Scottish Government media and social media subscriptions: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for a breakdown of the total costs of all media and social media subscriptions and any other recurring monthly subscriptions.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that purchase of media and social media subscriptions is delegated to branches and therefore to identify them we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. This can be done be defining the specific types of products and services described in the request as 'media', defining 'any other recurring monthly subscriptions' and the period of time you require the information to cover. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Information provided outwith FOISA

However, in order to provide you with as full an answer as possible I have interpreted 'media' as newspapers and news services and assumed the scope of the request covers the current financial year 24/25. I have provided a return from the Directorate for Communications and Ministerial Support and the Directorate for Digital within the Scottish Government as these areas are likely to be the heaviest users of media and social media services.

I therefore enclose media and social media spend from the Directorate for Communications and Ministerial Support and the Directorate for Digital for the financial year 24/25 as at 17th March 2025:

Supplier	Description	Gross Total
Hootsuite	Hootsuite social media management subscription	£55,853.00
Sprout Social	Sprout Social social media management subscription	£1,947.54
Adobe	Adobe digital media subscriptions	£3,929.40
Adobe	Adobe Creative Cloud subscription	£526.59
Shutterstock	Shutterstock licenced images subscription	£45.60
Canva	Canva graphic design platform subscription	£8,500.00
Financial Times	Subscription for single access (online edition)	£565.00
The Economist	Subscription for single access (online edition)	£210.00
The Ferret	The Ferret news and fact checking service. Single online access subscription	£360.00
Biteable	Subscription for Biteable video creation tool	£961.13
Mailchimp	Subscription for Mailchimp newsletter creation tool	£357.00
Wordpress	Subscription for Scottish Government Library Wordpress blog	£132.00
Newsbank	Newsbank UK and Ireland news archive database subscription	£15,111.00
Office Papers	Ad-hoc newspaper purchases (invoiced monthly and not a subscription service)	£16,324.65
Total		£104,822.91

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.