Brexit in the news : – frames and discourse in the transnational media representation of Brexit

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union and the possibility of it, has been discussed in the news with reference to the term ‘Brexit’ extensively for at least the last two years. The role of the media has been an important issue around the Brexit decision, which had its peak in June 2016 with the EU-referendum, where the population of the United Kingdom voted in favour of leaving the EU. The given master thesis builds up on these preconditions and aims for a better understanding of the media representation of Brexit on transnational news platforms from Europe and beyond. More precisely, the media output on Deutsche Welle, France 24 and Al Jazeera English after the EU-referendum until the end of the year 2016 is examined and compared to each other. The given form of the study has emerged out of the lack of previous research, where only the role of the media before the EU-referendum and the media output within the United Kingdom have been under investigation. First, a Framing Analysis on a big sample is conducted, where the main frames and the scope of the articles are examined to get a broad picture of the way transnational media reports about the issue. Second, a Critical Discourse Analysis is carried out on a small part of the big sample. In this way, the media output can be investigated more in-depth and the results of both methods complement each other. The results show that even though differences occur, the media representation of Brexit on DW, F24 and AJE are remarkably similar. More similar even than it was expected beforehand. It occurs that the topic ‘Brexit’ is particularly presented with emphasis on the conflictual potential of it, although differences can be found in the application of a national (rather UK) or international context. Furthermore, an uncertainty is present in various elements of the articles on DW, F24 and AJE. The significance of this study is empirically, since knowledge can be generated of Brexit in transnational news. However, also methodological indications are included that can be significant for future research