Social Understandings of Scale: The Role of Print and Social Media in the EU Referendum Debate

Based on a study of newspaper stories, readers’ attitudes and Twitter activity during the EU referendum of 2016, this project addresses the roles that print and social media play in shaping social understandings of multi-level governance and the politics of scale, with a particular emphasis on what voters know and understand of how membership in supra-national units shapes the prosperity of local areas. This project brings together expertise in regional political economy and the politics of scale; journalism and media studies; and computational linguistics and web semantics. It is expected that project results would be of relevance to the UK in managing its evolving relation with the EU and more generally any country where the domestic population may face important collective decisions regarding shifts in regulatory scales in the context of deepening and increasingly contested globalisation.