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Abstract

Political ideology has become a topic of discord amongst political scientists. With ideology being regarded in the 20th century as one of the most influential aspects of politics, contrasting with scholars in the late 20th century such as Francis Fukuyama claiming that ideology was no longer prominent, it is clear that interpretations of ideology’s role in politics are divisive. However, through the Brexit referendum the question has been raised whether ideology has had a resurgence of importance. In order to answer the question of whether ideology has been reborn through the 2016 UK referendum, this dissertation is split into four parts. The first chapter addresses the background of ideology, Brexit and why the question of whether ideology in British politics was sparked by Brexit is a crucial question. The second chapter discusses the methods of analysis used to answer the research question. These methods include framing theory, analysing how the two campaigns used the social and mainstream media and why the two campaigns were analysed separately. Meanwhile, the third and fourth chapters analyse how the mainstream media and social media were used in the Leave and Remain campaigns and whether ideological language was used with the help of framing theory. Overall, this dissertation argues that ideology has seen a renewed importance through the Brexit referendum 

Course: International Relations and Politics - BA (Hons) - C0694

Date Deposited: 2022-02-18

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13824.html