paper delivered at the University of limerick discussing the role of digital media in the Brexit referendum campaigns

1. The role of digital media in the
BREXIT referendum campaigns
Marcus Leaning
University of Winchester

2. 23rd June 2016
Population 64,928,787
Registered voters 46,501,241
Voted 33,578,016 72.2%
Rejected ballots 26,033 0.08%
Remain 16,141,241 48.07% (34.71%) ((24.85%))
Leave 17,410,742 51.85% (37.44%) ((26.815))

3. BREXIT and digital media
• Brief recap of the events and context.
• Consideration of the use social and digital
media by the campaigns.
– Compare the campaigns;
• Who won the ‘digital referendum’ (aside of
the real one) and why.

4. The UK and the EU
• Britain joins the EEC in 1973, a referendum to remain in
1975, 2/3 majority to do so.
• UK population has historically been largely in favour of
membership – British Social Attitudes records few
hiccups, 1984 large payments (T. wins rebate), 2000
Blair wants to join Euro, 2011, ‘migrant crisis’ 2011..
• However a strong vein of anti-Europe in Tory party but
also adherents on the left.
Curtis and Evans, 2016 British Social Attitudes 32 – Britain and Europe.

5. The past ten years:
The UK, Europe and the coalition
• Cameron takes leadership of
Conservative Party in 2005.
• New policy direction, revises One
Nationism, social liberal PM.
• Takes the party towards the centre
– hoovers up disaffected Labour
voters:
– war,
– austerity,
– MPs expenses.
• Labour lose 2010 election after 13
years in power.
• Tories form coalition with Liberal
Democrats.

6. The rise of UKIP
• UKIP founded in 1993, rocky start but
gradually gains strength, Farage elected
leader in 2006.
• Social conservative policies, respectable
M/C nationalism
• Farage resigns 2009, UKIP does badly in
2010 election, Farage re-elected leader.
• Post 2010 starts to gain strength:
– Disaffected traditional M/C Conservative
voters - old Thatcher supporters skeptical
of Europe, elitism and social liberal policies.
– Disaffected W/C Labour voters - concerned
about austerity, economy and immigration.
– Does well in EU elections in 2014 wining
most votes –first time non Tory or Lab won
a UK election with most British seats in
Euro parliament.

7. The referendum
• Tory right push for a referendum.
• Cameron initially rejects calls for a referendum but says
if Tories win in ‘15 they will hold one.
• Tories win in ‘15 and Cameron says he will hold a
referendum after an attempt to renegotiate a ‘new
settlement’ for the UK on, immigration, economic
governance, bail outs, eu worker benefits etc.
• Only partially successful but not on free movement of
people.
• As a result of this failure the referendum is called 23rd
June.
• Campaigning starts 22nd February.

8. The Leave campaign(s)
• Electoral Commission
designates Vote Leave as the
official leaving EU campaign.
• Mainly economic arguments.
• Key players are Gove,
Johnson, IDS and some
Labour MPs.
• Very strong PR esp new
media.
• Leave.EU was unofficial,
supported by Farage,
significant popular support.
• Focus on immigration.

9. The Remain Campaign
• Official campaign is Britain
Stronger in Europe.
• Cameron aligned but not
leading it.
• Appealed to reason and
economics.
• Largely negative – labeled
as ‘Project Fear’.
• Badly thought through,
poorly integrated, weak
message.

10. Big data referendum
• Money is sent on digital media:
– Remain £12 million;
– Leave £16 million.
• Used personalised voter profiles driven by analytic bespoke
software
– Voter Identification and Contact - Leave.
– NationBuilder - remain.
• Driven by social media analytics, electoral registration,
newspaper preferences, shopping choices, canvassing.
• Scored each voter on their likely hood to vote each way and
compile target lists for the campaign teams who then used
canvassing, email and other methods to engage them.

11. Contrasting Campaigns:
Basic Message
• Leave – Vote Leave /
Leave. EU.
– ‘Dynamic’, taking control -
restoring balance.
– Instruction to act.
• Remain - Britain Stronger
in Europe.
– passive – status quo.
– Poor name choice.
• Emotional decision,
economic secondary.

12. Web pages
• Leave.EU and Vote
Leave had ‘punchier’
websites.
• Humorous but still
conveying message.
– Leave.EU immigration
– Vote Leave economic
• Remain’s main
message is safety and
economic.
– But quite dry.

13. Facebook
• Vote Leave Facebook page -
534,212 followers,
• Leave.EU 762,877 followers but
substantial overlap.
• Remain had 561,277.
• All campaigns used FB
extensively spending millions
on advertising.
• Lots of fake news stories /
political opinions circulated.
• FB also hosted a ‘debate’
between Eliza doolitttle and
Katie Hopkins.

14. Google Search engine
• Vote Leave spent on non-organic adverts for
key terms during campaign.
• Had their ad placed top of search for register to
vote.

15. Twitter
• Vote Leave 68,000 followers.
• Leave.EU 110,000 followers.
• Stronger In 53,000 followers.
• Leave posts retweeted 7 times more than remain posts.
• Tweets about referendum dominated by Leave though Remain did improve
towards the end.
• Evidence of bots being used on both sides to repost tweets.
– Most active non-official accounts from each side were bots. Also other political
(pro-Palistinian) bots became repurposed to repost Leave messages.
NR Labs – University of Edinburgh

16. Instagram
• Most popular social media amongst young voters (18-
30), less bombastic than Twitter, real name policy.
• Users post images an label them with hashtags.
• 32.6% users clear leave advocates.
• 12.3% remain advocates.
• Leave posters more active:
• 35% of posts all posts were for leave, 7% for remain.
• Leave posts 25.5% more likes and 19.7% more
comments.

17. Other digital media…
• Leave developed an
app-
– regular calls to action
• ‘post this to you social
media feed!’
• 5 push notifications on
voting day;
– Sent contact list to
Leave HQ.
– Over 200,000 actions
because of it.

18. Discussion
Remain’s social media disaster
• Remain clearly lost the social/ digital media
referendum as well as the real one.
• Both sides used digital media and used the
same social media and spent a lot of money.
• However the tone and manner of what they
did was different.

19. Remain
• With a few exceptions the tone of the Remain
campaign was rational, economic and
unemotional.
• Intention to communicate reasoned arguments
that would result in a logical decision to vote to
remain.
• An almost ‘classical’ model of political
communications:
– voter is rational and will make their decision based
upon considered self-interest.
– Just need to provide them with the right information.

20. Leave
• Though they did do economics the tone (and adherence to
facts) was different.
• Tone was bombastic, emotional, assertive and humorous.
• They kept winning the debates, through humour, occasional
lies, calls to emotion and skilled use of rhetoric
• Not measured, overt emotional calls to action.
• More a PR campaign than a political communication one.
• An approach that suited certain key forms of social media.
– Twitter and Facebook – short, fact-light, argumentative,
– Instagram – visual memes.

21. Conclusion
• Leave made the debate an emotional one,
especially about immigration.
• The campaigns were carried out through
digital and social media.
• These channels afforded an advantage to the
kind of campaign run by Leave.
• Leave used the nature of the media to their
advantage.
• Remain could not compete.