ABSTRACT
On September 18, 2014, voters in Scotland were asked in a referendum, “Should Scotland be an independent country?”, ending a hard and often bitterly fought campaign between those who would vote “Yes” and those who would vote “No”. During the campaign, the term “cybernat” was used, in the main pejoratively, to describe individuals on the Nationalist side of the debate who were vociferous—that much can be agreed upon; whether the term cybernat was only used to describe bullying Internet “trolls”, or whether it was used to denigrate outspoken and passionate political debate, has not got the same consensus. In this chapter, with data from Twitter, I discuss the term and its (de)legitimizing force.
