Reporting the Road to Brexit

The purpose of this study is to reveal how migrants were mobilized in discourses in the British press prior to the UK’s referendum on European Union membership in June 2016. The analysis seeks to gain insight into the role fulfilled by the symbolic ‘migrant’ throughout the debate, the means by which the media does this, and the overall ‘common sense’ that was reported. This has been achieved through discourse analysis of articles from five British press titles over a timeline inclusive of three key events in the referendum debate that also encompassed heightened levels of displacement of migrants and refugees throughout Europe. The findings confirm the problematic position migration has within the British press, as the role of the ‘migrant’ played an instrumental and persuasive role throughout the debate.

This chapter is concerned with establishing and analysing the discourses that shaped the coverage of the 2016 EU referendum in a selection of Scottish and Welsh newspapers. The chapter looks at the Scottish editions of the Daily Express and Daily Mail, as well as the Herald and the Daily Record. The Welsh papers examined are the Western Mail/Wales on Sunday, the Daily Post and the Evening Post. Using Lexis Nexis the chapter engages in a search for key terms across a three month sample of coverage, followed by a critical discourse analysis of how these are used. Discourses of danger and fear are found to be prominent themes across both samples, mirroring public discourse more broadly.

This chapter examines the news coverage of the 2016 EU referendum on BBC Scotland and compares it to the equivalent BBC network coverage produced in London. It argues that the framing of the referendum in the two parts of the UK was different. Although the volume of the Scottish coverage was smaller, the focus was more varied than in the English coverage, with less emphasis on the game of the political campaign and more discussion of a broader range of policy implications of the vote. The chapter proposes possible reasons for the differences in the focus of the Scottish coverage, and discusses its findings within the context of public opinion and the outcome of the vote in Scotland.

This chapter argues that two related factors, both revolving around the wider media, provide some explanation for the apparently self-defeating Welsh 2016 EU referendum vote and its sharp contrast with Scotland: first, the fragmented cultural and political geography of Wales; second, the relative lack of pan-Welsh institutions beyond the National Assembly: in particular, the lack of independent English-language news media, meaning Welsh voters were almost entirely dependent on a combination of the BBC and the message from the London tabloids, which retain immense cultural and political traction over the border despite declining circulations.

The visit of high-profile British politicians to Northern Ireland during the 2016 EU referendum campaign might have, if only briefly, moved the region to the centre of the debate about the UK and EU, the two larger unions of which it is a peripheral member. As it happened, coverage of these events in the indigenous press was muted, largely confined to the inside pages and eliciting little editorial comment or political response. This chapter argues that this low-key coverage was symptomatic of a feeling that Northern Ireland was marginal to the outcome of the EU referendum, despite the potential consequences of Brexit for the region and its border with the Republic of Ireland. Accentuating that sense of marginality was the 2016 EU referendum appearing as a peculiarly English dispute: the driving force behind the Brexit campaign an emergent English nationalism. Given the bitterness and divisiveness of the debate, the dispute in Northern Ireland over constitutional issues and identity no longer looks so alien and parochial. Indeed, the region may have something to teach England about sovereignty and national allegiance.

This chapter offers an overview of British television news coverage of the 2016 EU referendum campaign. It examines three of the most significant British news channels (BBC, ITV and Channel 4) over a period of six weeks, focusing on three main critical issues: (1) editorial commentary on a polarized campaign; (2) a focus on personal divisions and animosities; (3) a problematic use of vox pops. Together, as was recognized in some critical comments at the time, these had negative effects on the discourse of the referendum debate by compromising public discussion of the ‘complex issues’ involved.

The present chapter offers an outside perspective on the study of the 2016 EU referendum as it focuses on one of Britain’s overseas territories, Gibraltar. The study uses critical discourse analysis (CDA), aiming to provide detailed social critique based on linguistic evidence. The textual corpus consists of opinion articles drawn from Gibraltarian newspapers in the days surrounding the referendum. In Gibraltar, the EU referendum event had significant impact because it posed a domestic conundrum. It was discursively constructed as the biggest threat to the status that this community had painfully achieved through its history. To face this challenge, appeals to continuity, unity and Britishness were recurrent in the opinion articles analysed. Moreover, references to Spain and the special threat it represented were equally recurrent.

In this chapter, we consider the extent to which the media cleavages, exposed by the Brexit vote result of the 2016 EU referendum reflect wider divisions in contemporary French politics, in a context where the mainstream ‘establishment’ appears increasingly distrusted. In particular, it will argue that the central cleavage shown is not that between left and right, but that between the mainstream and the margins. Unlike in the British case, no major French national newspaper is openly Eurosceptic, and a first section of the chapter will examine the cross-currents of this apparent consensus in the context of the 2016 EU referendum debate, using editorial content from Le Figaro (centre-right), Le Monde (centre) and Libération (centre-left). A second section examines representative media voices on the margins of the mainstream, and the terms in which their discourse on the debate challenge the pro-EU consensus.

People construct meaning by telling stories, so what are the stories told in Austrian, German and Swiss media about the 2016 EU referendum? They are stories of catastrophe and tragedy; of politicians characterized as working for their parties and careers, not for the public; stories of right-wing populism and nationalism, constructing illusions about the nation’s history; descriptions of responsibilities and the enormous causes and consequences of the EU referendum; stories of the incredible threats to society, democracy and the state; and definitions of what needs to be done now in the EU and UK in order to improve people’s lives.

This chapter analyses the coverage in three Norwegian daily newspapers and the online service of the Norwegian public service broadcasting company NRK during the 20 days before and 10 days after the British EU referendum in 2016. The study finds that there were four competing frames in the coverage, two about the outcome of a possible leave vote (negative effects and not particularly negative effects) and two about the reasons for a leave vote: a reaction to social and economic inequality or a reaction to immigration. The negative effects frame was the most salient frame, and it also turned out that a fair share of both effects frames was about economic issues, including long-term and more short-term reactions of the financial markets. Economic issues were however not given the same attention when it came to the situation of the unemployed or ‘working poor’, as the immigration question to an extent overshadowed other messages from ‘ordinary’ interviewees.

The amount of coverage of the 2016 EU referendum in the Spanish media was remarkable. This is not surprising as Brexit was seen as a threat to a European project celebrated for having delivered political, social and economic benefits to Spain in consonance with the values of the European Enlightenment of universal reality-based rationality. However, one of the most salient factors in the Spanish media coverage is related to the internal political life of the country, and, as a result, there was no homogeneous Spanish view. Instead, a range of ideologically grounded interpretations was produced in which the independence of Catalonia featured as highly as the future of the European Union.

This chapter explores the coverage of the 2016 EU referendum by three Portuguese newspapers, Correio da Manhã, Público and Expresso, between 4 June and 4 July 2016. Critical discourse analysis was used to analyse the way in which Portuguese journalists and columnists represented the question of political agency, namely: (1) the degree of prominence and framing power of each of the British actors involved in the referendum ‘battle’; (2) the interpersonal relation/evaluative attitude of the press in relation to the opposing social actors at European level, that is, the ‘doers’ (David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage) on one side and, on the other, the ‘done-tos’ in the process (particularly the EU). The study found that the emphasis on the confrontational framing (UK vs EU) effaced the importance of the intraparty power struggle among the Tories; it blurred the peculiar nature of so-called British ‘awkwardness’ regarding the process of European integration; and it re-centred the reader’s attention even more vigorously on the struggle between the sovereign will of a nation state and the supranationalism of the European project to the point that the EU ended up being constructed as ‘Other’.

This chapter analyses the coverage of the 2016 EU referendum in the Italian press and a key broadcast political talk show, taking as its focus the changed context of the Italian political landscape with the rise of populist anti-European political movements from the Northern League (Lega Nord) through the various incarnations of Berlusconi’s parties to the more recent political formation of the Five Star Movement, which has reduced the Italian people’s traditional support of the European Union. In Italy, as has been the case in other European countries, the press and media aligned to progressive parties of the left and centre-left camp predominantly voiced their support for the Remain campaign, while their counterparts on the right and the centre right-parties and coalitions supported the Brexit campaign.

The outcome of the British 2016 referendum on EU membership sent shockwaves through Europe. This chapter uses a discursive methodology in order to examine the response of four major Greek newspapers with national circulation. The chapter aims tο clarify the ways in which the UK’s EU referendum was perceived and represented in Greece. Through this investigation, we aim to highlight the different constructions of the referendum as a tool for decision making and/or consultation, as well as varying conceptions of popular sovereignty, of the notion of ‘the people’ and hence of democratic legitimacy itself, as they are articulated in media discourses. Lastly, we argue that examining the debate around Brexit within the Greek press may also illuminate Greece’s own responses to issues arising from its ambivalent and often turbulent relationship with the EU during the years of crisis and austerity and in particular during its own referendum in July 2015.

The EU is the pinnacle of modernity to some Turks, whilst something to be loathed by others. Although Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government pays lip service to joining the EU, very little progress has been achieved during its time in office. News of Britain’s EU referendum received mixed reactions in the Turkish press, depending on where the newspaper falls in Turkey’s deeply polarised political landscape. Throughout the Turkish press, coverage of foreign news is either ‘news stories’ sourced from Western news agencies or opinion pieces where more ‘home grown’ views of events are expressed. This chapter examines how a mainstream ‘oppositional’ online newspaper represented the EU referendum in opinion pieces. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the chapter explores how stories of the referendum are used by the newspaper to express criticism about the government’s domestic and international affairs. I reveal how these criticisms are ideologically driven to the advantage of those associated with the newspaper, but do little in terms of informing the public of the foreign events that directly affect them.

The outcome of the EU referendum 2016 and its significance have been widely debated in online forums across different countries and cultures. Examining media coverage and discussions of Brexit in Israel using online trend-tracking software, we found that Brexit and the referendum were mostly covered and discussed in Israel in the financial press, and were mentioned on Twitter much ue than on Facebook, confirming that it was discussed mostly by the elite, possibly due to its perceived limited political effect on Israel. Finally, a user-comment analysis identified that the few discussions on mainstream media included domestication of the news about Brexit with an interpretation of the event from a national perspective. From a theoretical perspective, then, these findings contradict the global-village notion and indicate that Brexit was instead ‘glocalized’.

This chapter quantifies the volume, issues, nature and origin of Canadian media coverage of Britain’s EU campaign between 3 June and 3 July 2016, gathered from a news-media database search. It highlights how Canada’s political environment and the shrinking breadth of its media facing financial pressures shaped the UK’s 2016 EU referendum coverage, as well as Canadian experience with two Quebec referendums. It found two-third of coverage came after the 23 June vote and most focused on economic and trade concerns. Foreign wires and news-organization syndications provided coverage for most Canadian outlets, with three notable exceptions. Opinion and comment written from Canada, with the weaknesses that come from relying on secondary sources rather than primary reporting, almost matched the volume of news reporting.

The Russian media’s attitude towards the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum can be summed up in the headline which the Latvia-based online Russian-language outlet Meduza ran on 25 June 2016c: ‘United Kingdom leaves EU. Why should we care?’ Inward-looking and defensive, the ‘official’ government-controlled Russian media have traditionally showed relatively little interest in foreign news unless it directly concerns Russian interests or politics. Russian-speaking media can be roughly divided into two groups: the official pro-Government outlets and the smaller group of websites (such as Meduza), radio stations (Dozhd) and social-media pages keen to reveal the truth about the Russian political realities. Yet, regardless of the emotional colouring and ideological content of Russian media’s reporting of the referendum, they are united when it comes to the subject of international sanctions against Russia. Russia cares more about referendum results when they mean progress in terms of its relations with the West.

Chapters of this book show examples in which the news media across a range of national and international locales appear to have constructed narratives in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum and shortly following the Brexit vote. This concluding chapter aims to examine how the media went about constructing Brexit in relation to international political communication theories that address the domestication/heterogeneity and globalization/homogeneity of news content. It does this by comparing how the national and international media cases reported the road to Brexit in 2016. The chapter concludes that national and international media representations of Brexit were mixed; and that the international political communication of Brexit included competing flows of globalized and domesticated news content.