So the First Minister is winning the battle of the Twittosphere.
According to The Herald's survey today, Alex Salmond has almost as many Twitter followers as all of Labour's MSPs put together.
Twitter, Facebook and other sites are now a well-established part of political campaigning, and have a useful part to play in the national discourse, but cannot compete as a means of staying informed with trusted news media outlets.
In 2014, newspapers such as The Herald remain the best information source, offering in-depth coverage of key issues, a range of opinion and opportunities for public debate on the much-read letters pages and online comment facility.
The Herald has consistently emerged in surveys as the most read newspaper among MSPs and, along with the Sunday Herald, is frequently cited in the Holyrood debating chamber, reflecting its position at the forefront of the national debate.
Twitter and Facebook offer a good way for voters to engage directly with politicians, but take their place alongside newspapers like The Herald, whose online readership has grown steadily. Whatever the referendum result, Scotland's newspapers will be in the forefront as history unfolds.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
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