Brexit And British Expatriates in The British Newspapers

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of Brexit on national identities. Particular focus is on British expatriates prior to and in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum held in June 2016 in the sense that Britain’s withdrawal from the EU raised concern about their identities in Europe. The paper uses media framing as a methodological tool in order to gain a better understanding of the way British daily newspapers represented British expatriates’ worries about Brexit. Corpus of the study, consisting in a selection of 200 articles from the Sun and the Daily Mail, is qualitatively analyzed in a bid to find out the way such newspapers framed Brexit in relation to British expatriates. Media frames are also juxtaposed to Ipsos Mori and YouGov polls dealing with Brexit and related issues to gain a better insight into media effects. Results of the study reveal that media frames seemed to have had a major impact on British expatriates, increasing their concern about their national identity to the extent that some of them decided to apply for another citizenship within the EU to keep their rights as EU citizens.