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An Untied Kingdom? Framing and sourcing
practices deployed by British newspapers during
the 2016 European Union referendum campaign.
Martin MacDonald (s3410668)
The University of Groningen
MA Thesis
Supervisor: Dr Scott Eldridge
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Table of contents
Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Theoretical Framework 7 Methodology 19 Results 28 Discussion 46 Conclusion 64 Bibliography 67 Appendices 733
Abstract
June 23, 2016 represented a watershed moment in modern British politics. The country’s electorate voted, by a narrow but clear margin, to end the United Kingdom’s 40-year membership to the European Union. Anecdotal analysis by commentators had suggested media coverage was
unsatisfactory in terms of relaying the complexities of the referendum campaign to the public, across a variety of platforms. Despite the emergence of new media platforms, where much of this
information was also shared, print newspapers remain an important focus for research pertaining to political news coverage as they continue to have a prominent place in such discussions and in media systems. This thesis examines newspaper coverage through twin-armed study, constituting a framing and sourcing analysis, which assesses the coverage of three British newspapers: The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail. The results reinforce the view that conflict and political strategy are the primary lenses used when conveying political campaign information and that political elites still retain a privileged position in contributing to the narrative. While such findings resonate with past research, further findings reveal some surprising discrepancies between the coverage provided by these three newspapers, all operating under the same brand banner. From its findings, this paper concludes that the lenses of political strategy and conflict were frequently utilized in the coverage of the referendum, with political actors given the greatest say in helping construct the narrative. These trends were, however, bucked by The Mail on Sunday, which sought to depict the referendum through issue-based frames.
Keywords: European Union, referendum, Brexit, journalism and democracy, framing, sourcing, agenda-setting
4 Introduction
June 23, 2016 represented a watershed moment in modern British politics. The country’s electorate voted, by a narrow but clear margin, to end the United Kingdom’s 40-year membership to the European Union. The United Kingdom had, since 1975, been a member of the European Union, a supranational union of European states. In 2015 the governing Conservative party, led by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, elected to hold a referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued
membership to the EU. This move was viewed in many quarters as a means of addressing a schism between the Eurosceptic and Europhilic wings of the Conservative party and an attempt to stem the loss of Conservative votes to the staunchly anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). more detailed explanation of the historical and political underpinnings of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union, Reporting the Road to Brexit, (Ridge-Newman, Leon-Solis and O’ Donnell, 2018) provides an excellent summary of the events that paved the way towards the EU referendum.
This thesis examines coverage of the European Union referendum, and specifically the narratives within which it was intertwined in news media. By focusing on how this referendum was framed in news coverage, better understanding of the role of news media in such coverage can be developed. This approach is instructive for understanding the relationship between coverage and societal attitudes toward democratic processes, political identity and news media’s sense of purpose within the wider democratic framework. For a generation of British citizens, this referendum on European Union membership represented the moment that politics became ubiquitous as it became a constant feature not only in news but in other public discussions and, for many, it also served as a catalyst for asking questions of how, and by whom, political news is constructed and construed. Alongside discussions of media, the campaigns themselves became features of debate. The ‘Brexit bus’, adorned with promises pertaining to a prosperous future outside of the EU, has become emblematic of this, an icon of a debate that many observers feel was characterized by wilful
misrepresentation of facts as a means of achieving the desired political outcome, all facilitated by an obliging media.1,2 The referendum campaign itself has been characterized as the “most divisive,
1 Kentish, B (2018) “Brexit: Campaign to prosecute Boris Johnson over £350m NHS bus claim raises £24,000 in two days”
Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-boris-johnson-nhs-bus-claim-350-million-fundraiser-campaign-prosecute-a8528886.html
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hostile, negative and fear-provoking of the 21st century” with such acrimony fuelled by “a highly partisan national media” (Moore and Ramsay, 2017: 164). Public malcontent regarding the nature of the debate surrounding the referendum, and the subsequent divorce deal obtained by British Prime Minister Theresa May (and at the time of writing, still the focus of debate, uncertainty and, with that, consternation), has led to increasingly vociferous support for a second referendum.3
Public dissatisfaction with such a political process can hardly be classified as a new phenomenon and viewing calls for a referendum rerun as a bellwether of a broken media-political axis would almost certainly represent an overreaction, however there is a palpable sense of public grievance regarding the manner in which the facts pertaining to such a momentous public decision were presented. Apparent concerns about the failure of politicians and the media upon which they rely to effectively and reliably convey the salient arguments to their public are particularly perturbing in the context of a referendum. “Ostensibly the purest form of democratic inquisition” (Barnett, 2016) a single issue presenting a binary choice uncomplicated by concerns regarding individual candidates or tactical political manoeuvring, a referendum represents one occasion where the public might reasonably expect media coverage to be characterized by factuality in place of sensationalist narratives. Whilst research pertaining to political elections, and the media framing thereof, has been well established, scholarly research of news media coverage of referendum campaigns is far scarcer. Much of this disparity in research likely owes to the relative infrequency of referenda compared to routine political elections. In the UK, referenda are particularly rare, with elected officials ordinarily making political decisions without the direct involvement of the electorate, while in the US and particularly in individual states they are more prevalent. Extant scholarly research has elucidated the importance of the role news media play in depicting referendum events to the public (Dekavalla, 2016), and the framing of referenda has been shown to have had an impact upon how the public perceive the available options (Kahneman and Tversky, 1984). Further work shows how the
fundamental issues of a referendum are interpreted (Wettstein, 2012). Despite the enormity of the EU referendum, quite possibly the defining event of recent British political history, there is a remarkable dearth of empirical research into how the issues that emerged within the EU
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/leave-campaign-rows-back-key-pledges-immigration-nhs-spending
3 Batchelor, T (2018) “Brexit poll shows voters back second referendum as Remain takes big lead over Leave” Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-theresa-may-second-referendum-remain-leave-yougov-poll-draft-agreement-a8635341.html
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referendum debate, and the manner of the debate itself, were presented to the British public by print newspapers.
This thesis addresses this gap in scholarly research into the British media’s conveyance of the EU referendum to their audiences, assessing how three newspapers, all published under the same overarching brand banner, sought to package the complexity of the European Union referendum for their readers. This thesis focuses on the coverage in The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail a subset of publications chosen in part because of the anecdotal assertions that The Daily Mail was, at least partially, responsible for tipping the scales in favour of leaving the European Union.4 Furthermore, given the divergence in referendum voting patterns between Scotland and England, analysis of The Scottish Daily Mail offers an important point of comparison, from which this thesis hopes to reveal whether the edition presented to the Scottish audience deviated greatly from the depictions of the referendum presented in The Daily Mail. Lastly, the divergence in stance on the European Union between The Daily Mail, which urged voters to vote leave, and The Mail on Sunday, which championed a remain vote, provides a further layer of nuance to analysis of media depictions of the EU referendum and the factors that underpin the news media’s coverage.
The research constitutes a twin analysis, examining both framing and sourcing practices, to provide a robust insight into the way in which issues arising during the EU referendum campaign period were presented, and to establish who was given a voice in the debate. The thesis begins with a theoretical framework, drawing on existing scholarly work to explore the relevant theories and literature
pertaining to the role of framing and sourcing in news reporting as well as the envisioned democratic role of the news media. The Methodology chapter of this research follows, outlining the
fundamental decisions that shaped the nature of this research, in addition to critically appraising the methodology and assessing the reliability of the findings. The results chapter then outlines the findings of the research with analysis and illustrative examples of the manifest framing and sourcing practices. The discussion chapter will explore some of these findings in greater detail and posit theoretically-grounded explanations for the emergent results before appraising the research and considering potential avenues for future work within the field.
4 Martinson, J (2016) ‘Did the Mail and Sun help swing the UK towards Brexit?’ The Guardian Available at: (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/24/mail-sun-uk-brexit-newspapers)
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Theoretical Framework
Journalism and Democracy
When considering the newspaper coverage of arguably the most momentous event in recent British political history it is vital that the interplay between journalism, particularly the news media, and democracy is scrutinized. Though recent scholarly work has attempted to broaden the scope of how we consider journalistic roles, to encompass the breadth of twenty-first century journalism beyond facilitating democratic imperatives (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018), this section will set out to view journalism’s societal role first through the lens of democracy in order to relate this to the news media coverage of the UK referendum on European Union membership.
The first barrier to appraising the role played by journalism in a democratic society is arriving at an acceptable definition of what constitutes a democratic society. Strömbäck outlines where scholarly consensus has derived five criteria that a political system must fulfil in order to be considered democratic: “The political decision-makers are elected by the people in free, fair and frequent elections; there is freedom of expression, of the press and of information; citizenship is inclusive; everyone has the right to form and join organizations of their own choosing, and society is law-governed” (Strömbäck, 2005: 335). Beyond these criteria, democracy can manifest in numerous ways with the realities of democracy, as articulated in scholarly work at least, giving way to theoretical models of democracy. To appreciate journalism’s role in a democratic society we must consider the various theorized forms of democracy and the requirements each places upon the news media in fulfilling their democratic responsibility. Whilst exploring the theoretical manifestations of democratic societies, and their resultant normative implications for the news media, one must remain mindful that these are models and that no society will neatly align with a single model – rather, “democracies exist as an amalgamation of principles, a creative and even contradictory mix of ideas that defies the orthodoxies of any particular school of thought or body of literature” (Christians et al, 2009: 95).
Among examples of the amalgamating aspects of democracy, liberty and equality offer useful points of consideration. Though liberty and equality are “cornerstones of any theory of democracy” the extent to which they intersect allows sub-stratification of democratic systems into the liberal or republican tradition. (Christians et al, 2009: 105). In the republican tradition of democracy, priority is assigned to equality and “a substantive commitment to promoting the common good” (Christiano, 1996: 29). In the liberal tradition of democracy, individual freedom is protected from “interference from an overbearing state” (Christians et al, 2009: 107). Viewed another way, democracy in the
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liberal tradition might be viewed as a means of “aggregating the preferences of citizens in choosing public officials and policies” (Young, 2000: 19) whereas democracy in the republican tradition seeks a deliberative process that facilitates civic participation and the exchange of views (Young, 2000: 22).
When considering the EU referendum through the lens of the liberal tradition, it can be seen as a direct means of aggregating public opinion to inform a political decision. Viewed through the prism of the republican tradition, as a binary choice it offers little scope for deliberation and would therefore be reliant upon a healthy level of participatory debate to ensure an informed citizenry.
Although such distinctions are best considered as democratic ideals, they are instructive when considering the democratic responsibilities of the news media and media attitudes that may prevail during a referendum. When appraising the democratic responsibilities of the journalistic profession, scholars tend to further classify democratic systems. Under the banner of liberalism, democracy can be considered either pluralistic or administrative (Christians et al, 2009). The vision of administrative democracy assumes that the average citizen lacks the capacity to govern themselves and instead cedes power to competing political elites with the citizenry merely allocated the power and
responsibility to “replace one government by another” (Held, 2006: 142). Under such circumstances the news media are called upon to focus on crises and political campaigns rather than overburden the citizenry with forensic analysis of events over which they have little control (Christians et al, 2009: 100). Zaller takes this notion further by rejecting the prevailing ‘full news standard’ that asserts news should “provide citizens with the basic information necessary to form and update opinions on all of the major issues of the day” (Zaller, 2003:110). Zaller proposes that the political news media should instead seek to serve as a ‘burglar alarm’ to “call attention to matters requiring urgent attention, and to do so in excited and noisy tones”, even when this necessitates
sensationalism and dramatization (Zaller, 2003: 122). Such a vision of democratic news reporting clearly prioritizes journalism’s role as a fourth estate and watchdog in exercising “critical scrutiny of the powerful” (McNair, 2009: 239). Whilst such standards may be applicable to periods when democracy is largely administrative, they are arguably ill-suited to covering a referendum whereby decision-making power is transferred back to the hands of an electorate who may have been deprived of insightful analytical coverage.
Through the liberal lens, democracy can also be viewed as a pluralistic society wherein “individuals can most effectively assert their interests and preferences by coming together in the form of groups, small and large, that compete with other groups in an effort to find or forge mutually satisfying policies and programs” (Christians et al, 2009: 96). Under such circumstances, the news media landscape should reflect the plurality of political opinions within society, with groups having their
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“own media for internal mobilization, external advocacy, and recruitment” (Baker, 2002: 177) under the premise that “competing interests need competing media” (Christians et al, 2009: 98). Though necessitating a plurality of voice, the liberal pluralism stance does not necessarily place any firm prerequisites on the media regarding the quality of political reporting offered, instead relying on the notion that market logic will prevail. The liberal view of a democratic function, and its resultant implications for journalistic standards in supplying democratically effective news media, clearly has a place in discussion of the journalism/democracy axis, however they presuppose a level of civic passivity that also bears consideration when analysing a referendum that ceded power directly to the electorate.
Whereas the liberal tradition accepts democracy as the aggregation of citizen preferences, the republican ideal of democracy places its faith in civic engagement and “free public reasoning among equals” (Cohen, 1997: 412). The republican ideal of civic democracy aligns with two of the
democratic models outlined by Strömbäck (2005) – the participatory democracy and the deliberative democracy. Participatory democracy necessitates individuals engage in civic and public life and, as the name suggests, such democracy is a manifestation of the participation of individuals in the political process (Strömbäck, 2005: 335-336). According to Strömbäck, this has several ramifications for the standards journalism should aspire to. Firstly, news should correspond to reality, lest the beliefs and actions of the citizenry be built on false premises (Ibid.: 339). Citizens should also possess an adequate knowledge of societal issues and the political landscape and mechanisms to enable them to make informed decisions (Ibid.: 336). Additionally, the media should strive to provide a voice for the ordinary citizen instead of framing politics as a “strategic game played by those already engaged” (Ibid.: 340). Deliberative democracy represents an extension of the ideals outlined in a participatory democracy with its core tenets being that political decisions are preceded by public discussion characterized by “values of rationality, impartiality, intellectual honesty and equality among the participants” (Strömbäck, 2005: 336) with the expectation that “reasons for and against various options are to be weighed on their merits” (Fishkin and Laslett, 2003: 2). A corollary of these increased expectations of civic participation is heightened media responsibility to inform the
electorate, to provide platforms for public discussion and to ensure that coverage and debate is conducted in accordance with the principles of impartiality, rationality, equality and intellectual honesty (Strömbäck, 2005: 341).
As stated previously, the nature of democratic realities do not neatly align with theoretical models and some scholars have attempted to create a broader set of normative standards, drawing on expectations of the democratic models outlined above, to provide a blueprint of democratic media
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obligations that can then be transposed across democratic societies, such as those set out by Norris (2000: 25). Among these, firstly, is the obligation that news media have a duty to inform the
electorate so that their political choices are informed and rational, given that “high-quality, independent news journalism which provides accurate and thoughtful information and analysis about current events is crucial to the creation of an enlightened citizenry that is able to participate meaningfully in society and politics” (Anderson, 2007: 65). This information, in the realm of political reporting should constitute “practical knowledge about the probable consequences of their political actions” is “contextual to the electoral decisions they face” and should be pitched “at a variety of different levels” (Norris, 2000: 30-31). Secondly, among normative obligations, journalism should contribute to a civic forum, in the mould of Habermas’ imagined public sphere, to facilitate the exchange of ideas (Habermas, 1989) and as Norris argues, to serve as a “conduit providing the government and the governed with opportunities to communicate effectively with each other” with politicians seeking to influence the media agenda to impart their message ‘downward’ to the electorate who are similarly able to use the media as a platform for the ‘upwards’ airing their of their views to the political class (Norris, 2000: 26). Additionally, Norris (2000) argues, the press should serve as a “watchdog” of the powerful, monitoring for abuses of power and bringing these to public attention, a role that is required in any of the democratic models discussed hitherto.
The Critical Political Economy Critique
One important critique of the media landscape is found in the traditions of political economy – the “study of the social relations, particularly power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of resources, including communication resources” (Mosco, 2009: 24). When specifically applied to journalism studies the field constitutes analysis of how economic conditions and pressures on the newspaper media industry shape the production and, ultimately, content of news. Political economy seeks to unpick the interplay between journalism’s societal role and the economic forces that shape the media landscape with the central claim that “different ways of organising and financing communications have implications for the range and nature of media content, and the ways in which this is consumed and used” (Hardy, 2014: 7). Political economy has largely emerged as works critical of the “unequal distribution of power and are critical of
arrangements whereby such inequalities are sustained and reproduced” in the form of critical political economy (CPE) (Hardy, 2006: 6). This argument extends to the democratic function of the news media and “critics have argued that journalism’s economic imperative tends to undermine its long-established democratic imperative” (Eldridge and Steel, 2016: 818). When analysing the
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framing utilised by The Daily Mail in its coverage of the EU referendum campaign period, the role of political economic factors in shaping content must be given due consideration.
A central of concern for CPE scholars is the nature of media ownership and how this relates to news production, with the trend towards concentration of media ownership being a focus. In the case of British newspapers, the last decades have seen an increasing trend of media ownership
concentration with the three largest media groups holding a 68.34 per cent market share of the newspaper industry in 2013 with The Daily Mail’s ownership group, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), accounting for 22.11 per cent of the market (Hardy, 2014: 88). Some scholars consider such trends of ownership concentration to be alarming, as they may “lead to overrepresentation of certain political opinions or forms of cultural output (those favoured by powerful media owners, whether on commercial or ideological grounds) and to exclusion of others” with an associated loss of pluralism, although there is scant empirical evidence to confirm or refute such assumptions (Doyle, 2002: 13). Criticism of a loss of media plurality within the UK landscape hasn’t been confined to the scholarly arena. The Guardian, a left-leaning quality British newspaper, argued that “the profoundly dysfunctional British press, over 75% controlled by three right-wing men, has the bit between its teeth, setting the agenda for the nation’s political discourse”.5
Studies emerging from a CPE tradition also address a core tension at the heart of journalism and democracy, namely the need to reconcile journalism’s role as a necessary purveyor of information for the public good with the need to generate profit to sustain their operations (Murdock, 1992). The Daily Mail’s ownership provides one such microcosm of this tension, which in theory calls for their having to balance economic and journalistic aims. As a Publicly Limited Company (PLC), the DMGT is dutybound to maximise returns for shareholder investors. The maximisation of profit under free market principles, however, does not necessarily equate to a simultaneous allegiance to the highest standards of journalism, nor does it require a focus on serving democratic needs of the newspapers’ audiences. Scholars have scrutinised the prevailing free-market ideology, which provides news audiences with information that they like, contrasting this to the vison outlined by those who would prefer a ‘public service approach’ (providing news audiences with information they need) in a bid to prevent the news media from “becoming subservient to the commercial forces that make for low quality, cultural uniformity and right-wing bias” (Curran and Seaton, 1991). The notion that market economics applied to the media are no guarantor of the diversity of journalism required to meet the civic needs of all citizens is taken further by Stein, who argues that “efficient market behaviour
5 Toynbee, P (2003) ‘Press ganged’ The Guardian Available at:
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systematically favours the interests of advertisers, shareholders, and more valued audience segments over those of the broader populace” (Stein, 2006: 47).
The primary scholarly concern regarding the British media being left to the “tender mercies of the market” is that it has allowed commercial concerns to exert an overbearing influence on media content (Petley, 2012: 533), with few arguing that this has been to the benefit of the consumer or democracy. Perhaps the most damning criticism of the influence of market forces on British news media output, and the exercising of necessary democratic functions, comes from Sparks, who outlines that the British newspapers are primarily businesses:
They do not exist to report the news, to act as watchdogs for the public, to be a check on the doings of government, to defend the ordinary citizen against abuses of power, to unearth scandals or to do any of the other fine and noble things that are sometimes claimed for the press. They exist to make money, just as any other business does. To the extent that they discharge any of their public functions, they do so in order to succeed as businesses. (Sparks, 1999: 46)
Whilst the findings of this thesis cannot be irrefutably linked to The Daily Mail’s ownership model or the prevailing liberal market ideology, discussion of the economic forces affecting the British news landscape through the lens of critical political economy helps provide a deeper layer of nuance to our understanding of factors shaping political news content and the way news is framed for audiences.
Framing
As McNair states, “modern politics are largely mediated politics, experienced by the great majority of citizens at one remove, through their print and broadcast media of choice” (2000: 1). The depictions of society and the political landscape that citizens have access to is largely constructed through the framing of the media, with the public gaining “most of their information from the media and the elites the media portray” (Entman et al, 2009: 179). This research will primarily address how newspaper coverage framed the European Union membership referendum, and whether there was any difference in the frames applied in The Daily Mail and The Scottish Daily Mail. As such, a robust understanding of the theory underpinning the concept of media framing will form the basis of the theoretical framework.
Framing transpires on four levels: “In the culture; in the minds of elites and professional political communicators; in the texts of communications; and in the minds of individual citizens” (Entman et al., 2009: 176). This thesis, with its assessment of framing practices in The Daily Mail’s coverage of the EU referendum is primarily concerned with framing at the level of communicative texts.
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However, the role of sourcing will also be assessed to provide an understanding of the role of elites and political communicators in the framing process and discussion of the theoretical understanding of agenda setting theory will attempt to explore the significance of framing in constructing the perceptions of individual citizens and society as a whole.
According to Matthes, “scholars are faced with an immense variety of theoretical and operational understandings of frames” (Matthes, 2009:350). He argues that the scholarly definitions of framing are broadly divided into two categories. The first set of general definitions describes what a frame is “without clear guidelines for operationalization” (Matthes, 2009: 350). Matthes cites Gitlin’s
definition of framing, which sees framing as “principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation”, and as a definition that leaves “the explicit operational understanding of the frame concept open” (Mathes, 2009: 350; Gitlin, 1980: 7). The second broad group of framing definitions are those that outline what frames do, (Matthes, 2009: 350); here Matthes uses Entman’s definition of framing to illustrate this. Entman defines framing as “to select some parts of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (Entman, 1993: 52). Entman’s definition of framing, and the “recommendations” frames prescribe, is particularly interesting in the context of examining coverage of a referendum. Although framing might have, under the circumstances, been employed in coverage which promoted a variety of nuanced views and appreciations of a complex field of debate, ultimately the binary nature of the vote left only two possible outcomes – ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
In moving beyond providing broad definitions of what constitutes framing, journalism and
communication scholars have also attempted to delineate the various forms which framing can take. From such work, scholars argue frames can be either generic or issue-specific (De Vreese, 2005: 54). Issue-specific frames pertain “only to specific topics or events” whereas generic frames “transcend thematic limitations and can be identified in relation to different topics, some even over time and in different cultural contexts” (De Vreese, 2005: 54). Whilst issue-specific frames are, by definition, dependent upon the event being covered, Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) identify five specific, recurring, generic frames that appear in news coverage. These frames are: conflict, attribution of responsibility, human interest, morality and economic consequences. (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000). Although the EU referendum represents a specific ‘issue’, the diverse range of social and political ramifications it entailed, as well as the “different cultural contexts” (De Vreese, 2005: 54) found within the UK and Scotland, it may be that generic framing schema are more suited to
examining frames around this topic, particularly as generic frames can transcend geographic barriers (Papacharissi and Oliveira 2008). In the context of the framing analysis applied here, the choice of
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generic frames utilized may be instructive in assessing the prism through which The Daily Mail wanted its readers to view the European Union and the referendum itself. This will be explored more fully in the methodology chapter.
There is evidence that political contests such as elections are often depicted by the media using the ‘game’ or ‘strategy’ frame (Strömbäck and Dimitrova, 2006; Strömbäck and Van Aelst, 2010), where the focus is placed primarily on the competitive element of politics (Aalberg et al., 2012). It is
perhaps not surprising that newspaper media should attempt to crystalize complex political contests in the minds of audiences by using such framing strategies. Some scholars, however, contend that this practice owes more to journalism’s previously discussed commercial incentives than a genuine desire to clarify convoluted information (Patterson, 2000).
Research has further demonstrated that framing of political contests through this strategic lens and as an electoral game can also instigate cynicism regarding politics in the minds of the electorate (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997). This finding has been replicated in research assessing the coverage of the 2000 Danish referendum on adoption of the Euro, in a study which found that strategic framing of the referendum led to increased voter cynicism (De Vreese and Semetko, 2002). Extant literature pertaining to the framing of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum found that the game and strategy frames featured prominently in newspaper coverage as well (Dekavalla, 2016), suggesting this is a trend that we might expect to find reflected in newspaper coverage of the EU referendum as well.
However, as also noted in the introductory chapter in reference to the body of research on referenda, within the field of framing research there is more research pertaining to parliamentary elections than on referenda and any theoretical conclusions drawn from this body of research must also acknowledge that there are fundamental differences between the multi-candidate elections the British electorate are accustomed to and the binary choice of the EU independence referendum. The research in this thesis hopes, in a small way, to address this dearth of framing analyses of British referenda.
Sourcing Practices – An extension of the frame
An adjunct of framing analysis is consideration of the role that newspaper sourcing practices play in helping to construct certain narratives for their audiences. When considering the framing of an event such as the EU referendum it is important to consider the role of sourcing given that “news is, after all, not what journalists think but what their sources say” (Sigal, 1986: 29) Scholars appreciate the role of sources in the construction of meaning (Wang, 2017; Pan and Kosicki, 1993) and that “in
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news texts, the sources chosen will structure the discussion” (Hertog and McLeod, 2001: 149). This knowledge provides methodological justification for appraising sourcing practices within a broader framing analysis.
Sourcing practices have their roots in the professional ideology of journalism (Deuze, 2005) with normative standards in Western media dictating that journalists should present news without “explicitly taking a side in the discourse” (Berkowitz, 2009: 103). Despite this aim of neutrality, news professionals are educated to seek out ‘official’ sources, a practice which institutional routines also reinforce in the general reliance upon elite sources (Turcotte, 2017). Elite actors are acutely aware of this paradigm, particularly as prominent “news sources usually having a vested interest in
journalists’ reports” (Berkowitz, 2009: 104), and the upshot of this dynamic is that news is often framed through elite perspectives (Pan and Kosicki, 1993; Bennett, 1990).
The preponderance of elite sources in mainstream political news does, however, suggest a tension between journalism’s simultaneous reliance on elite sources and its stated detachment, particularly in performing in their work a watchdog role of holding powerful elite figures to account. Berkowitz characterizes this as a “power struggle” within which journalists and societal elites contest for the upper hand in taking control of news narratives (2009; 104). In the context of the EU referendum, it would not be altogether surprising if elite political sources emerged as the main players in The Daily Mail’s referendum coverage. The source analysis will however go beyond this, and also appraise the national background of sources, when this is stated in texts, in order to assess whether there is any divergence between the sourcing practices of The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, compared to The Scottish Daily Mail. From the research outlined above on elite sources, it seems likely that that The Scottish Daily Mail will utilize more Scottish sources, partly due to geographical constraints and partly born of a desire to tailor the political narrative to a Scottish audience, and the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday will rely more heavily on English sources, and those in Westminster.
Agenda Setting
Whilst this research does not attempt to empirically analyse the impact that framing has on the salience of issues in the public agenda, it is important to contextualize the research by considering the ramifications that media framing practices can have in influencing the public agenda. The notion of agenda-setting theory, or “the relationship between the most often covered issues in the media and what the audience will consider important” (Blumler, 2015), is not new to media studies scholars. McCombs and Shaw, in 1972, postulated that the media can influence the agenda of political campaigns (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) and showed a correlation between the agenda of
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the news media and the public’s agenda as measured in public opinion polling. Early concepts of agenda setting outlined this in the way “issues emphasized by the media become the issues that the public thinks are important”; this is now termed “first level” agenda setting, separated from “second level” agenda setting which is concerned with how people understand these issues and the
attributes that constitute them (Coleman et al, 2009: 147). An example of the effects of second level agenda setting theory was demonstrated in a study of public perceptions of political candidates, showing “impressions of candidate personality traits mirror media portrayals of those traits” (Kiousis et al, 1999: 1). Additionally, research into second level agenda setting suggests that media agendas can also dictate public perceptions of the economy (Hester and Gibson, 2003), a finding of particular salience to our analysis of EU referendum coverage given that economic consequences is one of the frames coded for in this research paper.
Contemporary public discourse in the UK around the news media and its coverage of the European Union has speculated over the extent to which The Daily Mail’s coverage of the EU referendum represented a reflection of public opinion or an attempt to influence public opinion6 and the election outcome by a famously Eurosceptic newspaper. According to Weaver, “the mass media do have important effects on society in general and on elections in particular” but that these effects depend on a multitude of variables, namely; campaign context, length of campaign, prior interests and knowledge among voters and nature of coverage (Weaver, 1994).
An understanding of the news media’s role in setting the political and public agenda is particularly important when it comes to considering a referendum, given that these are not recurring votes where the outcome of the ballot can be (somewhat) easily reversed by expelling a candidate in a subsequent election. There is a degree of finality in a referendum that is not present in routine parliamentary elections (even considering that not all referenda are binding, the binary option provided tends towards a view of their results as conclusive). Wirth and colleagues have
demonstrated that issues in referendum campaigns can flow ‘top-down’ from campaigners, through the media and into a position of salience for citizens (Wirth et al, 2010). Despite offering a binary choice, De Vreese and Schuck argue that the multi-faceted nature of referenda means that “the framing of a referendum issue by political actors and key information sources during a campaign may therefore be unusually important to a referendum outcome” (De Vreese and Schuck, 2014). With this finding, they highlight the significance of research assessing the nature of newspaper framing within the EU referendum.
6 Martinson, J. (2016) Did the Mail and Sun help swing the UK towards Brexit? Available at:
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Beyond the ability of news media to influence the public agenda, there has been increasing interest among scholars regarding who sets the media agenda. Some academics are convinced that between the news media and political elites, there is little room for the average citizen to set the public agenda, given “news in all contemporary democracies is heavily oriented towards the words and actions of the elites in society” (Strömbäck, 2005: 342). In a nod to the importance of the previously mentioned “power struggle” over agency in controlling the media agenda, an example of political elites wresting control is found in accounts of press dealings with the ‘New Labour’ government; when New Labour was in power, journalists who were writing favourable coverage were rewarded with exclusive stories, while those who were critical saw their interview requests denied (Cottle, 2003: 63). This impression of the press having seceded their agenda-setting power to the political elites was not, however, shared by the incumbent press secretary, Alistair Campbell, who
contrariwise decried the fact that “the press are the primary agenda-setters, defining the shape of the agenda in the medium and long term” (McNair, 2000: 30). This divergence in opinion over who controlled the public agenda perhaps best summarises our understanding of agency of the public agenda, a dynamic whereby the press and political elites at different moments manage to take control of an agenda that they both exert significant control over.
At this juncture it is worth considering the influence that this jostling for control of the public agenda has exerted over the manner in which political elites communicate with their public. Such
considerations lead us to the concept of mediatization of politics as a means of providing further explanation for the prevalence of the conflict and political strategy frames within The Daily Mail’s coverage. Mediatization represents another divisive concept lacking outright scholarly consensus (Strömbäck, 2008), however, at its core the concept of mediatization refers to an ongoing process relating “to changes associated with communication media and their development” (Schulz, 2004: 88). Definitions of mediatization invariably address the concept of ‘media logic’, ostensibly the “dominance in societal processes of the news values and the storytelling techniques the media make use of in the ongoing struggle to capture people’s attention” (Strömbáck, 2008: 228).
Mediatization addresses the impact that this evolving media logic has on various spheres within society. The field of politics is not immune to the ongoing influence of the mass media, and it has been posited that the increasing influence of the media has engendered a more media-savvy
political approach, with political elites seeking to conform to the media’s logic to aid the imparting of messages to the electorate and the advancement of personal and party agendas (Strömbäck, 2008). The necessity of using the news media to transmit political messages to the electorate, and the subsequent impact of mediatization, has led to a greater professionalization of political
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communication, with political parties recruiting public relations experts and placing increasing emphasis on media training of candidates (Meyen et al, 2014).
19 Methodology
Research Questions
The theoretical framework presented in this thesis has established the academic theory that underpins our understanding of framing practices, their ramifications upon the narratives accompanying political news and, potentially, the democratic process itself. In order to establish how the referendum was depicted by the newspapers, and to facilitate further discussion, a primary research question was constructed:
RQ1: How was the United Kingdom’s European Union membership referendum framed in The Daily Mail, The Scottish Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday?
Exploration of framing theory also revealed the extent to which the framing process is supported, and altered, by the sources utilized. This knowledge gave rise to a secondary strand of research, constituting analysis of the sources used in coverage of the referendum campaign. This secondary strand of research was addressed with a separate research question:
RQ2: How did The Daily Mail, The Scottish Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday utilize sources in their coverage of the EU referendum campaign?
Methodological Justification
Framing analysis was chosen as a method for this study, owing to its ability to provide a “more fruitful view of the ideological character” (Reese, 2001: 9) of the EU referendum coverage offered by The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail. Whilst the theoretical underpinning of framing, and its effects, has been explored in the previous chapter, the operationalization of framing analysis requires further elaboration and justification.
The first major decision faced when constructing the methodological structure for the framing analysis was to establish the merits and limitations of the two differing fundamental frame analysis approaches; inductive and deductive analysis. The inductive method necessitates approaching the research with no predetermined framing definitions, instead allowing the frames present in the texts to emerge through the course of the analysis and shape the framing definitions (De Vreese, 2005: 53). The inductive approach may be advantageous to researchers as it can theoretically provide a more nuanced appreciation of the frames emerging within coverage of a specific event. However, the inductive method has drawn scholarly criticism owing to its potential for confirmation bias as researchers can, consciously or otherwise, determine the presence of frames that confirm their pre-existing contentions about the likely frames based on the focus of their research (Hertog and
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Mcleod, 2001). Furthermore, the inductive approach is more time-consuming and can be difficult to replicate in the event of future expansion of research (De Vreese, 2005).
Deductive framing analysis, on the other hand, relies upon conducting the research with a
predetermined set of frames and definitions. The fact that frames are identified prior to conducting research allows for faster analysis and lends itself to analysing a greater data set than would be possible using the inductive method. Additionally, using a pre-structured framework means research is less likely to lead to confirmation bias and also means research is easier to replicate. These
benefits, however, come at the potential expense of research specificity. Deductive frames can provide a general overview of the lens through which a journalist or editor wants to their ideas to be decoded by their audience, but they lack the nuanced specificity of frames that have been
unearthed by employing an inductive approach.
Owing to the large sample size being analysed in this work, while remaining mindful of the risks of confirmation bias in research, the deductive method was initially considered. As per the theoretical framework, generic news frames transcend issues and cultural and geographic boundaries
(Papacharissi and Oliveira 2008) whereas their issue-specific counterparts are confined to the coverage of discrete events. Semetko and Valkenburg posit five recurring generic news frames, Conflict, Economic consequences, Attribution of responsibility, Morality and Human interest, and these have featured prominently in scholarly research focusing on the generic framing approach (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000). Despite the prominence of these frames in previous work, for the purposes of this research such generic frames were deemed incapable of fully portraying the nuances of the framing in coverage of an isolated event of the magnitude of the UK EU referendum. Whilst both the diverse range of social and political ramifications the EU referendum entailed and the “different cultural contexts” (De Vreese, 2005: 54) of Scotland and the rest of the UK lend weight to the transcendent merits of generic frames analysis of issue-specific frames pertinent to the referendum debate were felt likely to provide a deeper understanding of how The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail attempted to portray the vote to their audiences. Previous researching assessing media framing of the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum demonstrated that an inductive approach can provide a nuanced appreciation of issue-specific frames emerging in referendum coverage (Dekavalla, 2016).
A literature review revealed there to be no existing research focusing on issue-specific frames emerging from coverage of the EU referendum. This lack of extant scholarly work made a deductive, issue-specific approach unworkable but also revealed a clear gap in scholarly knowledge, a gap which this thesis hopes to address. This knowledge gap necessitated an inductive approach, with
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analysis of the texts themselves being used to inform the issue-specific frames that would be applied in the framing analysis in order to address RQ1.
After establishing that the framing analysis would take an inductive, issue-specific approach, a secondary strand of the research, sourcing analysis, was considered. The theoretical underpinnings of framing analysis revealed the importance of sources in helping to construct meaning through frames by structuring the discussion whilst retaining the journalistic tenet of impartiality (Berkowitz, 2009; Pan and Kosicki, 1993) As such, a sourcing analysis, with due consideration of which actors were given voice in structuring the discussion of the key issues within the referendum debate, was felt to be a logical extension of analysing frames in order to fully appreciate how the referendum was framed by the publications in question. This strand of research gave rise to RQ2. To address this research question, an inductive approach was also applied to the sourcing analysis. The rationale behind this decision, as in the case of the deductive framing analysis, was to gain a more nuanced appreciation of the sources utilized in the referendum coverage and to ensure that the results were as specific as possible.
As stated previously, one of the main scholarly critiques of the inductive approach is the scope for the reliability of such analysis to be compromised by confirmation bias due to the researcher’s own pre-existing beliefs about a source or event influencing their interpretation of texts. Given that “confidence in any conclusions about systematic analysis of media content are entirely dependent on the quality of the data and coding” (Spence and Lachlan, 2005: 71) it was of paramount
importance that it could be demonstrated that applying the inductively constructed codebook would yield reliable data for analysis. With the aim of minimalizing the influence of confirmation bias and maximizing the reliability and future replicability of this research, it was decided that inter-coder reliability testing should be conducted. This process assesses “the extent to which independent coders evaluate a characteristic of a message or artefact and reach the same conclusion” (Lombard et al., 2002: 589) and ensures that other researchers can use the inductively produced codebook and closely replicate the research’s findings to demonstrate the reliability and validity of the findings.
Method and Sample Sample acquisition
The research constituted a comparative analysis of news content within three primary sources – The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail – and comprised a framing analysis and a source analysis.
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The sample period chosen for the analysis was the official EU referendum campaign window between April 16 and June 23, 2016, the date of the vote itself. This period was chosen in the belief that the official campaign period leading directly to the vote would provide the most fertile yield of articles pertaining to the referendum. Additionally, it was felt that the framing and sourcing patterns of articles from the period immediately before the vote would provide the most insightful
revelations about the respective attitudes towards the referendum of The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail. A further benefit of this sample period was that it yielded enough articles to ensure the findings were significant without producing so many as to necessitate representative sampling.
Digital archives of the three newspapers in question were readily available on the LexisNexis academic portal. Using the search function, the sample period was limited to articles published between April 16 and June 23, 2016 and further limited to those containing the search terms Europe and referendum. This research focused on how ‘hard’ news articles, namely those presented to the audience through the lens of journalistic impartiality, were framed by the publications. Accordingly, editorial and opinion pieces which, by their very nature, make no attempt to adhere to norms of impartiality endeavoured in news reporting, were omitted from the research samples. The LexisNexis portal grouped articles from The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday together into one sample of 333 articles. Editorial and opinion pieces were excluded to result in a sample of 180 articles, 30 from The Mail on Sunday and 150 from The Daily Mail. This process was repeated for The Scottish Daily Mail archive and yielded 253 articles, and when editorial and opinion pieces were excluded this resulted in a total sample of 115 news articles from The Scottish Daily Mail. The Scottish Daily Mail provides a slightly more complex data set to unpick, given that some of the articles were verbatim copies of articles from The Daily Mail whereas other articles pertaining to the EU referendum were unique to the Scottish edition of the publication. To facilitate a robust
discussion regarding the rationale that may underpin the editorial decision to select certain articles, The Scottish Daily Mail sample was subdivided to provide results for the entire sample, the articles duplicated in The Daily Mail as well as articles unique to The Scottish Daily Mail. The entire sample contained 116 articles, with 52 of these unique to The Scottish Daily Mail and 64 representing duplicates of articles published in The Daily Mail.
Inductive phase
As a means of addressing the research gap pertaining to framing of the EU referendum and to ensure the specificity of frames applied to the sample, an inductive phase of analysis was required. This involved analysing a sample of the data and allowing recurring frames to reveal themselves.
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Inductive analysis of every article within the sample would have proved too time consuming and accordingly a representative sample of articles was required to inform the inductive coding phase with the frames that emerged from this phase subsequently applied to the entire data sample. To ensure that the frames that emerged throughout the inductive phase were representative of the entire data sample, articles from The Daily Mail, The Scottish Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday were included in the inductive sample. From the sample containing The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, the first twenty articles, the twenty articles after the midway point of the campaign and the final twenty articles were inductively analysed, giving an inductive sample of sixty articles. This process was repeated for the sample containing The Scottish Daily Mail, with a further sixty articles subjected to inductive analysis. In total, 120 articles were analysed in the inductive phase with the recurring themes identified collated into ten observable frames which consistently appeared in the inductive sample.
The frames that emerged are outlined below. An exhaustive breakdown of the criteria for each frame is available in an appendix at the end of this thesis.
Frame Overview
Migration and border control Places the referendum in the context of the migration of foreign citizens into the United Kingdom, the country’s ability to control its own borders or the impact, whether positive or negative, of migration upon the United
Kingdom and its citizens.
Economic consequences Discusses the referendum in the context of financial repercussions, from the financial impact of the referendum itself to discussion of economic costs or benefits of the outcome of the referendum.
Sovereignty and democracy Frames the referendum as an exercise in democracy, discusses democratic
accountability, or lack thereof, with the EU or frames the referendum as a means of regaining
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sovereign control of decisions that impact upon the United Kingdom.
National security Places the referendum in the context of military threats to the United Kingdom, domestic or international terrorism, the impact on the United Kingdom’s armed forces or the country’s ability to deport foreign criminal threats.
Political strategic game Frames the referendum primarily as a contest with winners and losers. Focuses on the
referendum as an end and may use polling data to predict the outcome of this contest. Political strategies, both personal and at campaign group level, and their underlying motivations are scrutinized.
Future of British Union Depicts the referendum and its outcome through the lens of the potential impact upon the Union between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including the potential for the referendum to jeopardize the United Kingdom in its current form.
Conflict Depicts the referendum and campaign period
through the lens of disagreement or dispute. This frame may reference the divisive nature of the referendum, disputes between political actors, groups, organizations or sovereign nations and give voice to sources critical of the actions or motivations of others.
International relations Frames the referendum and campaign period through its impact, or potential impact, upon British relations with other sovereign nations, including the potential for further EU
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Uncertainty Portrays the referendum as a cause of
uncertainty. References a lack of clarity regarding the outcome of the referendum, the impact of the outcome on the United Kingdom or the impact upon other specific fields following the referendum.
Human interest Attempts to portray the referendum and
campaign through a human lens by focusing on the impact, or potential impact, upon
individuals or groups of individuals by providing a human face to the issues being discussed.
Having established the recurring frames through an inductive analysis, a coding scheme with a set of rules and examples pertaining to each frame was created. This coding scheme is attached as an appendix at the end of the thesis.
During the inductive coding phase, it became clear that many of the articles were tonally supportive of negative towards the European Union. To gain a deeper understanding of the overall conveyance of the European Union referendum, it was decided that tone would also be analysed in this research, as an adjunct to the analysis of framing and sourcing. The coder overall tone of each article was judged to be either positive, negative or neutral towards the European Union. This judgement required assessment of the content presented in the article, the opinions espoused by those sources and the nature of the language used.
To address RQ2 and establish the prevalence and prominence of sources appearing in the coverage of the EU referendum campaign, an inductive analysis of sources was conducted. This utilized the same inductive sample that informed the framing analysis and yielded 11 recurring source categories:
UK politician, EU politician, International politician, Scottish politician, campaign group, expert, corporate source, Intergovernmental organization (IGO), polling data, celebrity and vox pops.
As per the framing analysis, a robust coding scheme detailing the criteria for these source categories was constructed and this is included as an appendix alongside the framing coding scheme.
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Coding
With categories and definitions of recurring frames and sources established, coding of the entire data sample was then carried out. In addition to establishing the presence or absence of the inductively established frames and sources within each article, the coder was required to identify a dominant frame and dominant source. The widely-held journalistic convention of reporting hard news within the framework of an ‘inverted pyramid’ results in journalists “expressly placing the most important information at the beginning of the story” with “information presented after the lead sentence appearing in decreasing order of relevance” (Pöttker, 2003: 501-502). The prevalence of the inverted-pyramid technique informed the research decision to define the dominant frame of an article as that which appears first and the dominant source as that which is quoted or paraphrased first. Data was recorded within a spreadsheet for all 295 of the analysed articles.
In addition to each article being coded by the primary researcher, a sample of articles was subjected to further analysis by a group of three independent coders in order that inter-coder reliability testing could be conducted to endure the reliability of the results obtained. To ensure that each sample was represented within the inter-coder reliability testing, each of The Mail on Sunday’s 30 articles analysed was also subjected to inter-coder reliability testing. Further, the first 30 articles from The Daily Mail and the first 30 articles from The Mail on Sunday data sets were also coded by
independent coders to ensure comparable sample sizes. The independent coders were provided with coding schemes pertaining to the framing and sourcing analysis and asked to complete a pre-constructed spreadsheet for their respective data samples. They were asked to code only for the dominant frames and sources within the articles, as this was felt to offer a substantial enough test of an external coder’s ability to reliably code for frames and sources, without requiring them to code entire articles.
These were results were then subjected to Cohen’s Kappa testing to validate the results and ensure a satisfactory level of statistical reliability. Regarding the framing analysis, the first external coder’s results yielded a kappa of 0.83. The second external coder’s results for dominant frames yielded a kappa of only 0.48 and the third coder produced results yielding a kappa of 0.76. Interestingly, the first and third coders were journalism students with experience of content analysis whilst the second coder, whose results deviated most from the empirical findings, was a retiree with no prior
experience of coding. Despite this, it was hoped that this inexperience would be negated by the explanations offered by the coding scheme. That this appears to have been insufficient for one coder is disappointing and represents a potential shortcoming of the research. The average Cohen’s Kappa for the three sets of externally coded articles was 0.69.
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Intercoder testing was similarly conducted for the dominant sources in the same articles. The first external coder provided results with a Cohen’s kappa of 0.78. The second external coder’s results gave a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.69 and the final coder provided results with a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.77. These results provided an average Cohen’s Kappa score of 0.75 for the intercoder reliability of the framing analysis.
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Results
The analysis conducted in this research appraised the way The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail framed their coverage of the United Kingdom’s European Union referendum, and what role sourcing practices played in this process. As outlined in the methodology chapter, the sample period chosen covered the official campaign period between April 16 and June 23, 2016. The Daily Mail sample yielded 156 articles pertaining to the referendum campaign, The Scottish Daily Mail sample yielded 116 articles and The Mail on Sunday sample contained 30 articles. The Scottish Daily Mail results have been broken down into the total sample, duplicate articles also found in The Daily Mail and articles unique to The Scottish Daily Mail’s coverage.
This chapter presents the findings of the framing and sourcing analyses applied to each of the publications. These results will be explored in greater detail in the Discussion chapter, which will posit explanations for the emergent patterns in the results and contextualize the findings within the existing theoretical knowledge pertaining to the field.
Frame Presence
Each article within The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Scottish Daily Mail samples was assessed for the presence or absence of recurring frames obtained from the initial inductive coding process. The analysis recorded the presence or absence of frames within each article and,
accordingly, many articles featured a variety of competing frames. The emergent frames, and their respective prevalence in each publication, are depicted in the map below to provide a visual signifier of the emergent framing patterns.
Figure 1: Frame mapping
0 20 40 60 80
100Conflict Migration and Border control Sovereignty and
democracy Future of British Union Economic consequences Political strategic game
Uncertainty International relations
Human interest
Frame Occurrence Comparison
29 Political-Strategic game
The Political strategic game frame, characterized by analysis of the strategies and motivations underpinning a political process depicted as a contest to be won, was prominent throughout the analysed coverage of the EU referendum. The political strategic game frame was the most prevalent in The Daily Mail’s coverage, appearing in 121 of the 156 articles (77.6%) pertaining to the European Union referendum. This framing practice was replicated in The Scottish Daily Mail’s depictions of the referendum campaign, with both the total sample and subset of articles unique to the Scottish edition utilizing the political strategic game frame as the most prevalent means of framing the referendum for their audience. Examples of such framing are found below.
This quote, taken from an article in The Daily Mail from the opening days of the referendum campaign,7 is illustrative of the paper’s proclivity for framing the referendum through the lens of political strategy. Rather than focusing on the substantive issues arising from the complexity of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the EU, the focus here is on the Prime Minister as a potential loser in the ‘game’ of politics and the potential for a new political contest arising from the
referendum campaign. Such framing presents the audience with a specific insight into the potential political ramifications of the referendum, and allusions to previous events reinforce this with historical context. However, this does not directly address the substantive issues arising during the referendum debate itself. Towards the end of the referendum campaign period, framing through the lens of political strategy game was increasingly buttressed with predictions about the outcome of
7 The Daily Mail, April 16, 2016 “CAMERON WON'T LAST 30 SECONDS IF WE VOTE FOR BREXIT, SAYS KEN CLARKE”
“DAVID Cameron won’t last 30 seconds’ as Prime Minister if the country votes to leave
the EU, Ken Clarke said last night.
The former chancellor claims the idea that Mr Cameron could remain in Number 10 after
a Brexit vote is ‘farcical’ and it would prompt an immediate Tory leadership contest.
Mr Clarke, a longtime pro-European, also said the mood in the party was dangerously
close to that faced by John Major in the 1990s when he was under constant onslaught
from Tories rebelling over the Maastricht treaty.”
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the referendum and frequent references to polling data, furthering the depiction of the referendum as merely a political contest.
Conflict
In the publications where the use of a political strategy frame was prevalent, namely The Daily Mail and The Scottish Daily Mail, news regarding the referendum was also frequently depicted through the lens of conflict. Such framing goes beyond merely presenting politicians as competitors jostling for approval within a political contest, but as opponents, or enemies, locked in conflict.
Labelling the beliefs of a fellow politician ‘utter crap’ represents an overt demonstration of
opposition to George Osborne’s stance on the referendum, and when taken alongside the notion of a ‘backlash’, such framing goes beyond merely presenting politicians as competitors jostling for approval, but as opponents with diametrically opposed views on the referendum.8 Again, whilst providing an insight into the motivations that underpin overt displays of political opposition, such framing and its focus on quarrels does little to inform the audience about the underlying issues giving rise to the conflicting views.
The process-oriented frames of conflict and political strategy were less prevalent throughout analysed coverage in The Mail on Sunday, with the conflict frame appearing in only 46.7% of analysed articles and the political strategy frame in 50% of the analysed articles.
Issue-based frames
8 The Daily Mail, April 19, 2016 “BIASED BILGE! TORY BACKLASH AT OSBORNE'S BREXIT DOSSIER”
