Role of the media in Brexit
The current EU referendum campaign can reveal to us the problematic notion of broadcast impartiality and its role in presenting information to the public. Looking back over countless articles, we can make a case for how the referendum campaign was conducted in far from ideal conditions, whereby mainstream media lacked to provide a legitimate and impartial public sphere for voters across the UK. Not only were Britain’s biggest selling newspapers very critical of the vote, urging readers to leave the EU, but they failed to exhibit a “consistent and credible counter narrative”. The three main issues that dominated the media debate were: the economy, immigration and the conduct of the campaign itself. By this matter, we must also seek to analyse the way in which British mass media influenced voters understanding of issues such as austerity and the economic crisis during the campaign