PLAN DE ADMINISTRACIÓN AMBIENTAL

This thesis investigated the influence newspapers have on voters in referendums. The Brexit referendum in the UK was used as basis for this research. Based on the Agenda-Setting theory three possible effects of newspapers on their readers were proposed. Newspapers were assumed to be able to affect what people think about, how they think about and how well they feel informed about the referendum. Concerning what people think about, it was expected that readers would echo the topics that newspaper associate with the referendum when reporting on it. It was found out that, at large, all 4 newspapers reported on the same issues. While there were small differences between them, the most important issues in the investigated timeframe for the newspapers were the economy, finance and migration. As such, these topics were expected to also be on the minds of readers when asked which topics they associated with the referendum. However, it was found out that this does not seem to be the case for this particular referendum on the basis of this thesis’ data, which to reiterate suffered from a small sample size. Readers reported that they considered matters of trade, travel and their own attitude towards the EU far more often than what the newspapers reported on. This result is not in line with the agenda setting theory. While most of the research done on agenda setting revolves around elections and not referendums, it was shown that citizen’s key issues tend to be very close to what the news report on (McCombs, 2002; McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Weaver et al., 1981). The fact that this could not be

replicated in this study offers multiple interpretations. First of all, it is possible that Agenda Setting theory is not applicable on referendums. In a similar study to this one, Wirth et al. (2010) also had troubles finding evidence for Agenda Setting theory in referendums. On the basis of a 2006 referendum on asylum law in Switzerland they conducted an exhaustive panel study on which arguments the pro-camp, the contra-camp, the citizens and the media mentioned. Then they compared in how far the arguments mentioned by the public and the news matched up. While they were able to match the arguments of the news with the

arguments of members of the pro-camp that had a high reliance on media, they were unable to find this relationship for members of the contra-camp or people with low media reliance (Wirth et al., 2010). However, they also mention an effect of reverse causality, where they observed that arguments were first mentioned by the pro-camp and the media only picked them up at a later time. Furthermore, they pose that a reason for the weak match on the contra-side is that the contra-camp was unable to reach out their arguments (Wirth et al.,

31 2010). Therefore, it seems that the Agenda Setting theory cannot be transferred easily onto referendums. It is possible that the success the theory has on explaining the media effects in a referendum depends on the nature of the campaigns. In the Swiss referendum both sides were fairly convinced that the pro-side would win the referendum (Wirth et al., 2010). In the Brexit referendum however, the outcome was unclear up until the very end. Furthermore, the campaigns were very emotional on both sides. The “remain” campaign was accused of “scaremongering” (Tapsfield & Sculthorpe, 2016) and even called “Project Fear” due to the pictures of poverty and war that David Cameron painted (Tapsfield & Dathan, 2016). At the same time the “leave” campaign was caught over exaggerating multiple times in how they described how much money the EU would cost the UK each week ("The Guardian view on the Leave campaign: show some respect for truth," 2016) or how well the economy would be doing in the case of a Brexit. For instance, when debating how a Brexit would affect

pensions, “remain” campaigner George Osborne claimed that it would cost every pensioner up to 32,000 pounds, only to get immediately criticised by experts that claimed that the EU would drive down pension rates and that therefore leaving the union would be equally viable (Martin et al., 2016). In the end, “leave” campaigner Michael Gove even exclaimed that the people would be “sick of experts” since both sides were very fast to dismiss the claims of the other side (Tapsfield & Sculthorpe, 2016). This “arms race of ever-more-lurid claims and counter-claims” between the two sides of the campaigns left voters confused about what a Brexit really meant for the UK (Jones, 2016).

On the other hand, it was possible to connect how well people feel informed about the referendum with the number of articles their newspaper published on the referendum. When tested, the number of articles served as a predictor for how well people feel informed about the referendum on a 5-point scale based on self-reports. Therefore newspapers that intend to act as an informer for the public could potential improve their impact by publishing more articles. In other words, the intensity of the news coverage seems to affect the competence of the readers. Albeit there are limits in the measurement of the competence when asking for a self-report, the results found indicate evidence for the proposal by Hobolt (2005) that campaign intensity affects voter competence. However, this fact can also be used to pursue an agenda.

The third connection investigated, how people thought about the referendum, showed that the position newspapers took towards the referendum – advocating “leave” or “remain” – correlated with the intended voting behaviour of their readers. People that read newspapers that ran a “leave” campaign like The Sun were more likely to vote “leave” than readers of newspapers that ran a “remain” campaign like The Guardian, whose readers were more likely to vote “remain”. Therefore, even though both newspapers reported on largely the

32 same issues as shown at the example of the VAT bills on electricity (Bloom, 2016a; Dathan, 2016) and the criticism towards Sadiq Khan for campaigning together with Prime Minister David Cameron(Mason, 2016; Sculthorpe, 2016; Smith, 2016), the way the issues were framed had an observable impact on their readers. The discussion on the strength of this relationship and its vulnerability to a third confounding variable revealed that a possible connection to partisanship exists, but that this relationship is unlikely to be causal. Instead, a voters’ political orientation might explain the suggested connection between the partisanship and the choice of newspapers, as a relationship between the partisanship and the voting behaviour in the referendum could not be found. This shows that the newspapers have substantial power in affecting the public depending on the way they frame their stories, what they report about and how much they report about it even in referendums. So even though this thesis could not find evidence to extend the Agenda Setting theory on European

referendums, framing effects could be applied and observed in the case of the Brexit. This is also in line with what De Vreese and Boomgarden (2006) found in their research on the attitude towards the enlargement of the EU.

Despite the small sample size of this studies’ survey, the analysis of this thesis managed to fit in and contribute to the small existing literature about the effects news media have on referendums. While there seems to be reasons to believe that framing theory is well applicable on referendums, the place of Agenda Setting still needs to be determined. Additional research into how the news can affect the issues that are on the publics’ mind would be very valuable to help understanding the effects of media on referendums. On the one hand, clarifying the effects of partisanship and political affiliation on the voting behaviour in referendums and newspaper choice could strengthen the findings on framing effects found in this thesis. Secondly, further examining the applicability of the agenda setting theory on media campaigns in referendums could lead to an increased understanding of voting behaviour in those. An opportunity for such a research could be the upcoming Hungarian referendum on the migrant quota which will be held on the 2nd of October, 2016. As the topic at hand is similar to many arguments of the Brexit’s “leave” campaign, further insights could be gathered by examining what arguments the news bring up, which arguments the public identifies and how well these arguments match. Furthermore it could be wise to include an indicator for the nature of the arguments to see how rational or emotional they are

conducted. If this referendum and this measure could be compared to either the Brexit referendum or another upcoming referendum in 2017, it could be possible to determine the effects of the nature of the arguments for the effects of media campaigns on referendums.

33 6. Sources

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36 7. Appendix

This appendix contains all original data that was generated for this thesis, as well as additional information on how the data was gathered.

Appendix 1: A table that shows the topics mentioned by each newspaper, both as a number count and a percentage. This table was used to create figures 7, 8 and 9 and contains a large part of the results of the content analysis. The positions of the newspapers were counted additionally and displayed in figures 3-6. The data for them can be found in Appendix 4, Appendix 5, Appendix 6 and Appendix 7.

Appendix 2: The online questionnaire that respondents filled in. The website used to create the survey was surveymonkey.com. The direct link to the survey is

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XLYVSZ8. Each subject had its own page. This means that between questions 3 and 4, questions 5 and 6, and questions 7 and 8 respondents were required to get to the next page.

The Daily Mail The Daily Mirror The Guardian The Sun Total

Total Percentage Total Percentage Total Percentage Total Percentage Total Percentage

Economy 46 23 20 23 58 23 10 15 134 22,26 Migration 31 16 18 21 39 15 12 18 100 16,61 Finance 42 21 15 17 30 12 9 13 96 15,95 EU-Attitude 9 5 1 1 30 12 10 15 50 8,31 Jobs 10 5 7 8 9 4 4 6 30 4,98 Regulation 7 4 1 1 15 6 3 4 26 4,32 Travel 10 5 3 3 9 4 2 3 24 3,99 Rights 3 2 9 10 10 4 1 1 23 3,82 Security 9 5 2 2 5 2 2 3 18 2,99 Trade 8 4 0 0 8 3 1 1 17 2,82 Healthcare 3 2 2 2 8 3 2 3 15 2,49 Military 3 2 0 0 6 2 3 4 12 1,99 Sovereignty 2 1 2 2 5 2 3 4 12 1,99 Future 6 3 0 0 5 2 0 0 11 1,83 Turkey 1 1 0 0 8 3 0 0 9 1,50 Influence 3 2 1 1 2 1 2 3 8 1,33 Pensions 3 2 3 3 0 0 2 3 8 1,33 Science 0 0 2 2 4 2 1 1 7 1,16 Education 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 2 0,33 Total 196 100 87 100 252 100 67 100 602 100

38 Appendix 3: The coded results of the survey. Answers for the ordinal questions that can be seen in the survey in A1 were coded in ascending order, with 1 representing the lowest values like “less than 5 minutes” in question 2 or “fully disagree” in question 8, and 5

representing the highest values. The answers for questions 6 and 7 that were written in text form were also transformed into the same topics that the newspaper used under Appendix 1.

39 ID Q1 TV Q2 Newspaper Q1 Radio Q1 Internet Q2 Time spend Q3 Which Newspaper Q4 Vote in Ref 1 1 4 4 1 2 Sun Leave 2 4 5 4 4 2 None Remain 3 2 5 2 2 3 None Remain 4 2 1 2 2 4 Other Leave

5 2 5 5 1 3 Daily Mail Remain

6 2 4 1 1 2 Guardian Remain

7 2 5 2 1 5 Guardian Remain

8 3 4 4 1 2 Mirror,

Guardian Remain

9 1 1 1 4 2 Other Don't Know

10 1 1 5 2 Other Remain

11 2 5 5 1 3 Guardian Remain

12 5 1 1 1 4 Guaridan Remain

13 1 1 1 1 2 Other Remain

14 3 5 1 1 2 Daily Mail Remain

15 4 5 5 1 1 Sun, Daily Mail Leave

16 2 4 5 1 1 Guardian

17 2 2 1 1 4 Mirror, Sun Remain

18 5 5 5 1 2 Daily Mail Remain

19 5 4 5 5 1 None Leave 20 2 5 1 2 4 Guardian Remain 21 2 5 2 1 3 Other Remain 22 1 2 1 1 4 Guardian Remain 23 1 1 1 1 3 Guardian Remain 24 1 3 5 2 4 Other Remain 25 5 2 1 1 3 Guardian Remain 26 2 5 1 2 2 Guardian Remain 27 5 3 1 2 3 Other Remain 28 5 2 1 2 3 Guardian Remain 29 3 2 1 2 3 Guardian Remain 30 4 3 1 4 3 Guardian Remain 31 1 1 2 1 4 Guardian Remain

32 1 3 1 1 2 Daily Mail Remain

33 2 3 2 1 4 Guardian Remain

34 5 3 1 2 4 Guardian Remain

35 5 4 4 5 1 None Don't Know

36 1 3 4 1 3 Guardian Remain

40 ID Q5 Party Q4/5 Number of Topics