Presentation on Brexit, social media and fake news given at the University of Costa Rica for the Chair of Information Literacy and Interculturalism,

1. Brexit, Social Media and Fake
News – the challenge to
interculturalism.
Professor Marcus Leaning
University of Winchester

2. The EU
• Brexit is the process of the UK leaving the European Union.
• EU emerged from post WW2 efforts to prevent war – idea that
economically interdependent countries tend not to fight each other.
• A process of gradual integration with waves of countries joining and new
treaties deepening ties.
• A single market of 28 countries 500 million people.
• Four ‘freedoms’:
• Goods – a common customs union;
• Capital – banking, trading shares, owning property, investing.
• Services – operate in any country;
• Movement – move to and work in any country;

3. 22nd June 2016 UK Referendum
held.
33,614,074 (72.21%) voted
Leave 17,410,742 51.9%
Remain 16,141,241 48.1%
29nd March 2017 Prime Minister
Theresa May invoked Article 50 of
the Lisbon Treaty announcing the
UK will leave the EU on Friday 29nd
March 2019.

4. How (and why) did this happen?
Did social media and fake news play a part?
What impact is it having for the idea of
interculturalism?

5. The UK and the EU
• Britain joined the EEC (forerunner to the EU) in 1973, a referendum to remain
was held in 1975, 2/3 majority to do so.
• No overwhelming majority in the UK population either way on membership and
it changes.
• However, there are pockets of people with very strong feelings both to remain
and to leave. This crosses the political spectrum.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
1977 1979 1981 1983 1987 1989 1991 1993 1994 1997 1999 2001 2003 2007 2011 2012 2014
Voting intentions on EU membership
Data from IPSOS Mori
Stay in Get out
Thatcher / Major Conservative
Blair Labour Cameron Conservative / Lib Dem
coalition

6. The road to Brexit
The UK, Europe and the coalition
• Cameron takes leadership of Conservative Party in
2005.
• New policy direction, social liberal PM.
• Takes the party towards the centre.
• Labour lose 2010 election after 13 years in power.
• Conservatives form coalition with Liberal Democrats.
• About half of Conservative Party anti-European Union
fearing greater integration and control and a desire to
control borders more strictly.
• Also rise of Right wing United Kingdom Independence
Party (UKIP) – very anti European Union.
• Object to:
• Migration;
• Loss of sovereignty.

7. The referendum… and after.
• Inside the Conservative Party a lot of fighting –
UKIP poaching members, calls for a referendum
on EU membership after perceptions of high
numbers of migrants and the migration crisis
(post Afghan war, north African and middle east
Spring).
• 2015 Conservatives win election – Cameron
agrees to call a referendum.
• 2016 Referendum, Cameron resigns, May takes
over.
• 2017 election May no majority, forms a pact
with DUP.
• Currently no deal about what will happen post
29 March 2019…

8. The Leave campaign(s)
• The Leave side had two
separate campaigns:
• Vote Leave was the official
one.
• Made economic arguments;
• Very strong on PR.
• Leave.EU was unofficial,
supported by Farage,
significant popular support.
• Focus on immigration.
• More emotive.

9. Campaign Styles:
Leave
• ‘Take back control’
• Money – spend it on the NHS;
• Borders;
• Immigration;
• Restore traditional power in trade;
• Make own laws.
• A simple, powerful message about restoration and
unity.
• Emotional in content, played to ideas about nation,
an ‘enemy’ and freedom.
• Aim was to induce behavior rather than
communicate ideas.

10. The Remain Campaign
• Official campaign was
Britain Stronger in
Europe.
• Cameron aligned with it
but not leading it.
• Appealed to reason and
economics.
• Largely negative – listed
the bad things that would
happen - labeled as
‘Project Fear’.

11. Campaign Styles:
Remain
• Key message was economic and
rather mixed – a defensive
approach.
• Retain the status quo.
• Appealed to economic rationality.
• Stability.
• More of the same - didn’t offer
anything new.
• More a public communication
campaign than an persuasive one.

12. Big spending on big data referendum
• Remain £12.1 million (Also a government leaflet - £9.3 million);
• Vote Leave £9.8 million (along with other campaigns spent £3.5
million on Aggregate IQ who are linked to Cambridge Analytica).
• Leave EU £3.2 million (they also illegally over spent by £675,000) all
spent entirely on digital.
• Both spent heavily on digital.
• Leave spending more and had virtually no print media advertising.
• Remain made use of digital and print media.

13. Personal data
• Both sides used personalised voter profiles driven by bespoke analytic
software
• Voter Identification and Contact - Leave + Facebook profiles provided by
AggregateIQ
• NationBuilder - remain.
• Driven by social media analytics, purchased information from
electoral registration, newspaper preferences, shopping choices,
canvassing.
• Scored each voter on their likely voting preference and compile
target lists of potential ‘swingers’ for the campaign teams who then
used canvassing, email and other methods to engage them.

14. Digital Campaign:
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.
• Remain made some very bad errors in handling non-social
media digital.

15. 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.

16. Social media
Platform Vote Leave/ Leave EU Britain Stronger in
Europe.
Facebook Vote Leave Facebook 534,212
Leave.EU 762,877
561,277
Twitter Vote Leave 68,211
Leave.EU 110,319 followers.
53,762
• Main social media used by both campaigns were
Facebook and Twitter.
• Allowed precision targeting and data driven campaigns.

17. Posts
• Social media used to share lots of news stories from newspapers and TV clips, visual images and memes
about the referendum.
• On Twitter Leave posts were retweeted 7 times more than Remain posts.
• Bots very active – most active non-official accounts on Twitter were bots.

18. 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.

19. Fake News
• Two forms of fake news:
• Real Fake News Completely fictitious
information produced by sites to generate
ad revenue then shared on social media.
Often looks like real sites. Used heavily in
US election.
• Fake Real News - Fake information
published by ‘reputable’ news
organisations and then shared on social
media.

20. Fake Real News
Unlike US Presidential elections, Real Fake
News was not detected in EU referendum.
However, British Newspapers printed a lot of
stories of ‘questionable’ objectivity and
truthfulness.
Also published a lot of questionable claims
made by politicians and pundits.

21. Since the referendum…
• Theresa May triggered Article 50 (the leave action) 29th March 2017.
• If all goes as planned UK will exit EU on 29th March 2019.
• Since then lots of problems within the different political parties:
• Conservatives split between ‘Hard’ (no trade deal and WTO rules) and ‘Soft’
Brexit (a trade deal). May is very weak (no majority means she has to make
deals all the time, any division will bring down government)
• Labour also for Brexit but a softer versions but has internal problems with
Anti-Semitism.
• Changes in wider culture and the ‘place’ of migrants in British life.

22. UK multiculturalism and interculturalism
• UK always had migrants – idea of an indigenous white population very
questionable.
• Since the 1960s the approach to migrant communities has been to allow for
cultural diversity:
• 1966 Home Secretary Roy Jenkins defined ‘integration’ as: “not as a flattening process of
assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of
mutual tolerance.”
• Treat migrants well and they will embrace British culture and values.
• They come to Britain because of these values.
• Evidence indicates that over generations people from different communities do
consider themselves more British and identify with British values.
• Brexit is part of a series of events and phenomena that challenge this ideal.

23. Challenges…
• Various reinterpretations of
immigration and multicultural
policy.
• Claims that it has ‘failed’.
• Academic research indicates it has not
and actually works well in comparison
to other systems.
• More recently (since 2010) the Right
asserting resistance to immigration
– ‘Hostile Environment’ policy.
• Extremist Islamic terrorist attacks.
• Rise of far Right movements.

24. Wider political culture…
• Hate crimes up 23% in 2017.
• Anti-Muslim street attacks increased by 58% in
months post Brexit.
• Prof Tendayi Achiume UN Special Rapporteur on
racism:
“The environment leading up to the referendum, the environment
during the referendum, and the environment after the referendum
has made racial and ethnic minorities more vulnerable to racial
discrimination and intolerance.” (2018)
Home Office Report “Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2016/17”

25. Migrant views – young people
• 49.35% of young people from outside the UK reported an increase in the
amount of racist abuse they have received since Brexit.
• “I feel European more than anything. The Brexit Referendum has me
severely worried for the future of this country, its people and foreigners
living here.”(Slodan, 15, Czech Republic).
• “I moved here when I was six years old, and even though I speak English
with a British accent as a result of using it for over 11 years, when people
find out I am Polish, I often face racism and discrimination. I find that I
belong as long as no one finds out my nationality.” (Artur, 17, Poland)
N. Tyrrell, E. Käkelä, S. Corson, D. Sime, C Kelly, C. McMellon and M. Moska, “Eastern European Young People’s Feelings
of Belonging: Any place in Brexit Britain?” Policy Briefing No.2, ESRC, 2018.

26. • “I was once talking about Brexit with my lecturer. He said I was lucky
because you can’t tell I’m Polish by the way I speak. I don’t want to
stay in the country in which I need to hide my nationality to be
treated equally.” (Kolin, 17, Poland).
• I have experienced “incidents of being called a prostitute based on
my background, being told to go back to my own country, a couple of
more severe incidents included having rocks thrown at me and me
being chased down the street by a group of teenage boys.’ (Oksana,
18, Poland)
• “I don’t feel as much as a part of England after Brexit as I’m uncertain
of the future.” (Dorota, 18, Poland).
N. Tyrrell, E. Käkelä, S. Corson, D. Sime, C Kelly, C. McMellon and M. Moska, “Eastern European Young People’s Feelings
of Belonging: Any place in Brexit Britain?” Policy Briefing No.2, ESRC, 2018.

27. No happy ending, and maybe worse to come.
• The damage to the intercultural and attitudes towards
multicultural in Britain is evident:
• A definite rise in the amount and virulence of discourse of
an anti-intercultural nature - nativism;
• Particularly evident in certain social media echo chambers;
• Fuelled by borderline racist and xenophobic discourse
‘normalised’ being normalised in the popular press;
• General rise in hate-crime and xenophobic attitudes.

28. Final question:
Is Brexit a cause or a symptom?
What to make of this phenomena?
• Academics have offered explanations that we can group into three
positions:
1. Brexit unleashed dragons;
2. Brexit used by political entrepreneurs to secure career progress and
power;
3. Brexit a consequence of the form of British late modernity.

29. 1. Brexit unleashed dragons.
• Brexit gives license to the racism that was
already there in British culture.
• Acceptable for people to say things and
behave as they had wanted to for a while
and gives legitimacy to xenophobic
attitudes.
• Good news is these are not new, often
come out in times of political crisis, can be
dealt with and peace restored.
• A LOT of effort to do so though.

30. 2. Political Entrepreneurs
• Politicians use a crisis to secure power.
• During a period of turmoil they adopt
a position that distinguishes them
from others.
• This often involves adopting populist,
nationalistic and occasionally racist
positions and discourse.
• Place themselves as outsiders to the
system who will reform the system.
• Problem is that their careers do
damage to social fabric.

31. 3. British late modernity
• Britain’s experience of late Modernity is one of a decreased role in
world politics.
• Rise of other powers and even former colonies.
• Presented with the idea that the best option was within a larger
trading block with other European countries – consequences of this
for national pride.
• This coupled with a period of severe austerity following financial
crash left many disenchanted with politics as it is.
• Brexit vote a way of offering resistance the existing relations and
having a revolution against a ‘foreign’ enemy.

32. Questions?