In 2024, social media is an accepted part of political life.

While back in the heady days of 2011 you could find Ed Balls tweeting his own name by trying to search for it, now parties and politicians operate slick campaigns across Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, 𝕏 and more, while intelligence agencies try to use armies of bots to influence outcomes to their benefit.

At the time of the independence referendum though the phenomenon was in its infancy and it brought some innovative approaches - and more than a few missteps.

One notorious example was a spot by the Better Together campaign titled The woman who made up her mind.

The 2 minutes 40 seconds advert ran on political broadcasts on the BBC and ITV, as well as being uploaded to the campaign's website and its YouTube channel.

It features a mother, implied to be a housewife, taking time to mull over the referendum when her kids and husband are out of the house.

"Don't get me wrong, I know how important this vote is and there's not much time left for me to make a decision," she tells the camera. "But there's only so many hours in the day."

Another line sees her tell her husband "it's too early to be discussing politics, eat your cereal".

The spot was, presumably, intended to win over women, who were seen as one of the largest groups of undecided voters, but it proved to be a catastrophic own goal.

It was lampooned on Twitter under the hashtags #PatronisingNoLady and #PatronisingBTLady.

Sandra Grieve, former convener of the Scottish Liberal Democrats said it had pushed her over the edge into voting for independence: "When I watched it I felt like I'd been transported back to the 1950s. I found it really shocking that we would portray a woman in 2014 who didn't know the name of Scotland's First Minister and left all her political thinking for her husband to do."

The advert even made it onto late night TV in the United States, John Oliver summing it up on Last Week Tonight as: "I'm just a woman, just a pair of ovaries and some bangs, how do I possibly have the mental capacity to pick from one of two options?".

It was far from the only example of the No campaign seemingly failing to grasp the importance of optics on social media.

In September a delegation of Labour MPs made their way north from London for a Better Together rally, only to be greeted at Glasgow Central station by a man on a bike blasting 'The Imperial March', Darth Vader's theme from Star Wars, from a speaker.

As they made their way through the streets he followed them on a rickshaw yelling through a megaphone: "Welcome to our imperial masters!".

The footage was uploaded to YouTube and went viral.

The sense ahead of the vote was that if Better Together was winning with the traditional media - the Sunday Herald was the only national newspaper to publicly back independence - it was Yes Scotland who had the edge on social media.

Pro-independence blogs such as Bella Caledonia, Wee Ginger Dug and Arc of Prosperity used social media to take their message to a wide and eager audience, while the satirical account Angry Salmond, its profile picture the then First Minister in a pink beret, spread the message of #SexySocialism.

When the No side ultimately triumphed, Angry Salmond posted: "For the record, I never lost. I simply repositioned the location of victory."

The real First Minister replied: "I'll leave that in your capable hands."

Things weren't all fun and games on social media though, notably with the rise of the so-called 'Cybernats'.

First coined in 2009, the term refers to pro-independence accounts who which direct vitriol at those opposing - or seen to oppose - the breakup of the UK.

When Chris Hoy expressed concern over the implications of independence he was met with a Twitter pile-on, users describing him as, among other things, a "typical Scots Tory naysayer", a "traitor" and "donning a gimp suit to ride a bicycle round a track all day long".

Read More:

Prominent politicians and campaigners for the No campaign such as JK Rowling received similar levels of vitriol.

The pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland, operated by Bath-based former video game journalist Stuart Campbell, became particularly synonymous with such behaviour.

One post entitled 'What an arsehole looks like' was devoted to Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone, who Mr Campbell described as a "worthless fat trougher", a "disgusting, arrogant, patronising, condescending piece of toilet-scraping" and a "repellent sack of filth in a suit".

In February of 2013 Yes Scotland emailed supporters saying: "Someone who does not agree with us should be treated with respect. Politics is all about different viewpoints. Never make personal attacks on any individual or engage in general abuse of opponents. The key to victory is positive persuasion. Our case is a strong one and there is no need to become involved in personal attacks."

Not that the vitriol was confined entirely to the Yes side.

On the eve of the vote, Andy Murray shared his support for independence, writing on Twitter: "Huge day for Scotland today! No campaign negativity last few days totally swayed my view on it. Excited to see the outcome. Let's do this!".

Some of the more unsavoury responses included branding the tennis star 'retarded' and allusions to the Dunblane massacre which he and his brother, Jamie, survived.

A 26-year-old man, Christopher Stevenson, was given a deferred 12 month prison sentence for posting "think I might assassinate Alex Salmond". While it was accepted that he had been joking, he was convicted of acting in a "threatening or abusive manner which was likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm".

It's difficult to conclude much has changed in the intervening decade, though the cultural battleground has shifted to areas like gender - where Wings and JK Rowling find agreement - immigration and vaccines.

For good and for ill, the social media forces unleashed in the independence referendum aren't going back into the bottle.