Tweeting Brexit

Social Media and the Aftermath of the EU Referendum

Maja Šimunjak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000584967
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Tweeting Brexit presents the most thorough examination of the role that the most political social network, Twitter, played in creating, negotiating, and challenging Brexit narratives during the process of UK's exiting of the European Union.

Working with multiple methods, from digital media analysis to interviews, and a wide variety of data, the book offers scrutiny of Brexit-related tweets and discourses they promote and gives voice to key actors – UK citizens, political and media actors – to explain why and how they've used Twitter to talk about Brexit and with what outcomes. In doing so, the author engages with, and enhances, a range of theoretical discussions central to our understanding of the role of social media in politics, from permanent campaigning on social media to social media journalism. With a reach far beyond the central Brexit case study, the book discusses new trends and practices in political communication and contextualises them with references to empirical evidence.

The book is key reading for all students and researchers in digital media and politics, digital methods, and related areas, as well as anyone interested in developing their understanding of the role that Twitter plays in political communications.

1 Introduction Tweeting politics

DOI: 10.4324/9781003188995-1

There were only a few things that could de-throne Twitter hashtags, such as #BrexitVote and #WithdrawalBill but also #BrexitShambles and #BrexitReality, in the days surrounding key discussions of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) – Brexit, during the EU referendum implementation period in the United Kingdom. Football occasionally came on top of the trending list, and sometimes rugby. Since March 2020, also coronavirus. But that’s basically it. Especially during the days when the British House of Commons (the Parliament) was debating Withdrawal Agreements (WAs) negotiated with the EU, its amendments, and/or motions which Members of Parliament (MPs) have been filing to try to influence governments’ actions on the issue, it appeared that the country was living and breathing Brexit.

Political actors, such as British government and Parliament members, as well as lobby and campaign actors, and EU and its Member States representatives, were keen to push their perspectives on what is going on by writing columns, giving media interviews, and posting on social media. We saw British prime ministers (PMs), first Theresa May, then Boris Johnson, posting videos on their social media accounts explaining why their WAs – i.e., ‘deals’ – were ‘fantastic,’ ‘delivering Brexit’ which British people have voted for. Simultaneously, we’ve seen opposing political voices outlining all that’s wrong with these deals, motions, and political leaders. The jargon of Brexit and parliamentary procedures became part of everyday political talk, with, for example, discussions of Erskine May, the guide to parliamentary procedure, legislative process stages, and parliamentary timetables, becoming commonplace. Illustratively, one of the most liked and shared tweets from a head of mission of one of the EU Member States in this period has been that of the Swedish ambassador Torbjörn Sohlström, who tweeted on 24 January 2019: ‘I never realised that being ambassador in London meant spending so much time reading about parliamentary procedures.’

Of course, the media were closely following minutiae of Brexit, camping for days in front of Number 10, the British PM’s office and residence, and on College Green, next to the Palace of Westminster, where peers and lords debated and voted on Brexit. Journalists often spoke about ‘historic’ and ‘unprecedented’ events, actions, and outcomes, the weight of these words at risk of diminishing with the course of events which made historic and unprecedented becoming almost a daily occurrence. And yet, it seems the topic managed to hold the public’s interest even when after almost a year of debates surrounding the WA, the media spoke about its return to Parliament for the fourth time in October 2019 in terms of yet another ‘historic’ and ‘decisive’ Brexit moment. Indeed, the data shows that the number of average daily viewers watching Parliament’s dedicated website Parliamentlive.tv increased by more than 200% from 2017 to 2019, with BBC Parliament, public service media television channel broadcasting proceedings from the Parliament, at times of Brexit votes being as popular as the long-running British soap opera Eastenders, which regularly attracts over four million viewers (Marshall, 2019; Thorpe, 2019). This is not surprising given that representative surveys showed throughout this period that the public saw Brexit as the most important issue the country was facing (YouGov, 2020b). Plugged in and eager to know what is happening, citizens have been learning about, thinking of, and discussing Brexit in their homes, workplaces, caffes, pubs, trains, tubes, and buses; face to face, over the phone, via emails, digital messenger services, and social media (Coleman, 2020). On social media, and Twitter in particular, they were seen joining the key debates by tweeting with the aforementioned hashtags, such as #BrexitVote and #WithdrawalBill, but many were also found to clearly position themselves in the discussion through a choice of more subjective hashtags, such as #Leavemeansleave and #StopBrexit.

Given Brexit has come to be considered as one of the major political events of recent history, it does not surprise that the topic has been already covered in many words, pictures, and minutes of audio and video material. Its communicative elements – i.e., how it has been presented, consumed, interpreted, and discussed – have also been at the focus of many publications, including those scholarly. The majority of these focus on the 2016 EU referendum campaign, with its political communication discourses and practices receiving detailed analysis (see, for example, Buckledee, 2018; Jackson, Thorsen, & Wring, 2016; Ridge-Newman, León-Solís, & O’Donnell, 2018; Tong & Zuo, 2021). However, the political communication aspects of the post-referendum period, from June 2016 to January 2020 when the United Kingdom left the EU, are in comparison underexplored. Also, those academic pieces that have started to unpack the political communication during the Brexit process refer either to a particular political communication actor, like Coleman (2020) does in his book, which explores how citizens talk about Brexit, or on specific elements of Brexit discussions as they have played out on different platforms (Charteris-Black, 2019; Koller, Kopf, & Miglbauer, 2019; Zappettini & Krzyżanowski, 2021). Many of these touch upon the use and role of social media in Brexit, but these platforms are mostly examined as only one of the mediums employed in the communication, with a rare focus on communicators themselves.

This book aims to contribute to this body of knowledge, which examines the political communication aspects of Brexit in the post-referendum period, and enhance the existing scholarship in three main ways. One, it focuses on Twitter, the most political of social networks, as the communication medium and provides a detailed analysis of its use during the Brexit process. Twitter, it is argued, matters, as it is an important tool of political communication in the United Kingdom. Reportedly, it is being used by more than 90% of British politicians and journalists and by around a third of its citizens (Akhtar & Morrison, 2019; Broersma & Graham, 2016; Newman et al., 2021). And while its use in the 2016 EU referendum and its immediate aftermath has been widely examined (Bouko & Garcia, 2019; Hänska & Bauchowitz, 2017; Llewellyn & Cram, 2016; Tong & Zuo, 2021), we know very little about its role in the post-referendum period – i.e., during the Brexit process. This book aims to fill this gap.

Two, the book moves from digital media analysis, common in analyses of political communication, including Brexit, on Twitter, and puts at the centre of the study the political communication actors – political actors, media, and citizens – by giving them a voice to explain and contextualise their actions and lived experience of communicating about Brexit. Specifically, the discussions presented in this book are based on a robust multimethod approach which aims to triangulate data and, most importantly, give voice to key actors. Like many other Twitter studies, it employs digital media analysis, but unlike others, it also draws on digital ethnography, interviews with media and political actors, and a representative survey of British citizens.

And three, the discussions presented in this book provide the state of play of how, why, and with what perceived consequences main political communication actors use social media, which furthers our understanding of the developments of key practices in the field, from permanent campaigning on social media and social media diplomacy to social media journalism and citizens’ political participation in this space. By doing so, it contributes primarily to the literature on political communication, which can in general terms be defined as communication about politics and political issues among the three key actors – political actors, media, and citizens (McNair, 2018). It specifically speaks to a subsection of the field which is concerned with social media, which are usually understood as online platforms that enable users to consume and create content – i.e., be informed and inform – as well as network and interact with other users (Klinger & Svensson, 2016).

The questions of which political communication actors use social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, in what purpose and with what effect have been at the forefront of political communication research in the past decade (see, for example, Bruns, Enli, Skogerbø, Larsson, & Christensen, 2016; Dennis, 2019; Katz, Barris, Jain, Barris, & Jain, 2013; Ott & Dickinson, 2019; Penney, 2017; Trottier & Fuchs, 2015). And given political communication can be seen to sit at the intersection of political science, political psychology and sociology, and media and communication studies, studies of political communication on social media make regular contributions to a range of related disciplines, as is also the case with the study presented in this book. Specifically, this book primarily draws on two key theories to contextualise actors’ behaviours, motives, and perceived consequences of tweeting Brexit. Firstly, the uses and gratifications theory (UGT), which, in the context of social media, works from the premise that users are active in deciding how and why they use particular networks, and they receive a range of gratification in this process. And while in Chapter 5, which focuses on British citizens, this is the key theoretical framework guiding analysis, in other chapters actors’ uses and gratifications from Twitter regarding Brexit are examined with a focus on novel and underexplored concepts from a range of relevant disciplines, including political science, international relations, digital media, journalism, and sociology. For example, regarding the analysis of British political actors’ behaviour, the book examines the use of Twitter in permanent campaigning, as well as examining the behaviours of increasingly important actors and groups that campaign on political issues without a political mandate. Regarding the EU diplomatic actors, the book explores framing and message discipline as tools and techniques in portraying the EU’s internal cohesiveness in public diplomacy. In relation to journalists’ behaviour, the book offers analysis of opportunities and challenges of tweeting about a controversial topic with reference to sociological theories of boundary work and emotional labour. Secondly, the book relies on democratic theories focused on pluralism, and in particular deliberative democracy and agonistic pluralism, in examining the extent to which Brexit discussions on Twitter, and how they are perceived by key actors, are of a quality that promotes participation and engagement with diverse users and views on the topic. This aspect is in detail examined in Chapter 6. Overall, the book represents not only an extensive, if not comprehensive, overview of Twitter’s role in Brexit discussions but also a resource that more widely documents and deliberates some of the key emerging trends in political communication in the era of social media.

This introductory chapter provides background and context to the study by outlining existing research related to political communication actors and social media, and in particular Twitter, and introducing the case study of Brexit. These are followed by the summary of the multimethod research design which informs the book and the outline of the book structure.

1.1 Social media and political actors

The US President Barack Obama is considered to have introduced and normalised the use of social media in politicians’ behaviour, transforming political communication through campaigning and governing on social media (Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015). In his 2008 campaign, he used 15 social networking sites, many of these being seen as employed in a sophisticated political manner to such an extent that the election was branded simultaneously ‘Facebook election’ (Fraser & Dutta, 2008), ‘Twitter election’ (Weaver, 2008), and ‘YouTube election’ (Lynskey, 2008). And if Obama has been called the ‘[s]ocial media president’ (Katz et al., 2013), then this title could be seen as transferred to his successor, Donald Trump, who came to power with a strong presence on Twitter, which he himself attributed to his 2016 victory in the US presidential elections (McCaskill, 2017). Trump continued using Twitter daily throughout his presidency to communicate about political matters, with his tweets often driving the news cycle in the United States and abroad, being widely discussed among political communication actors, and receiving extensive attention from scholars of political communication (Boczkowski & Papacharissi, 2018; Ott & Dickinson, 2019). In general, since Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008, the studies of politicians’ use of social media have grown substantially, with scientists all over the world examining which politicians, how, why, and with what effect communicate on social media (for an early overview of studies focusing on the use of Twitter in politicians’ communication, see Vergeer, 2015). Among other things, politicians’ use of social media has been examined as a technique which could help decrease the democratic deficit, observed in many modern democracies, by enabling politicians to reach voters, even those not particularly interested in politics, bond with them, and increase the trust in political actors and institutions (Vergeer, 2015). Interestingly, rare studies have found that politicians’ use of social media has led to reinvigoration of politics or democracy, although analyses point to country-, context-, and even actor-specific peculiarities, which hinder generalisations.

And while many studies have looked at the use of social media in campaigns and by candidates, communications of the executive and their officials, and particularly their social media aspects, are a fairly under-researched study area. Medaglia and Zheng (2017) mapped government social media research and found 93 studies published on the topic. However, their overview was based on a wide definition of government, including the entire public sector – i.e., not only the national-level executive (cabinet) and its officials but also local governments, embassies, police departments, national committees, local political leaders, etc. The overview of existing literature focusing on a narrow definition of government – i.e., cabinet and its members and their communicative behaviour – suggests that there is scholarly interest in governments’ social media strategies in times of crisis (Haman, 2020; Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Rufai & Bunce, 2020), as well as some focus on heads of the executives’ social media behaviour (Aharony, 2012; Bulovsky, 2019; Lalancette & Raynauld, 2019; Rufai & Bunce, 2020; Šimunjak & Caliandro, 2019).

DePaula, Dincelli, and Harrison (2018) suggest that governments can use social media for several main purposes, including information broadcasting, self-promotion and branding, seek...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Tweeting politics
• 2 British political actors: #GetBrexitDone vs #PeoplesVote
• 3 The European Union: #CitizensRights
• 4 Journalists: #BrexitFacts
• 5 Citizens: #LeaveMeansLeave vs #StopBrexit
• 6 The uncivil argument?
• 7 Conclusions: Tweeting Brexit
• References
• Index