‘Brexit means Brexit’: Explaining the Framing of the UK’s 2016
EU Referendum Campaign.
George Muscat, 12086630 June 2019
Supervisor: Armèn Hakhverdian Second reader: Matthijs Rooduijn
MSc Thesis: Political Science (International Relations), University of Amsterdam. Word count: 21101.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Armèn Hakhverdian, whose guidance has enabled me to carry out this study, not least in the early stages of the process. I would also like to thank my family, without whose support I would not have been able to continue my studies this year, as well as my friends who have given me welcome breaks from my research. Finally, I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to study in Europe as a UK Citizen. I hope that many other British students will have similar opportunities in the coming years.
Abstract
Ever since the 2016 EU Referendum, how exactly the UK will leave the EU has remained an unanswerable question. This paper asks how leaving and remaining in the EU were framed to the British public during the referendum campaign, and answers this through a frame analysis of social media posts and newspaper articles written by politicians and journalists. It finds that Remain relied heavily on consequential framing, while Vote Leave used nativist and above all populist discourses. Indeed, Vote Leave’s campaign slogan, ‘Vote Leave, Take Back Control’, acted as a common language and ‘master frame’ for viewing the issue of the UK’s EU Membership. While Remain’s focus was narrow and rationalist, Vote Leave wove different discourses together into emotive, patriotic and nostalgic motifs, demanding that the UK regained its sovereignty and independence.
Contents
Abbreviations ... 5
List of Tables ... 5
Chapter 1: Introduction ... 6
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Framework ... 12
Framing, Frame Formation and Master Frames ... 12
Hypotheses ... 15
Populism & Nativism ... 27
Chapter 3: Typology, Method & Case Selection ... 30
Frame & Media Typology ... 30
Case Selection ... 34
Method ... 35
Chapter 4: Results & Analysis ... 37
Vote Leave ... 37
Remain ... 42
Nuanced Frames ... 47
Double and Triple Frames ... 49
‘Take Back Control’ as a Master Frame? ... 54
Chapter 5: Conclusion ... 61
Bibliography ... 66
Abbreviations
2016 Referendum: 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. Brexit Referendum: 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. Brexit: The United Kingdom leaving the European Union.
ECB: The European Central Bank.
EU: The European Union.
IMF: The International Monetary Fund. NHS: The British National Health Service.
‘No Deal’/’WTO Brexit’: Leaving the European Union without an agreement and carrying out UK-EU trade according to WTO tariff rules.
Political Declaration: The non-binding agreement setting out the terms of the UK and the EU’s ‘Future Relationship’.
PM: Prime Minister.
Remain: The campaign for remaining within the European Union.
UK: The United Kingdom.
UKIP: The United Kingdom Independence Party. Vote Leave: The campaign for leaving the European Union.
Withdrawal Agreement: The legally binding agreement agreed to begin the UK’s institutional withdrawal from the EU.
WTO: The World Trade Organisation.
List of Tables
Table 1. Frame use in articles written by journalists and politicians ... 37
Table 2. Nuanced Frame use in articles written by journalists and politicians ... 47
Table 3. Frame use in articles written by journalists and politicians ... 49
Table 4. Double frame use in articles written by journalists and politicians ... 49
Table 5.Overall frame use in articles written by journalists and politicians ... 53
Table 6. Use of ‘Take Back Control’ by media type ... 54
Table 7. Frame use by media type ... 57
Table 8. Frames used alongside ‘Take Back Control’ ... 58
Table 9. Frame types used alongside ‘Take Back Control ... 58
Chapter 1: Introduction
When Theresa May launched her campaign to become Prime Minister with the now infamous statement, ‘Brexit means Brexit’, she unknowingly struck at what would be perhaps her most
debilitating failure as Prime Minister.1 Over the next three years, she would attempt to explain and
secure her version of Brexit. However, she would only succeed in alienating MPs on all sides of the debate: opposition from those within her own party who wanted a ‘hard’ and if necessary ‘No Deal Brexit’, from moderates across the political spectrum who wanted to respect the 2016 referendum with the least possible economic damage, and from those demanding a People’s Vote, would see her Withdrawal Agreement defeated three times in the House of Commons. The first
of these defeats was the heaviest ever suffered by a British government in the democratic era.2
The difficulties that characterised Theresa May’s premiership were arguably of her own making. Because of her vacuous definition of Brexit, MPs and the public at large are still in profound disagreement about what Brexit is. All that can be said with certainty is that Brexit is a term whose meaning lies entirely in the eye of the beholder; and each beholder views it with increasing confusion and demoralisation. This failure since the referendum to define Brexit has resulted in a period of indefinite public vacillation, parliamentary inertia and a crippling paralysis of government.
The recent indicative votes held in Parliament reinforce the impression that Brexit is an undefined national policy. Despite being intended as a mechanism for MPs to signal their facoured option, Parliament could only agree about what it did not want. As it turned out, this was every option available: this included, the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement; a ‘No Deal’ Brexit on WTO terms; renegotiating the Withdrawal Agreement to amend the ‘backstop arrangement’; renegotiating the Political Declaration negotiated between the EU and the Government to see continued membership of the EU’s Single Market or Custom’s Union; holding another referendum; and revoking Article 50.3 The multitude of options and the collective failure to coalesce around one, speak to the fact that the dichotomy of ‘Brexit’ and ‘no Brexit’ is imaginary.
Politicians from all sides claim to represent the will of the people, be it for another referendum, or
implementing the result of the 2016 vote.4 Meanwhile, rhetoric has become increasingly hostile
and public opinion ever more polarised. On calling for MPs to back her deal at the third time of asking in March 2019, Theresa May framed MPs’ continued rejection of her Withdrawal
1 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-36764525/no-second-eu-referendum-if-theresa-may-becomes-pm. 2 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46885828.
3 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47781009; ‘The Backstop Arrangement’ refers to the solution UK-Irish
border problem, as set out by the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement.
Agreement as a betrayal of the British people. In an address from Downing Street, she told the public:
‘You, the public, have had enough. You’re tired of the infighting, you’re tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit… You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree.
I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide’.5
There is a striking paradox at the heart of the Brexit problem: all actors claim to represent ‘the will of the people’, but there are many different interpretations about what it is that ‘the people’ want. Well-known actor Danny Dyer, who voted to leave in 2016, put this succinctly in what quickly became a viral encapsulation of the public’s frustration, declaring, “No one has got a fucking clue what Brexit is.”6
It is against this backdrop that this study returns to the 2016 referendum campaign to investigate how Brexit was presented to the electorate. After all, the framing of the UK’s entire political and economic relationship with the EU on dualistic terms goes back to David Cameron’s decision to
call a referendum on EU Membership in May 2015, fulfilling a Conservative manifesto promise.7
What follows is an analysis of the framing of the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum. This analysis will seek the answer the following questions: how did the Remain and Vote Leave campaigns frame the 2016 Referendum? How did framing vary across traditional newspaper and online social media? Did Vote Leave’s slogan of ‘Take Back Control’ constitute a master frame? While there are already some useful studies of framing in the Brexit Referendum, none of these directly link
framing to populism or nativism, as this study does.8
Studying the framing of the Brexit referendum offers a lens into viewing the genesis of public opinion on Brexit. This is because it has been shown that the way issues such as EU Membership are framed affects how the public views these issues. Given that the UK’s relationship with Europe covers the political, economic and cultural sphere it therefore follows that a decision by either side to stress one or more of these dimensions could have affected the way people have viewed the
5 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/20/acting-like-trump-theresa-may-sparks-mps-brexit-fury. 6 Danny Dyer, 28 June 2018, on ITV programme, ‘Good Morning Britain’,
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/29/twat-danny-dyer-cuts-through-the-brexit-bluster.
7 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-15390884.
8 Levy, D. A. L., Aslan, B., Bironzo, D., (2016), ‘UK Press Coverage of the EU Referendum’, Reuters Institute for the
Study of Journalism; Khabaz, D., (2018), ‘Framing Brexit: the role, and the impact, of the national newspapers on the EU Referendum’, Newspaper Research Journal, 39 (4); Goodwin, M., Hix, S., Pickup, M., (2018), ‘For and Against Brexit: A Survey Experiment of the Impact of Campaign Effects on Public Attitudes toward EU Membership’, British Journal of Political Science, pp. 1-15.
issue. Moreover, framing effects during the referendum have been shown to have been significant, offering a clear justification for this study.9
Unsurprisingly, since the 2016 Referendum, many commentators have tried to recapture the essence of the campaign. Additionally, the rich academic literature on Euroscepticism has much to say about how one may have expected the campaign to play out. Testing the theories of this literature against the Brexit case study is worthwhile, not least because Vote Leave’s win was unexpected. Most analysis of the campaign agrees that the Remain side used a heavily economic
focus.10 This observation fits with literature on Eurosceptic public opinion that portrays
referendum campaign on EU Membership as ‘processes of learning’ in which the public learns the effects of EU membership. In theory, this puts voters in a position to ‘decide according to the perceived utility of the ballot proposal’.11 Institutions such as political parties, think tanks and economic institutions can contribute to this dissemination of information by providing ‘elite cues’ to help the public decide. Such cues can act as ‘reliable substitutes for more detailed knowledge’ and ‘guide voter choice’.12
However the Brexit referendum campaign arguably seems ill-suited to these generalisations. Despite a heavy consequential focus, and the supportive advice of economic institutions, the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour Party, the Remain side lost the referendum, suggesting that British voters did not follow elite cues. This could be explained by the notion that EU Membership is only appealing to some people. Many studies have shown that an individual’s views on the EU
depend on their socio-economic position, rather than macro-economic analysis.13 Members of a
demographic group, referred to by some theorists as the ‘losers of globalisation’ benefit less from
EU Membership compared to other citizens.14 Hobolt has related this theory directly to the UK’s
2016 Referendum.15
However, many commentators have also commented that the 2016 Referendum campaign was not especially informative, and so there is a more fundamental flaw to a depiction of EU referenda
9 Goodwin, M., Hix, S., Pickup, M., (2018), p. 1. 10 Levy, D. A. L., Aslan, B., Bironzo, D., (2016), p. 21
11 Hobolt, S., cited in Dvorak, T., (2013), ‘Referendum Campaigns, Framing and Uncertainty’, 23 (4), p. 370. 12 Hobolt, S., (2007), ‘Taking Cues on Europe? Voter Competence and party endorsements in referendums on
European integration’, European Journal of Political Research, 46 (1), p. 176.
13 Tucker, J., Packe, A., Berinsky, A., (2002), ‘Transitional Winners and Losers: Attitudes toward EU Membership in
Post-Communist Countries’, American Journal of Polticial Science, 46 (3), p. 557.
14 Hakhverdian, A., van Elsas, E., van der Brug, W., Kuhn, T., (2013), ‘Euroscepticism and Education: A
Longidtudinal Study of Twelve EU Member States, 1973-2010’, European Union Politics, 14 (4); Hobolt, S., de Vries, C., (2016), ‘Public Support for European Integration’, Annual Review of Political Science, 19 (1), Tucker, J., Packe, A., Berinsky, A., (2002); Hobolt, S., (2016), ‘The Brexit Vote: A Divided Nation, a Divided Continent’, Journal of European Public Policy, 23 (9).
as ‘processes of learning’.16 Vote Leave has been accused of spreading misinformation, while the Remain side too has been criticised for overemphasising the dangers of leaving the EU.17 For example, Vote Leave’s discredited claim that leaving the EU would free up £350m per week for
the NHS, was heard by ‘two-thirds of the public’ during the referendum campaign.18 Furthermore,
it has been found that UK citizens are especially ill-informed about the EU.19 Another survey has
also revealed that a large proportion of UK citizens believed three factually untrue claims about
the negative consequences of immigration.20 Level of political alienation in the UK, also mean that
‘elite cues’ may be less salient in the UK, reducing the importance of objective information.21 The
role of information and elite cues strikes at a key debate in the literature on Euroscepticism to which this study hopes to contribute. Moreover, given that framing effects are generally thought to be prevalent among the less politically aware, the Brexit referendum seems likely to have been especially suited to framing effects. This adds further weight to the assertion that a frame analysis of the 2016 referendum offers an insightful lens into public opinion on the UK’s relationship with Europe.22
This lack of detailed knowledge about the EU may have left room for Vote Leave to deploy more identity-based arguments. The 2016 Referendum has been characterised as crystallising along an ‘economy versus immigration’ axis.23 This view fits with literature linking Euroscepticism to
national identity and ‘hostility toward other cultures.’24 Studies have also linked Euroscepticism to
populism, with many EU citizens opposed to gradual EU Integration because of resilient national identities. EU elites increasingly have to ‘look over their shoulders when negotiating European
issues. What they see does not reassure them’. 25 This has set the scene for a political context in
which populism and Euroscepticism have become more intimately intertwined.
16 Hobolt, S., cited in Dvorak, T., (2013), p. 370.
17 Renwick, A., Palese, M., Sargeant, J., (2018), ‘Discussing Brexit – Could We Do Better?’, The Political Quarterly, 89
(4), p. 546.
18 Duffy, B., ‘Brexit Misconceptions’, in Menon, A. ed.s, (2019), ‘Brexit and Public Opinion’, p. 10.
19 Goffman, cited by Khabaz, D., (2018), pp. 198-9; The European Commission, “Public Opinion in the European
Union,” Standard Eurobarometer 83 (2015): p. 131.
20 Duffy, B., ‘Brexit Misconceptions’, in Menon, A. ed.s, (2019), p. 10. 21 Ibid., p. 212.
22Hobolt, S., (2005), ‘When Europe Matters: The Impact of Political Information on Voting Behaviour in EU
Referendums’, 15 (1), p. 105; LeDuc, L., (2003), ‘Opinion Change and Voting Behaviour in Referendums’, European Journal of Political Research, 41 (6), p. 727.
23 Hobolt, S., Wratil, C., (2016), ‘Which Argument will Win the Referendum - Immigration of the Economy?’. 24 McLaren, L. M., (2002), ‘Public Support for the EU: Cost/Benefit Analysis or Perceived Cultural Threat?’ Journal
of Politics, 64 (2), p. 564; De Vreese, C. H. Boomgaarden, H. G., (2005), ‘Projecting EU Referendums Fear of Immigration and Support for European Integration’, European Union Politics, 6 (1), pp. 70-1.
25 Hooghe, L., Marks, G., (2009), ‘A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus
More generally, national contexts have been seen as central to Euroscepticism.26 Literature also suggests that due to historical, geographical, cultural and political differences, British identity is
exclusive of European identity.27 Moreover, Britain’s imperial past arguably makes citizens
complacent about the UK’s ability to carve a future outside of Europe, be re-forging ties with old
colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, India, The United States of America and Canada.28 This
study will drill into the significance of national pride and collective national memory in British Euroscepticism.
This study also contributes to literature on populism and nativism. These phenomena are increasingly salient in public political discourse, but many commentators employ ‘sloppy conceptualisation’ in conflating the distinctive concepts of nativism, populism and
Euroscepticism.29 On the other hand, this study empirically investigates the links between them
through an empirical case study. This study also uses a precise definition of populism and nativism and identifies the two concepts through a frame analysis. This method has two benefits: firstly, identification of frame use over a range of material informs the collection of quantitative data, thus increasing the ‘reliability and validity in measuring populism’; secondly, this method allows research to incorporate strands of scholarship on political ideas that emphasise the importance of cognitive
responses to different language.30 In short, a frame analysis allows an investigation into populism,
nativism and Euroscepticism that makes no assumptions a priori, and integrates elements of communication science into the findings. This satisfies Rooduijn’s call for more conceptual rigidity
and more integration with other disciplines when studying populism.31
This study also applies theory regarding ‘master frames’ to a new context. The concept of a ‘master frame’, has been largely confined to political movements, whereas this study investigates whether
a master frame was used by Vote Leave in the context of a referendum campaign.32 ‘Master frames’
appear highly relevant in the context of recent political campaigns. Donald Trump was recently catapulted into The White House on a mandate to ‘Make America Great Again’, while Vote Leave’s
26 Christin, T., Trechsler, A., (2002), ‘Joining the EU? Explaining Public Opinion in Switzerland’, European Union
Politics, 3 (4), p. 14.
27 Carl, N., Dennison, J., Evans, G., (2018), ‘European but not European Enough: An Explanation for Brexit’,
European Union Politics, 20 (2), p. 5.
28 Bell, D., Vucetic, S., (2019), ‘Brexit, CANZUK, and the Legacy of Empire’, The British journal of Politics and
International Relations, 21 (2), p. 2.
29 Rooduijn, M., (2019), ‘State of the field: How to study populism and adjacent topics? A plea for both more and
less focus’, European Journal of Political Research, 58 (1, p. 362; Bale, T., van Kessel, S., Taggart, P., (2011), ‘Thrown around with Abandon? Popular understandings of populism as conveyed by the print media: a UK case study’, Acta Politica, 46 (2), pp. 127-8.
30 Aslanidis, P., (2015), ‘Is Populism an Ideology? A Refutation and a New Perspective’, Political Studies, 64 (1), p. 99. 31 Rooduijn, M., (2019), p. 372.
use of the ‘Take Back Control’ mantra seems to use similarly decisive and concise language.33 If Vote Leave successfully deployed a master frame, this would justify more case studies into master framing in an electoral or referendum campaign context.
This study also analyses framing across traditional and new media types. The role of social media in political campaigns such as the 2016 Brexit Referendum and the 2016 US Presidential election
campaigns has been the subject of several studies.34 More generally, authors have written about the
impact the Internet has on how we interact politically, notably with the development of online ‘filter bubbles.’35 It has been argued that ‘selective exposure’ on social media result in ‘echo
chambers’ which reinforce and polarise users’ existing beliefs.36 Some have argued that these are
‘especially well-suited to populism’.37 This study will investigate whether Facebook provided a platform especially suited to populist discourse. Moreover, there is strong interest in the role of social media in the Brexit referendum, with Khabaz urging research to look beyond traditional
news platforms.38
This study contributes to a wide range of fields and rich academic debates. It also uses a contemporarily relevant case study to suggest an answer the seemingly unanswerable question of what Brexit is, or at least how it was presented to the public in 2016. The paper begins with an explanation of framing theory. Second, a discussion of literature on Euroscepticism and the UK national context informs the study’s hypotheses. I define the terms populism and nativism next, before outlining the frame typology, method and case selection used for the data collection. The study’s findings are presented subsequently with integrated analyses. The most notable findings show that Vote Leave used populist discourse most often and Remain used consequential language the most. Vote Leave’s slogan of, ‘Take Back Control’ is then presented as a master frame that viewed the 2016 Referendum with a common language of nostalgic nationalism. In the paper’s conclusion I consider its shortcomings as well as its implications for existing literature and future research agendas.
33 https://www.donaldjtrump.com/; http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/.
34 Gorodnichenko, Y., Pham, T., Talavera, O., (2018), ‘Social Media, Sentiments and Public Opinions: Evidence
from #Brexit and #USElection’, IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc; Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 206 Election’ Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (2).
35 Pariser E (2011) The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You.
36 Himelboim, I., Smith, M., Schneiderman, B., (2013), ‘Tweeting Apart: Applying Network Analysis to Detect
Selective Exposure Clusters in Twitter’, Communication Methods and Measures, 7 (3-4), p 195.
37 Engesser, S., (2017), ‘Populism and Social Media: How Politicians Spread a Fragmented Ideology’, Information,
Communication & Society, 20 (8)), p. 1123; Gerbaudo, P., (2018), ‘Social Media and Populism: An Elective Affinity?’, Media Culture & Society, 40 (5), p. 750.
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Framework Framing, Frame Formation and Master Frames
To begin, it is necessary to unpack what is meant by the word ‘framing’. Chong and Druckman refer to framing as ‘the process by which people develop a particular conceptualisation of an
issue.39 Literature on framing starts from some epistemological premises regarding the social world
and the nature of knowledge and communication. These are related to postmodernist thought which in the 1950s and 1960s began to question the way rationalist Enlightenment thinking viewed the world and the truths we perceived within it as fixed and universal. Conversely, the foundations of framing theory are rooted in a perception of the social world as a ‘kaleidoscope of potential realities’, and a web of intersubjective meanings.40
Meanings ‘do not automatically or naturally attach themselves to the objects, events, or experiences we encounter’. Instead they are constructed by interactive social processes and shaped by language,
social norms and interpretation.41 Political issues, such as the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum, can be
viewed differently, with varying implications ‘for multiple values and considerations.’42 Crucially,
framing theory posits that each of these perspective or frames will affect how individuals interpret and respond to issues. For example, research done by Kahneman and Tversky in 1984 found that people’s response to a political question varied when they were asked to consider the issue from different perspectives. Participants in a survey were asked about how best to control the spread of a disease: the first time, they were asked to consider the number of lives that prevention measures may save; second, they were asked to consider the number of lives that may be lost. The results showed that the frame introduced affected how people ‘understand and remember a problem, as
well as how they evaluate and choose to act upon it’.43
In political communication, frame formulation is usually carried out by elite actors, such as politicians or prominent journalists who ‘assign meaning to and interpret relevant events and
conditions.’44 Actors choose which aspects of a ‘perceived reality’ are significant and ‘make them
more salient in communicative text’.45 Frames are thus conceptualised and then articulated and
communicated to the public. This process is called, the ‘politics of signification’.46
39 Chong, D., Druckman, J., (2007), ‘Framing Theory’, Annual Review of Political Science, 10 (1). p. 104.
40 Edelman (1993), cited in Entman, R. M., (1993), ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal
of Communication, 43 (4), p. 55.
41 Snow, D. A., Soule, S. A., Kriesi, H., (2004), ‘Framing Processes, Ideology and Discursive Fields’ in The Blackwell
Companion to Social Movements, p. 384.
42 Chong, D., Druckman, J., (2007), ‘Framing Theory’, p. 104. 43 Kahneman and Tversky, cited by Entman, R. M., (1993), pp. 53-4. 44 Snow, D. A., Soule, S. A., Kriesi, H., (2004), p. 384.
45 Entman, R. M., (1993), p. 52.
Frame Formation
Frame formation is a dynamic process in which elites interact with a variety of contextual factors. It is important to note that key texts by Snow and Snow and Benford on frame formation theory refer to social movements. This theory helps to inform some of the hypotheses of this study. While frame formation theory in social movements should not be applied unequivocally to a referendum campaign, it seems likely that frame formation would occur in a similar way. Moreover, as this theory only informs the hypotheses and not the method itself, the similarity of frame formation in social movements and the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum will be tested empirically, not assumed a priori.
Frame formation does not take place within a fixed time period, but is an ‘active, process-derived
phenomenon’.47 This involves an interaction with two structures. The first is what theorists have
called the ‘discursive field’ or discursive opportunity structure. This refers to the political, social
and cultural context in which frame formulation takes place.48 How strong a frame is, is determined
by how compatible it is with this discursive field. For example, a nation with a strong history of liberal democracy would produce a discursive opportunity structure conducive to frames emphasising the importance of individual rights. Crucially, this interactive process does not end when a frame is articulated for the first time; rather it is ongoing.49 Thus, frames continually evolve as actors respond to the discursive opportunity structure.
Secondly, frames must engage with the institutional opportunity structure. This refers to how compatible contextual institutions are with the interests and ideology of the framing agent. For example, a frame which emphasises the need for proportional representation in a debate over constitutional reform, may find institutional opportunities limited in a Parliament that is dominated by parties who benefit from a first-past-the-post electoral system. When institutional opportunities are limited, actors must alter their frame to make it more effective. If they cannot do this, their frames remain ineffective.
Koopmans and Statham’s 1999 study of extreme right politics in Germany and Italy helps to illuminate the process of frame formation. They found that both the discursive opportunity structure and the institutional opportunity structure were important in dictating how frames were received. According to frame theory, this reception feeds back to the framing actors who then refine the frames accordingly. In Germany, they found that the discursive opportunity structure
47 Snow, D., Benford, R., (1992), ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, p. 136 48 Snow, D. A., Soule, S. A., Kriesi, H., (2004), pp. 400-1.
was resistant to extreme right politics because German politicians and the public strongly associated with democratic government, even though parts of the German population were partially sympathetic to ethnonationalist ideas. Additionally, because German Conservatives had already combined liberal democratic ideas with notions of ethnic German nationalism, the institutional opportunity structure was also limited.50 The result of this interaction of far-right actors with resistant institutional and discursive opportunity structures was a failure of far-right politics to gain influence in Germany.
Master Frames
Frames constitute a lens into viewing issues, but discussion of political issues is rarely homogenous. Snow and Benford has conceptualised frames that draw on more than one discourse simultaneously as ‘master frames’ in relation to social movements. These are defined simply as collective action frames (social movement frames) ‘on a larger scale’.51 These frames are often generic and provide a ‘grammar that punctuates and syntactically connects patterns or happenings
in the world’ under a single rubric.52 They attribute blame by assigning causality for the problem
that they attempt to solve. Master frames use either a ‘restricted’ or and ‘elaborated’ linguistic code: the restricted types are more ‘syntactically rigid’, whereas the elaborated types are more
universalistic in their use language and concepts.53 Generally, elaborated master frames are more
potent and better mobilising people, but other factors already discussed also affect this.54 One
historical example of master framing is the discourse used by American Civil Rights campaigner Martin Luther King in the 1950s and 1960s. King mobilised millions of Americans by ‘weaving together strands of Gandhism, Christianity, and the US Constitution into a powerful “rights” master frame’. Importantly, once this master frame had been elaborated, King was able to use a
‘common language’ of ‘rights’ as a shorthand to refer to these different strands.55
50 Koopmans, R., Statham, P., ‘‘Ethnic and Civic Conceptions of Nationhood and the Differential Success of the
Extreme Right in Germany and Italy’, in Giugni, M., McAdam, D., Tilly, C., (1999), pp. 239-40.
51 Snow, D., Benford, R., (1992), p. 138; Snow, D. A., Soule, S. A., Kriesi, H., (2004), 384. 52 Snow, D., Benford, R., (1992), p. 138.
53 Ibid., (1992), p. 140 54 Ibid., (1992), p. 140.
Hypotheses
Our attention now turns to the hypotheses. These expectations about the nature of the framing used by Vote Leave are informed by a reading of framing theory in combination with a review of the literature on British politics, Euroscepticism and existing studies on the 2016 EU Referendum in the UK.
Discursive Opportunity Structure
Several contextual factors about British Euroscepticism inform the hypothesis that the Remain side used the consequential frame most often, whereas the Leave side was more likely to use populist and nativist frames. This is because the ‘discursive opportunity structure’ in which the referendum debates took place was conducive to identity-orientated appeals to ‘Britishness’ and nativist and populist attacks against the EU. On a basic level, the well-known economic benefits of EU Membership and economic risks of leaving mean that the consequential frame was likely to have been an obvious one for the Remain side. Moreover, the fact that EU institutions such as Interpol help to combat international terrorism with a common European criminal database is likely to have been raised by Remain supporters. Additionally, British Euroscepticism UK has been socially entrenched by many polticial, cultural and structural factors and the historic moment of a referendum on EU Membership gave Vote Leave the institutional opportunity to make their case for leaving at a ‘once in a generation’ poll. As a result, I expect that the Leave side used discourses which criticised the EU with populist and nativist language, while Remain invoked consequential reasons for supporting EU Membership.
It seems that the nature of British identity contributed to a discursive opportunity structure that was suited to fundamental populist and nativist critiques of the EU. British national identity’s nature as distinct from Europe has been explored by Carl and Dennison. Several factors help to explain this distinctive British identity. For example, the geographical fact that the British Isles are separated from the European mainland by the English Channel represents a physical chasm between the UK and Europe. Additionally, the legal systems of Britain and Europe are based on different systems: the British one on Common Law and historic precedent as opposed to
European law. 56 Crucially, British Protestantism, which was institutionally consecrated by King
Henry VIII’s split from Rome in the Sixteenth Century, created a British religious identity which was antagonistic to Catholicism in mainland Europe. Attempted Spanish invasions of the British Isles through Ireland were endorsed by successive Popes, while Queen Elizabeth was even excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1553. Fear of continental Catholicism was
underlined by hysteria surrounding popish plots to place a Catholic on the English throne. The foiling of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and arrest of Spanish Catholic Guido Fawkes has been
ritualised by ‘Guy Fawkes day’ which is celebrated by British citizens on the 5th November every
year. Fawkes had been planning to assassinate King James I as a prelude to a Catholic uprising. This reflects the fact that the imagination of ‘British-ness’ has historically developed hand-in-hand with Protestantism and a deep-set suspicion of Europe and Catholicism.
This feeling of British Exceptionalism was reinforced as the modern period of European history began, especially by the French Revolution, which appalled many English liberals. In contrast to France’s violent lurch to democracy which terrified the British aristocracy, liberals perceived that the English Constitution reformed gradually and peacefully with reform acts in 1832, 1867, 1884 and 1918. From 1918, all men over 21 and all property-owning women over thirty were enfranchised. This narrative of gradual reform informed an impression that Britain’s unwritten Constitution was uniquely disposed to furnish its people with liberty and freedom. This was in sharp contrast to mainland Europe where pan-continental violent revolutions returned again in 1848, and the young democracy in the United States, where slavery was still legal, and a traumatic
Civil War was to see the Union imperilled in the 1860s.57 This school of thought, termed as Whig
History is closely linked to the idea of British Exceptionalism; that is the notion that the British Isles are distinct from and superior to mainland Europe and the rest of the world. In addition to an affinity for British liberty, the British Empire added further justification for this nationalism. As the Empire’s dominion spread across the globe, it brought prestige and riches from lands in India and Africa, fuelling the building of the modern British state. British liberals perceived this national aggrandisement as a vindication of their faith in the British nation, its constitution and its people.
This view of British history as a teleological narrative culminating in the contemporary realisation of freedom and parliamentary sovereignty was endorsed by prominent Vote Leave campaigner and Conservative MP Michael Gove during his time as Education Secretary under David Cameron. Gove expressed his affinity for a novel written in 1905 by Henrietta Marshall called Our Island Story.58 The book offered a historical account of England that celebrated the ‘development of
England’s and subsequently Britain’s constitutional liberties.’59 In the novel, Europe was
consistently brought into the story as a ‘source of political and military danger’, and so the book, became ‘part of a wider battler of ideas, using England’s constitutional past to help imagine the
57 Wellings, B., (2016), ‘Our Island Story: England, Europe and the Anglosphere Alternative’, Polticial Studies Review,
14 (3), p. 371.
58 Ibid., p. 371. 59 Ibid., p. 371.
UK outside the EU’.60 This use of the past establishes ‘continuity between the past and a
contemporary political project’ and ‘bestows legitimacy on the project and those promoting it’.61
Whig history is now roundly rejected by professional historians, and these critiques speak to what Whig history can tell us about the discursive opportunity structure in which the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum took place. Pre-eminent historiographical historian, Michael Bentley has called it a typical example of ‘bad’ history which characteristically avoids facts and events that do not fit into the overarching narrative which often casually spans several centuries.62 In constantly viewing history in relation to the present with a self-congratulating narrative, Whig history tells us more about contemporary politics than about actual history. This criticism resonates with the importance of British Exceptionalism to this study: the prevalence of these ideas reflects the fact that the discursive opportunity structure of the 2016 referendum seems to have been well primed to discourse emphasising how identities of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Englishness’ were ill-suited to EU Membership.
Empirical findings confirm that contemporary British identity is largely exclusive from European identity. Eurobarometer surveys consistently show that UK citizens are more likely to hold an ‘exclusively national identity’ than citizens of any other Member State: 61% of Britons self-reported having this narrow identity; the next highest country was Greece where half of
respondents saw their identity as purely national-based.63 A reflexive suspicion of Europe has also
been reinforced by decades of Eurosceptic coverage from major UK newspapers. Indeed, the media bias in the UK towards Euroscepticism has been described by Oliver Daddow as ‘the
essential explanation’ for ‘destructive dissent on the question of British relations with Europe’.64
He argues that the British media, namely publications owned by mogul Rupert Murdoch, have presented Europe in sensationalist terms and have conditioned politicians and the public to be fearful of the EU. As a result, politicians have been reluctant to make a positive case for Europe, and further European integration has taken place without adequate explanation of the benefits of it. This lack of positive pro-EU leadership alongside further EU Integration and a Eurosceptic
British public have combined to make the EU highly politically vulnerable.65 Therefore, the UK’s
discursive opportunity structure is highly susceptible to arguments against EU Membership. As a result, the Remain side may have focused more on consequential reasons for staying, while the
60 Wellings, B., (2016), p. 373. 61 Ibid., p. 371.
62 Bentley, M., (1999), Modern Historiography: An Introduction, p. 65.
63 Eurobarometer Survey, cited by Carl, N., Dennison, J., Evans, G., (2018), p. 8.
64 Daddow, O., (2012), ‘The UK media and 'Europe': from permissive consensus to destructive dissent’, International
Affairs, 88 (6), p. 1235.
Leave side may have emphasised more fundamental nativist and populist frames to advocate leaving the EU.
In addition to the distinctive nature of British national identity and the media’s entrenching of this, more contextual analysis shows that the ‘discursive opportunity structure’ of the referendum campaign would have been primed for Vote Leave to invoke nativist and populist frames. Structurally, the development of the EU has left it vulnerable to attacks from populists about the concentration of unelected powers and the erosion of national sovereignty. Since the 2009 Eurozone crisis, international institutions such as the IMF and the ECB have limited the scope for
national governments to control national macro-economic policy.66 Greece for example, held a
referendum in 2015 where voters emphatically rejected the terms of the bailout proposed by the IMF the ECB and the European Commission. Despite this, Prime Minister George Tsipras was forced to accept the bailout, imposed with even harsher pension cuts and tax increases. In Spain, Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero was forced by EU policy to reduce Spain’s deficit to 3% of its
GDP, breaking a key election campaign promise to fiscally stimulate the Spanish economy.67 This
erosion of national sovereignty over economic policy has informed a perception of ‘democracy without’ choices’, and the notion that the EU and other international institutions have ‘dramatically limited the political choices available to citizens’.68 These structural changes have occurred quickly, and have also through experience been conflated with harsh austerity and sharp economic deprivation for many. So, it is hardly surprising that citizens who grew up under the authority of the nation state find this loss of national sovereignty threatening and relate some of their experiences of austerity to the EU. The result is a desire reassert the authority of the nation-state, and a discursive opportunity structure well suited to populist framing for Vote Leave.
The convergence of nativism and Euroscepticism has also been reinforced since the so-called EU migrant crisis which began in 2015. With thousands of refugees arriving through Southern European EU Member States like Greece and Italy, media coverage told a story of an EU that was unable to cope with a sudden influx of people. The issue of which countries should host these refugees quickly became highly politicised and contentious. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel faced a considerable backlash for welcoming many refugees. Conversely, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban epitomised a more hostile position when he ordered the construction of a
66 Bosco A. & Verney, S., (2012), ‘Electoral Epidemic: The Political Cost of Economic Crisis in Southern Europe,
2010 –11’, South European Society and Politics, 17(2), p. 132.
67 Bosco A. & Verney, S., (2012), p. 133.
68 Bosco A. & Verney, S., (2012), p. 134; Hobolt, S.B. and J. Tilley (2016), ‘Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger
border barrier between Hungary and Serbia to stop the flow of migrants into Hungary. Research has shown the effects of media coverage of the migration crisis on Euroscepticism. Those who already had negative views regarding the EU were found to have hardened their views in light of the crisis, conveying that the migration crisis has become an issue underpinning Euroscepticism
across Europe.69
Research has also shown the prevalence of nativism in Euroscepticism since well before the migration crisis. Given that freedom of movement for EU citizens within the EU guarantees unlimited EU migration into the UK, it follows that the EU is vulnerable to nativist discourse. Additionally, McLaren has argued that that many scholars have underestimated nativism’s importance and has collected data which shows that ‘attitudes towards the European Union tend
to be based in great part on a general hostility towards other cultures’.70 De Vreese has gone even
further to suggest that it is not just fear of other cultures that fuels Euroscepticism, but that ‘fear of immigration’ specifically is an even stronger signifier of an individual’s EU stance than
government approval or economic evaluations.71 Therefore, it seems that in a historic and more
recent context, nativism is closely tied to Euroscepticism, and so the discursive opportunity structure of the Brexit Referendum may have suited nativist Eurosceptic frames.
Institutional Opportunity Structure
According to framing theory and empirical framing studies, the institutional opportunity structure is also important. Hooghe and Marks have argued that these structural aids to Euroscepticism have been mobilised by ‘political entrepreneurs’ who have made the UK’s relationship with Europe a ‘strategic issue for party elites.’72 This appears to be especially true for Vote Leave’s most prominent campaigners, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson who missed out on leadership to Theresa May in the wake of the referendum in 2016, and are both currently vying to replace her as Prime Minister. Boris Johnson especially has been regarded by many commentators as having opportunistically used the EU Referendum in a bid to further his career. During his time as Mayer of London, Johnson celebrated the city’s multicultural identity and immigration, and his decision to support Vote Leave seemed to break with this.
Historically speaking, the Conservative Party has offered institutional opportunities to Euroscepticism. While the issue has perennially divided the party, the Eurosceptic UKIP can be
69 Harteveld, E., J., Schaper, S. de Lange & W. van der Brug (2017), ‘Blaming Brussels? The impact of (news about)
the refugee crisis on attitudes towards the EU and national politics’, Journal of Common Market Studies 56 (1), p. 174.
70 McLaren, L. M., (2002), p. 564.
71 De Vreese, C. H. Boomgaarden, H. G., (2005), p. 64. 72 Hooghe, L., Marks, G., (2009), p. 6.
viewed as a pressure group to the Conservatives. By winning the 2014 European Parliament elections, UKIP effectively forced David Cameron to call a referendum to settle the issue for a generation, despite the 67% majority won in favour of remaining within the European Community
(Common Market) in 1975.73 The dynamic between UKIP and the Eurosceptic right of the
Conservative Party has been described as ‘symbiotic’ by Bale.74 Indeed, developments since the
referendum provide further support for his argument: since Theresa May promised to leave the Single Market and EU Custom’s Union shortly after the referendum, support for UKIP has reduced significantly: in the snap election called by Theresa May in 2017, UKIP attracted just 1.8%
of the national vote, down from 12.6% in 2015.75
However, Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement has been rejected by Parliament three times, and so she has failed to deliver Brexit. This year, the newly formed Brexit Party led by ex-UKIP leader, Nigel Farage won the most seats in the European elections, securing 31.6% of the vote, while the
Conservative Party suffered historic losses, winning just 9.1% of voters’ support.76 This coincided
with Theresa May’s removal as Conservative Party leader, triggering a new leadership election with
many hopefuls promising to leave the EU, if necessary without a deal, in October 2019.77 The fact
that ex-Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe was elected as one of the Brexit Party’s MEPs lends more weight to the perceived reciprocity of the right of the Conservative Party and external Eurosceptic forces (UKIP and the Brexit Party). Therefore, the Conservative Party’s historic interplay with hard Euroscepticism conveys how the institutional opportunity structure of British politics has been conducive to identity-based Euroscepticism.
That the leaders of the UK’s four major political parties favoured a Remain vote, may have blown further wind into the populist and nativist sails of Vote Leave. Anger from voters at years of austerity and falling living standards has fuelled resentment of mainstream Westminster politics. As McCormick notes, ‘declining faith in the EU is matched only by declining faith in the
government more generally’.78 The opportunity to express this anger was also granted at a national
poll which asked a single question that circumvented the party loyalties that are usually influential in the British two-party system. This arguably also lent weight to the populist and nativist frames of Vote Leave because voters did not feel as bound by the positions of the two main parties and
73 https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7253.
74 Bale, T., ‘Who leads and who follows? The Symbiotic Relationship Between UKIP and the Conservatives – and
populism and Euroscepticism’, Politics, 38 (3), p. 277.
75 https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results; https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2015/results. 76 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48403131.
77 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/tory-leadership-candidates-brexit-plans-brussels-eu/.
78 McCormick, J., (2014), ‘Voting on Europe: The Potential Pitfalls of a British Referendum’, The Political Quarterly,
felt that they had a chance to express discontent at mainstream politics. Therefore, the 2016 referendum contributed further towards an institutional opportunity structure that was conducive to nativist and populist framing from Vote Leave.
Data already collected during the 2016 Referendum campaign supports the notion that Remain is likely to have used consequential framing and Vote Leave populist and nativist frames. Polling conducted by Lord Ashcroft showed that just 9% of those who voted remain did so because they
felt a ‘strong attachment to the EU and its shared history culture and traditions’.79 Additionally, a
Reuters Report of media coverage of the Referendum found that over half of Remain-orientated articles invoked the economy as a reason for their decision to back Remain. Conversely on the Leave side, the report found that Vote Leave referred to migration twice as often as Remain, while
the Leave side also referred more often to the UK’s sovereignty.80 This study hypothesises that the
data compiled will confirm these findings. Because of the conduciveness of the UK’s institutional and discursive opportunity structures to Euroscepticism and the willingness of Conservative politicians to treat Euroscepticism as a strategic party issue by calling a referendum, it seems that the Remain side may have been forced to find pragmatic reasons to support EU Membership. Concurrently, Vote Leave may have found it easier to appeal to British sovereignty and an exclusive national identity. Thus, the Remain side is expected to have used consequential arguments more often and the Leave side is expected to have used populist and nativist frames more often:
H1a. Remain used the consequential frame more often than Vote Leave. H1b. Vote Leave used populist and nativist frames more often.
The question remains of whether Vote Leave used populism or nativist frames more often. Hobolt and Wrattil, argued during the campaign that Vote Leave focused heavily on immigration. The choice crystallised for voters was, ‘vote remain to avoid the economic disaster of Brexit (“A leap in the dark”) or vote leave to regain control of British borders and immigration (“Take Back Control”).81 However, Vote Leave’s slogan of ‘Take Back Control’ does not explicitly refer to immigration or sovereignty, and so it should not be assumed that this refers just to immigration,
as Hobolt suggests.82 Indeed, as Hobolt herself acknowledges, ‘The Leave campaign presented the
referendum as a unique opportunity to regain control of British law making, borders and restrict
immigration’.83 Indeed, it seems that Vote Leave’s key appeal for British citizens to ‘Take Back
79 Lord Ashcroft Polling, cited in Carl, N., Dennison, J., Evans, G., (2018), pp. 8-9. 80 Levy, D. A. L., Aslan, B., Bironzo, D., (2016), p. 21.
81 Hobolt, S., Wratil, C., (2016). 82 Hobolt, S., (2016), p. 1263. 83 Ibid., p. 1262.
Control’ relies on populist notions of sovereignty over British law-making as well as the desire to limit immigration by controlling borders. Moreover, regaining control of the UK’s borders is not a solely nativist argument, because the perceived necessity of doing so is twofold: firstly, it is necessary to limit immigration, but more fundamentally, it can be seen as an essential hallmark of any sovereign nation to decide its own migration policies. Therefore, it seems that these two frames are deeply intertwined in British Euroscepticism and therefore presumably in Vote Leave’s referendum discourse. So I expect that they were often invoked simultaneously.
McLaren has explored the relationship between conceptions of national sovereignty and nativism in the context of Euroscepticism, finding that the two do indeed go hand-in-hand. She argues that the resistance of many citizens to immigrants is rooted in their attachment to their nation-state
whose ‘power and sovereignty’ they have been ‘socialised to accept’.84 Hooghe and Marks also
suggest that the perceived threat of the EU to nation states cuts across populist and nativist lines
because the EU both ‘increases immigration and undermines national sovereignty’85:
H2: Vote Leave used dual and triple frames more often than Remain.
The next question is on whether Vote Leave employed a ‘master frame’ in its presentation of the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum. The phrase ‘Take Back Control’ has been shown by Khabaz to be
the most common slogan from Vote Leave’s campaign.86 It is first necessary to find the extent to
which the slogan, ‘Take Back Control’, featured in Vote Leave’s campaign, and how its use varied across the different media types analysed. Khabaz’s finding informs the following expectation: H3: ‘Take Back Control’ featured prominently in Vote Leave’s campaign.
Next, a deeper analysis of ‘Take Back Control’ will follow. First, I will identify which media platforms featured the phrase the most. Political social media content is still a relatively new phenomenon, but it has already attracted substantial research. It seems that social media is especially suited to frames which use a repetitive or simplified interpretation of a political event or issue. This is especially true in partisan online communities which come to form a ‘filter bubble’
for users to connect with like-minded individuals.87 Within these communities, ‘users are unlikely
to observe competing frames’ and they share and ‘like’ content which reinforces their particular interpretation of a political event.88 Alcott and Gentzkow have theorised that this interaction
84 McLaren, L. M., (2002), cited by De Vreese, C. H. Boomgaarden, H. G., (2005), pp. 63-4. 85 Hooghe, L., Marks, G., (2009), p. 11.
86 Khabaz, D., (2018), p.502.
87 Pariser. cited by Gerbaudo, P., (2018), p.750.
88 Chong and Druckman, (2007); Entman (2003) both cited by Aruguete, N., Calvo, E., (2018), ‘Time to #Protest:
Selective Exposure, Cascading Activism, and Framing in Social Media’, Journal of Communication, 68 (3), p. 498. on p. 498
between users produces ‘psychological utility’ which is ingratiating to users and encourages
continuous engagement and reinforces individuals’ prior beliefs and interpretations.89 The result is
the power of social media communities to re-forge ‘dispersed’ individuals to ‘a new political
community’ who ‘coalesce’ around ideas in an ‘online crowd of partisan support’.90 These
communities therefore seem like fertile breeding ground for master frames which ‘connect’
partisan interpretations of issues under one simplified single rubric.91 Therefore, if, ‘Take Back
Control’ is considered as a master frame for Vote Leave, it follows that it would be most commonly found on Vote Leave’s Facebook Page as a ‘catch-all’ shorthand for the different Vote Leave frames:
H4: ‘Take Back Control’ featured most over social media platforms.
It is now necessary to work out what ‘Take Back Control’ referred to. In other words, what frames were used alongside the phrase, ‘Take Back Control’? Did this refer to reclaiming sovereignty, re-establishing British border controls for EU immigration, or taking back control of an independent trading policy? Previous research suggests that social media platforms are also relatively well-suited to populist content. This suggests that ‘Take Back Control’ may have been strongly linked to populist discourse given that master frames seem well-suited to social media platforms (H4). Research has been conducted on the perceived ‘elective affinity of social media and populism’. Social media’s ‘mass networking capabilities’ and potential to facilitate large-scale bottom-up
organisation resonates with populism’s linguistic emphasis on ‘the people’.92 Furthermore, users
interact with each other by ‘liking’ social media content. This has been presented as an ‘informal voting system’ in which the collective voice of the people assumes central importance, with posts that receive the most positive interactions featuring most prominently on pages and groups.93 Research into the social media presence of Italian populist party M5S and the Spanish populist Podemos party corroborated this point, finding that social media championed the ‘bottom up recuperation of popular sovereignty’.94
Social media also provides a forum for online discussion outside the sphere of traditional media, and Engesser has argued that this allows populists to operate outside the realms of ‘traditional
media logic’.95 While commentators have often claimed that traditional media outlets overrepresent
89 Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 206 Election’ Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (2),
p. 218.
90 Gerbaudo, P., (2018), p. 750.
91 Snow, D., Benford, R., (1992), p. 140. 92 Gerbaudo, P., (2018), p. 745.
93 Gerbaudo (2015), cited by Gerbaudo, P., (2018), p. 745
94 Gerbaudo and Seretti (2017), cited by Gerbaudo, P., (2018), p. 747. 95 Kingler and Svensson, (2015), cited by Engesser, S., (2017), p. 1123.
populism, Wettstein found this to be untrue in a cross-national context, concluding that news media outlets in fact displayed ‘a surprisingly clear scepticism toward populist politicians and their ideas’.96 Therefore, Engesser seems correct to argue that social media does provide spaces for populist discourse that does not exist in more traditional media. This ‘gives them more freedom
for the use of strong language when attacking elites.’97 This suggests that social media platforms
provide new institutional and discursive opportunity structures which are well-suited to facilitating populist discourse:
H5: Populism frames were used most often over social media.
A deeper analysis of whether ‘Take Back Control’ constituted a master frame will be facilitated through a qualitative analysis of how the phrase ‘Take Back Control’ was used by Leave supporters. The notion of taking ‘back’ control resonates with literature which emphasises the significance of ‘nostalgic deprivation’ in the appeal of far-right politics. While it would not be accurate to assume that voting to leave the EU is a far-right policy, the radical-right combines populist and nativist discourses similarly to how this study expects Vote Leave to have framed its arguments. It therefore seems apt to hypothesise that similar uses of popular memory and nostalgia were important to the concept of ‘Taking Back Control’. In short, it seems likely that double and triple frames were invoked under ‘Take Back Control’ and a ‘common language’ of patriotic nostalgia
that reminisced about the UK’s apparent former glory.98
Gest, Reny and Mayer explain that ‘nostalgic deprivation’ is a ‘latent psychological phenomenon’
which focuses on the perceived shift of natives to the ‘periphery of society’.99 Best and Johnson
have also argued that nostalgic ideology plays a key role in radical populist right discourse. Followers of radical right politics see multiculturalism, declining national sovereignty and lower wages as symptoms of the decline of ‘ethno-natural dominance’ of nation states by natives. In
resisting this process, the far right aims to ‘revive a previous condition of social virtue’. 100This
condition is perceived to have decayed in a social, economic and political sense: immigration and demographic shifts have undermined ethnically organised social hierarchies; economic dislocation between central and peripheral regions has caused living standards to drop for many natives; and
96 Wettstein, M., Esser, F., Schulz, A., Wirz, D., (2018) ‘News Media as Gatekeepers, Critics and Initiators of
Populist Communication: How Journalists in Ten Countries Deal with the Populist Challenge’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23 (4), p. 490.
97 Engesser, S., (2017), p. 1123.
98 Tarrow (2013), cited by Aslanidis, P., (2018), ‘Populism as a Collective Action Master Frame for Transnational
Mobilisation’, Sociological Forum, 33 (2), p. 433.
99 Gest, J, Reny, T., Mayer, J., (2018), ‘Roots of the Radical Right: Nostalgic Deprivation in the United States and
Britain’, Comparative Political Studies, 51 (13), p. 1695.
100 Wallace, (1968), cited by Betz, H. G., (2017), ‘Nativism Across Time and Space, Swiss Political Science Review, 23 (4),
international institutions such as the EU have undermined the power of the nation state.101 Importantly, Gest, Reny and Mayer emphasise that this process of native degradation is ‘a matter of perception and may not be objectively real’.102 Thus, by drawing on popular sentiments of ‘common sense’ and native identity, radical populist right politics combines populist and nativist
discourses under a single ‘backward-looking reactionary ideology’.103
Indeed, research has shown that support for the radical right in the USA and the UK correlated with feelings of nostalgic deprivation.104 Moreover, this collective nostalgic has economic, political and social manifestations, and so it may be especially suited to combining consequential, populist and nativist frames under a common rubric in favour of leaving the EU. The American context also offers a useful recent comparison, with the election of President Trump whose campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’ evokes clear feelings of nostalgia and bares more than a
passing resemblance to ‘Take Back Control’.105 Thus, the idea of reclaiming what has been taken
away that is suggested within the phrase ‘Take Back Control’ may have constituted the common language of a master frame.
There is reason to believe that nostalgic deprivation may be especially pertinent in a British context. This is because of the nature of British identity and the sense of exceptionalism that is integral to its perceived national history, both of which have already been discussed. Additionally, the UK’s former Empire also adds to the appeal of a perceived superior national past in popular imagination.
Indeed, the Empire was and remains integral to the formation ‘English national narratives’.106 Bell
and Vucetic have argued that during the referendum, Vote Leave imagined re-establishing ties with its former colonies. This ‘post Brexit imaginary’ glorified the ‘shared language, history and culture’ of the Empire, and viewed the UK’s EU Membership as a ‘betrayal’ to former settler colonies like
the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India.107 While this view of Britain’s place in the
world re-emerged during the referendum debates, it essentially relied upon ‘imperial debates of the
late 19th and early 20th century’ and can be seen as a nostalgic elegy to former times of British
imperial dominance.108 Therefore, the nature of British identity, history and influential imagination
of the two mean that the discursive opportunity structure of the 2016 referendum may have invited Vote Leave to invoke a sense of nostalgic deprivation with the slogan, ‘Take Back Control’. This
101 Gest, J, Reny, T., Mayer, J., (2018), pp. 1698-9. 102 Ibid., pp. 1669-70.
103 Betz, H. G., Johnson, C., (2004) ‘Against the Current – Stemming the Tide: The Nostalgic Ideology of the
Contemporary radical populist right’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 9 (3), p. 324.
104 Gest, J, Reny, T., Mayer, J., (2018), p. 1707. 105 https://www.donaldjtrump.com/.
106 Wellings, B., (2016), p. 369. 107 Bell, D., Vucetic, S., (2019), pp. 3-4. 108 Ibid., p. 13.
may have acted as a means for uniting populist, nativist and consequential discourses in favour of leaving the European Union under a common language or master frame which assigned blame for
the UK’s demise to the EU109:
Populism has been conveyed as an inclusive discourse which can easily assimilate multiple
discourses under one ‘common language’.110 In a social movement context, Aslanidis has shown
how a ‘the people’ frame can allow ‘activists to mobilise diffuse sentiments in favour of the value of popular sovereignty’, as an ‘elaborated’ master frame. reinforcing the perception that its
discourse may have been used in tandem with nativism 111 As the meaning of ‘the people’ is in
practice fairly malleable, it can form the foundation of a ‘loose ideational lattice’ which arms people
with ‘discursive weapons’ against ‘elites’.112 In the context of the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum, this
would entail contrasting the claims of a pure ‘people’ against elites in Westminster and Brussels, as well as foreign immigrants. The compatibility of nativism and populism in the context of debates over EU Membership adds to the notion that discourse could be easily assimilated into a populism-based master frame. Additionally, if populist discourse is inclusive, it also may have assimilated consequential frames also. Therefore, the phrase, ‘Take Back Control’ may have acted as a master frame which combined nativist and consequential discourse with a populist rhetorical core: H6a: ‘Take Back Control’ refers to populism most often.
H6b: ‘Take Back Control’ refers to dual and triple frames.
109 Aslanidis, P., (2018), p. 445.
110 Mudde, C., Kaltwasser, C. R., (2018) ‘Studying Populism in Comparative Perspective: Reflections on the
contemporary and future research agenda’, Comparative Political Studies, 51 (13), p. 1670; Tarrow (2013) cited by Aslanidis, P., (2018), p. 433.
111 Aslanidis, P., (2018), p. 445. 112 Ibid., pp. 445-7.
