Abstract:
In this study I ask the following research question: How did leave and remain endorsing letters to the editor frame Brexit in British newspapers during the Brexit campaign period? The following frames were selected for this research: responsibility, human-interest, conflict, economic, morality and powerlessness. A corpus of 60 letters to the editor from three large British newspapers was analyzed to determine which frames were used in leave and remain letters. Furthermore an in-depth qualitative analysis was performed on one leave and one remain letter to examine how the frames were employed in the letters. The results of the quantitative study show that leave endorsing letters used the responsibility and powerlessness frame more frequently than remain endorsing letters. Further analysis showed that overall, the human-interest frame and the conflict frame were most salient in the letters. These results are in line with expectations.
