What is evolutionary theory and how does it inform policy studies?. Policy & Politics, 41(2), 279-298.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2013/00000041/00000002/art00008

A Picture of Pathways to Impact

This picture went into my recent ESRC application and it seemed a shame to just go to waste there (so to speak) ...

....It was drawn by Tereza Procházková, who is a Masters student of Service Design, a course run by Hazel White at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. I had asked Tereza to interpret my 'Case for Support' so that I could demonstrate to the ESRC how I would try to work with Tereza to produce some reports using words and pictures. The point is not to make superificial or simplistic arguments about complicated topics. Rather, the idea is that the production of drawings forces you to decide what the key points of a document are (perhaps in a stronger way than an abstract or set of bullet points would make you choose). The interpretation of my reports by someone else also allows me to check if I have managed to get my point across to an audience that doesn't understand the issues in the same way (see also http://paulcairney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/how-do-people-read-your-research.html).
The idea came from the CIPFA annual conference in Scotland in 2013. White’s students contributed to her lecture/ workshop on ‘Service Design’ at the event and Tereza also summarised my lecture (on complex policymaking systems) using text (found here, compare with my lecture/ blog post here) and pictures. I don't *think* that it appealed to me simply because the picture of me was flattering. 

Using the Internet for Political Research (POL9RM 30.4.13)

Since I am giving a lecture on using the internet for political research (for POL9RM), it seems appropriate to upload it to your actual internet. This is, depending on how you view these things, either an excessively long or good-value blog. We might settle on ‘generous’.

The lecture will be split into two basic issues:

1. What type of information should you seek, and from where?

2. What are the best (or, at least, most used) tools to use to source that information?

Types of Information

Before we examine how best to use the internet for political research, we should consider why you (as a former first year student) may have been advised *not* to rely on the internet to produce essays. Why would there be such an objection to using freely available information produced by such a wide range of people? Why, perhaps, would people criticise you for favouring the democratic, as opposed to the elite, production of knowledge? The answer is not that your older lecturers - who still remember the days of punch cards, rolodexes, hard copy journals and the need to speak to someone about borrowing books - resent the fact that you can get information so quickly without going to a library or even leaving your home. It is also not a form of group closure, in which we protect and promote our own people, methods and types of information.  It is not that lecturers associate undergraduate student internet research with a small bunch of people copy-and-pasting from Wikipedia into their essays (although this does happen, sometimes).

The more important explanation is that, in a world where the amount of information seems infinite, it may be increasingly difficult to identify the information to which we should pay most or least attention.  We need to identify some sort of hierarchy of important and/ or reliable information. This is a skill like any other. Your successful development of this skill will be reflected in your grades, since it will relate to the willingness of your essay markers to accept the information you present, according to the way in which you account for your information.

One way to address this issue is to consider why lecturers tend to treat books and/ or journal articles as the gold standard of information - at least as secondary sources, before you are expected to do your own research using primary sources such as government documents.

Possible answers (though not always useful answers) include:

1. They are peer reviewed. Lecturers may recommend journals that only allow publication after a number of relevant academics have commented on the work, often anonymously. The number of peer reviewers may vary from 1 to 6; in my experience an article is usually read by 2 or 3 anonymous reviewers. Their evaluation of journals may be linked partly to the reputations that some journals have in terms of academic rigour, linked to the need for scholars to anticipate and address critical reviews before having their work accepted.

2. They are competitive and much work is rejected. Some journals have an acceptance rate below 10%, which helps them develop an image of prestige and cutting edge research. (You can get a rough idea of acceptance rates in politics and IR here - http://www.reviewmyreview.eu/ ). Some people also put some faith in proxy measures of journal reputations, such as their ‘impact factors’ (although this is a problematic faith). It is also an increasing trend to evaluate the status of individual scholars according to the extent to which the publication is cited by other scholars (see below on Google scholar). Being well cited is a proxy used increasingly to gauge respect for the information.

3. They may be based on a long period of scholarly research. This varies from discipline to discipline. Consider, for example, the historical research produced over years after painstaking attention to thousands of documents.

4. The research may be theoretically informed. Being theoretically informed means being aware of the general implications of individual pieces of information. In part, this focus on theory is based on one role of scientific research: to draw lessons from sets of single cases to produce insights that may apply to many or all cases. A focus on theory is a focus on generalisation – something that is difficult to do if we rely only on information that is produced in very particular circumstances.

5. The research may be methodologically sophisticated. Most research is required to reach some sort of level of sophistication. For example, a quantitative survey requires a certain (large) number of responses to be considered statistically significant (in other words, for us to conclude that the results could not have happened by chance). It is then subject to a series of statistical techniques (which you may learn, using programmes such as SPSS) to explore the associations between variables. Qualitative research may be judged on different criteria, but there is a similar requirement that the conduct of the research meets certain professional criteria. The data may then be subject to further techniques to gauge its meaning and significance. It is often a condition of journal article acceptance that the scholars set out clearly their methods (and often provide a copy of the data for others to use).

6. The research may be empirically rich. Much research is based on surveys of thousands of people or qualitative interviews of dozens or hundreds. The data may be combined with documentary and historical analysis to produce a wealth of information. That information may be compared with information from other studies, to help accumulate knowledge within particular fields.

7. The authors may be meticulous when they identify the source of their information. One aim of the scholarly text is to show the reader where they got their information, to allow the reader to follow up, confirm and/ or read further. Most of you will have noticed the attention that we pay to your referencing style and bibliographies (hopefully most of us are looking for a consistent style rather than a particular style, although be suspicious of people who don’t agree that Harvard is best). This is because, when people make empirical or theoretical claims, the understanding is that they show us the information on which they based their claims (or, at least, they give us the option to follow up their work).

It is according to these kinds of criteria that we may judge other sources of information. In many cases, the information may be useful even if it does not live up to many or any of these criteria. For example, it is legitimate to use newspaper stories and commentary pieces, particularly if they provide much-needed timely information and the source is seen as reliable (indeed, although some newspapers now suffer poor reputations, we can still identify a tradition of fact/ source checking as a routine part of information gathering – partly, but not exclusively, because journalists are generally proud of their reputations and newspaper managers do not want to be sued). However, we would then have to consider the trade off against the academic ‘gold standard’ (is the information likely to be theoretically informed and based on a sophisticated method?) and consider the extent to which the trade is appropriate. In many cases, this just comes down to a mix of sources – student essays could benefit from immediate sources but those sources may not be an alternative to a more comprehensive review of the relevant literature.

However, this is not to say that academic information is unproblematic. We may be meticulous when we catalogue our sources of information, but that information may still be of varying value. For example, quantitative work may be limited by the availability of information provided by other actors (such as governments) and qualitative work may be limited by access to the right sources of information and simple things like the ability of interviewees to recall or provide an honest recollection of relevant information. The more difficult task, then, is to consider in more depth how people access and present information and how we might compare and critically analyse those sources to produce what we consider to be an accurate or valuable overall assessment of the available information.

Search Tools

We might divide that search broadly intro two categories: primary and secondary sources. I will a focus on Scottish politics to tailor the advice.

Secondary sources

The starting point for most students is likely to be a secondary source: you look through the existing academic literature for your information. Those texts analyse things like government documents, and you get your information about those documents indirectly, through a secondary source.

For me, the best way to start a search for secondary sources is to use Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.co.uk/). You enter a small number of search terms and it produces a list of materials to consult. Most Universities also have the ability (particularly if you search on campus) to link the article access directly to the search. Your results are likely to reflect your search terms. For example, a search for ‘Scottish politics’ reveals a list of general texts, while a search for referendums in Scotland produces more specific texts. They tend to be organised according to the extent to which they have been cited elsewhere (which often produces a tendency for older materials to be listed first).

A good rule of thumb is that you should use Scholar more as you progress in your studies. The ‘further reading’ section of a textbook, or list of readings in a course guide, is essential when you are an early undergraduate. When you become an advanced undergraduate, and start to plan to write a relatively independent piece of work, you are expected to do your own searches for the relevant literature. This will require you to think carefully about your research question and the keywords you will have to use to get the most out of the search. You may also need to think about the sources of offer from Google scholar. There is now a wide availability of journals and books, but how do you prioritise and/ or determine the quality of the information?

Primary Sources

An independent project will also prompt you to seek primary sources of information, including government and parliamentary sources. This requires a bit more thought, since you are unlikely to get useful information unless you have first thought about what your research problem is and how you intend to address it. In other words, you think about what you want to know, what are the most appropriate methods to get the right information, and *then* do these sorts of searches.

Government and parliamentary sources

It is quite amusing to look through the Burnham et al (2008) 2^nd edition of ‘Research Methods in Politics’ because it still talks about CD ROMS. These were growing in popularity when I was a student, but you may never have used a physical, round, disk to secure information (and may never have to). Instead, sources of government and parliamentary information tend to be available online directly from them (or, if you are that way inclined, through sites that claim to provide documents that governments don’t want you to see). For example the Scottish Government has a fairly extensive site (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics) which allows you to search using key terms. This tends to be less straightforward than a Google Scholar search, forcing you to be much clearer in your mind about what sort of information you want (since you will have to be fairly specific in your search unless you want to sift through a tonne of information). Similarly, the Scottish Parliament (http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/) provides a written record of virtually anything that any MSP has said in a committee or plenary discussion since 1999, as well as a full record of written and oral evidence to committees. Again, there is too much information to browse, so you first need to think about what you want to know.

Newspapers

Lexis Nexis (which can be accessed through library resources) is a key archive of UK newspapers and can track the Scottish papers to some extent (it is OK for Scottish papers like the Scotsman, Herald, Daily Record and Press & Journal, but it does not store Scottish editions of the UK papers like the Daily Mail). The archive varies, with papers like The Times providing the longest stretches of data (the Scotsman has also begun to archive its really old material). Again, to make the search manageable (below, say, 1000 stories), you need to be very specific about what you want. For example, a search for Scotland AND referendum AND independence will produce thousands of stories which will take you days to get through (unless you focus on a short space of time).

Blogs

Blogs are a minefield. Consider the extent to which they meet the gold standard criteria I outlined above. Some of them might do, but how would you know? I would treat blogs in the way that I might treat newspapers: you might trust them if they have a good reputation (but, then, whose opinions do you trust on reputations?). You should also expect biased, and often highly biased, opinions. That means that they can be a good source of information, but you might ask yourself if you can rely on a blog on its own, or as something to be compared with one or more sources. Interestingly (for me at least), along with my co-author on the 2^nd ed of Scottish Politics, Neil McGarvey, I had to come up with a list of websites to check out. The idea is that they would be relatively useful, but is this list (below) particularly reliable? Or, are they simply the ones that came to mind at the time?

SCOTTISH POLITICS BLOGS

http://www.betternation.org/

http://brightgreenscotland.org/

http://underdogsbiteupwards.blogspot.com/

http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.com/

http://burdzeyeview.wordpress.com/

http://www.labourhame.com/

http://andrewrunning.blogspot.com/

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/

http://www.scotgoespop.blogspot.com/

http://joanmcalpine.typepad.com/

http://www.gerryhassan.com/

http://iainmacwhirter2.blogspot.com/

http://albamatters.blogspot.com/

http://the-universality-of-cheese.blogspot.com/

http://theshooglypeg.com/

http://scotspolitics.com

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/meltdown-man/

 

Twitter and other things

I tend to use Twitter as an alternative to the TV, as an additional source of entertainment. However, it is possible to sign up to a wide range of news and party sites and to use twitter as an alternative to reading newspapers page by page. This provides you with a new source of bias, but perhaps no more problematic than sticking with a paper like the Daily Mail. You might even simply follow specific lists (such as academics on twitter) or, if you are feeling particularly lazy, just look at the list of people/ organisations I follow and piggyback on that.  There are things that are particularly useful, such as the LSE blog sites and accounts such as ‘Writing For Research’ which you might find more useful if you progress to postgraduate work.

And finally ..

Here is a list of websites that Neil and I produced for our book. It is likely to be a bit scattergun and biased (for example, we don’t list small party websites), and some will already be out of date, but there may be some sources there that you wouldn’t otherwise consider.

EXAMPLES OF POTENTIALLY USEFUL WEBSITES ON SCOTTISH POLITICS

(from the chapters of the forthcoming 2^nd ed. of ‘Scottish Politics’ by Paul Cairney and Neil McGarvey)

The idea here is that these websites might get you started if you don’t want to rely on a scattergun search engine search. It is not a particularly well-thought-out list, so be careful!

DEVOLUTION

Scottish Parliament http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/
Report of the Consultative Steering Group http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/PublicInformationdocuments/Report_of_the_Consultative_Steering_Group.pdf 
The Economic and Social Research Council ‘Devolution and Constitutional Change’ research programme http://www.devolution.ac.uk  and ‘The Future of the UK and Scotland’ http://www.esrc.ac.uk/about-esrc/what-we-do/our-research/future-of-uk-and-scotland/index.aspx   
University of London’s Constitution Unit http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/    
UK Politics page http://www.ukpolitics.org.uk/

Paul Cairney’s Blog: http://paulcairney.blogspot.co.uk/

MEDIA
http://www.smg.plc.uk
http://www.allmediascotland.com  
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/
http://www.theherald.co.uk/
http://www.scotsman.com
http://www.holyroodmag.com/
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/
http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/
http://www.sundayherald.com
http://www.thisisnorthscotland.co.uk

SCOTTISH ECONOMY

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Economy

http://www.scottisheconomywatch.com/

http://www.cppr.ac.uk/centres/cppr/analysisofthescottisheconomy/

http://www.strath.ac.uk/fraser/

SCOTTISH SOCIETY

http://www.scottishcivictrust.org.uk/

http://www.stuc.org.uk/

http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk

http://www.scmo.org/

http://www.eis.org.uk/

http://www.cosla.gov.uk/

http://www.sns.gov.uk/

POLITICAL PARTIES

Scottish Conservative Party http://www.scottish.tory.org.uk/  
Scottish Green Party http://www.scottishgreens.org.uk/  
Scottish Labour Party http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/  
Scottish Liberal-Democrats http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/
Scottish National Party http://www.snp.org.uk

ELECTIONS

http://www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/    
http://www.votescotland.com
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/scotland
http://www.fairvote.org
http://www.yougov.com
http://www.populuslimited.com  

http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk  

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/

http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/category/scotland

http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/polls_scot.html

http://www.scottishelections.org.uk/

http://www7.politicalbetting.com

PARLIAMENT

Scottish Parliament http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/
Scottish Constitutional Convention http://www.almac.co.uk/business_park/scc/ 
Consultative Steering Group http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/PublicInformationdocuments/Report_of_the_Consultative_Steering_Group.pdf 
House of Commons http://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/  

 UCL Constitution Unit - http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT

Scottish Government http://www.scotland.gov.uk/

Scotland Performs - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/Performance/scotPerforms

UK Cabinet Office http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk 
Scottish Ministerial Code http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/14944/684 

 GOVERNMENT BEYOND THE CENTRE

http://www.scottishhousingregulator.gov.uk/
http://www.creativescotland.com/
http://www.visitscotland.com/
http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/  
http://www.cosla.gov.uk

http://www.improvementservice.org.uk/
http://www.show.scot.nhs.uk 
http://www.scvo.org.uk 

http://www.scottishfuturestrust.org.uk

INTEREST GROUPS

Convention of Scottish Local Authorities http://www.cosla.gov.uk/  
Friends of the Earth Scotland  http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/     
Scottish Council for Development and Industry http://www.scdi.org.uk/
Scottish Trades Union Congress http://www.stuc.org.uk/
CBI Scotland http://www.cbi.org.uk/about-the-cbi/uk/scotland/
Scottish Council for Voluntary Organizations http://www.scvo.org.uk/ 

NFU Scotland - http://www.nfus.org.uk/

Scotch Whisky Association - http://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/

ASH Scotland - http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/

Educational Institute of Scotland - http://www.eis.org.uk/

SCOTTISH PUBLIC POLICY

ScotHub  http://www.scothub.org/

Centre for Scottish Public Policy http://www.cspp.org.uk  
Centre for Public Policy for Regions http://www.cppr.ac.uk

For SPICe summaries of all Scottish Government bills see http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/Bills/12417.aspx

INTERGOVERNMENTAL ISSUES

Alan Trench http://devolutionmatters.wordpress.com 

Cabinet Office http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/
Scotland Office http://www.scottishsecretary.gov.uk/
Scotland Europa http://www.scotlandeuropa.com
Government EU Office http://www.scotland.gov.uk/euoffice
British/Irish Council http://www1.british-irishcouncil.org

UK Supreme Court - http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/index.html

McKay Commission http://tmc.independent.gov.uk/

Lallands Peat Worrier http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/baccymongers-bankers-supremes.html

FINANCE

UK National Statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/index.html

Her Majesty’s Treasury http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/

Scottish Government http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Economy
Scottish Parliament http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/17534.aspx

Improvement Service (http://www.improvementservice.org.uk/

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

Scotland Act 2012 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/11/pdfs/ukpga_20120011_en.pdf 

Scotland Act 2012 Sewel Motion - Scottish Parliament Official Report 18.4.12 http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r=6972 

Scotland Bill committee final report http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/PreviousCommittees/29884.aspx

Calman Commission - http://www.commissiononscottishdevolution.org.uk/

National Conversation - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/constitution/a-national-conversation

Steel Commission - http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/files/steelcommission.pdf

Scotland Office - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/factual-analysis-promised-as-legal-implications-of-scottish-independence-made-clear

Scottish Government - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/02/8079

Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers Fiscal Commission Working Group - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Economy/Council-Economic-Advisers/FCWG

Alan Trench - http://devolutionmatters.wordpress.com/

Lallands Peat Worrier - http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/

ScottishPol - http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/

BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scotland/scotland_politics/ 

Newsnet Scotland - http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/4341-a-unionist-lexicon-an-a-z-of-unionist-scare-stories-myths-and-misinformation

Scots Independent - http://www.scotsindependent.org/index.htm

Constitution Unit - http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/

Edinburgh University Blog - http://www.referendum.ed.ac.uk/

Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum - http://www.scottishconstitutionalfutures.org/Home/tabid/1269/Default.aspx

ESRC - http://www.esrc.ac.uk/about-esrc/what-we-do/our-research/future-of-uk-and-scotland/index.aspx

 

AND FINALLY again

Maybe you have read this far to see what we can say about Wikipedia. My view is that I am sometimes pleasantly surprised about what I see on some of those pages. However, you will find very few academics that will trust your information if your source is Wikipedia (partly because it is difficult to know who is providing the information, how they got it, how well they cite that information, and how easy the information is to edit and manipulate). Maybe a good rule of thumb is that you look at it for a short cut to information, but that you do not rely on it as your definitive source.

Brian Adam

There is a well written obituary of Brian Adam here - http://local.stv.tv/aberdeen/news/222852-brian-adams-death-at-just-64-robs-scottish-politics-of-a-much-admired-man/

I would like to add that he was very helpful to my students during my time at Aberdeen (as were people like Richard Baker and Alex Johnstone). He was the sort of MSP who would always offer his services to give informal lectures, either at the University or in Holyrood. He would do so even when he knew he should be elsewhere (such as in the chamber to vote or persuade others to vote the right way).  He was refreshingly frank about the details of things like whipping, in a no nonsense, not particularly careful way. I think that students really appreciated it. He also gave about 8 of my students (as many as could cram into the lift) a decent story, by telling me that an article I wrote, about the SNP, in Holyrood Magazine, was "guff" before reminding me to get out of my ivory tower. It may have been a little bit uncomfortable at the time, but I bet that a lot of people will have a little giggle as they remember that sort of exchange with Brian.