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With respect to privacy, our findings point to some clear best practices: first, consider anonymizing identifying information when quoting tweets. Only a minority of our respondents stated that they would prefer for tweets to be attributed to them.

We therefore recommend not quoting tweets verbatim without reason and generally to consider Bruckman’s (2002) levels of disguise when directly using content in a published work. This suggestion tracks to conclusions from M. L. Williams et al. (2017) on publishing tweets verbatim, that particularly if there is any personal information involved, researchers should consider obtaining consent.

we suggest that publication of user identity should only occur when the benefits of doing so clearly outweigh the potential harms, or with user permission.

We also recommend not using deleted content

Although we are certainly not advising against using qualitative methods in Twitter research, it is a situation where research design should be considered carefully, particularly, with respect to, for example, the subject matter of the study and content of the tweets.

we posit that disallowing use of public data in research altogether would be as poor an outcome as using it indiscriminately without any consideration for ethics.

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Social computing systems such as Twitter present new research sites that have provided billions of data points to researchers. However, the availability of public social media data has also presented ethical challenges. As the research community works to create ethical norms, we should be considering users' concerns as well. With this in mind, we report on an exploratory survey of Twitter users' perceptions of the use of tweets in research. Within our survey sample, few users were previously aware that their public tweets could be used by researchers, and the majority felt that researchers should not be able to use tweets without consent. However, we find that these attitudes are highly contextual, depending on factors such as how the research is conducted or disseminated, who is conducting it, and what the study is about. The findings of this study point to potential best practices for researchers conducting observation and analysis of public data.

Introduction

In recent years, research ethics has become a topic of greater public scrutiny. This is particularly the case for research taking place on or using data from social computing systems ( McNeal, 2014; Wood, 2014; Zimmer, 2010a). However, as Vitak, Shilton, and Ashktorab (2016) point out in a study of ethical practices and beliefs among online data researchers, there are not agreed upon norms or best practices in this space. Organizations such as the Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) have offered guides for researchers ( Ess & AOIR Ethics Working Committee, 2002), although these guidelines have had to be revised as new platforms present novel research contexts and as data collection practices evolve alongside them ( Markham, Buchanan, & AOIR Ethics Working Committee, 2012). It is also rare that the people whose data are being studied are involved in the development of such guidelines. However, public reaction to research ethics controversies ( McNeal, 2014; Wood, 2014; Zimmer, 2016) suggests that these individuals have opinions about how researchers should study and use online systems and data. Brown, Weilenmann, Mcmillan, and Lampinen (2016) suggest that research ethics should be grounded in "the sensitivities of those being studied" and "everyday practice" as opposed to bureaucratic or legal concerns. We therefore suggest users can help inform ethical research practices.

Traditional interventional human subjects research involves informed consent and direct interaction with participants who are aware they are being studied. Under certain regulatory conditions, research that falls outside of this scope may not be strongly regulated. For example, in the United States, the use of publicly available data (e.g., tweets) may not meet the criteria of research involving human subjects as per the Code of Federal Regulations (45 CFR 46.101). However, there is a lack of consensus among individual university institutional review boards (IRBs) on this point ( Vitak, Proferes, Shilton, & Ashktorab, 2017). Data obtained from sources such as Twitter most often do not constitute research that requires their oversight or informed consent practices. Most researchers who use data sets of tweets do not gain consent from each Twitter user whose tweet is collected, nor are those users typically given notice by the researcher. Although Twitter's Privacy Policy now mentions that academics may use tweets as part of research, this update was not included until revisions were made to the policy in the Fall of 2014. Moreover, Internet users rarely read or could fully understand website terms and conditions ( Fiesler, Lampe, & Bruckman, 2016; Luger, Moran, & Rodden, 2013; Reidenberg, Breaux, Cranor, & French, 2015).

Although there are a great many open questions around research ethics, including around experimental manipulation on online platforms ( Schechter & Bravo-Lillo, 2014), for this study, we focus specifically on the issue of researchers' use of public social media content. Because of the prominent use of Twitter data in research ( Zimmer & Proferes, 2014), in this study, we ask: how do Twitter users feel about the use of their tweets in research?

Our goal with this work is not to suggest whether or not use of Twitter data is ethical or not based entirely on user attitudes. Instead, we aim to inform ethical decision-making by researchers and regulatory bodies by reporting on how user expectations align with the actual uses of their data by researchers. Therefore, we designed our survey instrument to probe contextual factors that impact whether Twitter users find studying their content acceptable. This study is exploratory, providing initial insights into a complicated space.

In brief, the majority of Twitter users in our study do not realize that researchers make use of tweets, and a majority also believe researchers should not be able to do so without permission. However, these attitudes are highly contextual, differing based on factors such as how the research is conducted or disseminated, who the researchers are, and what the study is about. After describing the study and findings, we conclude with a discussion of what these findings might suggest for best practices for Twitter research and offer potential design interventions that could help mitigate some user concerns.

Background

Research Ethics for Social Computing

The Internet introduced a host of additional complications to research ethics around issues such as anonymity and confidentiality ( Bruckman, 2002; Zimmer, 2010a), informed consent ( Barocas & Nissenbaum, 2014; Hudson & Bruckman, 2004), terms of service (TOS) ( Fiesler et al., 2016; Vaccaro, Karahalios, Sandvig, Hamilton, & Langbort, 2015), relationships with and dissemination of findings to participants ( Beaulieu & Estallea, 2012), and the definition of public spaces and public data ( Bromseth, 2002; Hudson & Bruckman, 2004; Zimmer, 2010a). The last is particularly important to this study because one of the major challenges for researchers is even determining when a project constitutes human subjects research. Under US federal regulatory definitions, studying public information on the Internet is typically not considered "human subjects research," which is characterized by an investigator obtaining "data through intervention or interaction with the individual" or "identifiable private information" ( Bruckman, 2014). Therefore, many IRBs consider the study of public data to not be under their purview ( Bruckman, 2014; Vitak et al., 2016). A study of IRB attitudes toward social computing research revealed that a majority of IRB respondents feel that researchers do not need informed consent to collect public data ( Vitak et al., 2017). Similarly, an analysis of several hundred published papers using Twitter data noted that very few of these studies discuss undergoing ethics review ( Zimmer & Proferes, 2014).

However, regardless of regulatory standards (or lack thereof), there are still potential harms that can occur in social computing research ( Collmann, Fitzgerald, Wu, Kupersmith, & Matei, 2016). For example, Crawford and Finn (2015) point out that Twitter users may publicly share personal, identifying information of themselves or others during crisis events as a way to find assistance and support. Another early controversy surrounding the ethics of using and disseminating public data was around the "Taste, Ties, and Time" paper that released profile information from Facebook users ( Lewis, Kaufman, Gonzalez, Wimmer, & Christakis, 2008). Despite good faith efforts to protect the privacy of those users, they were quickly identified, putting their privacy at risk ( Zimmer, 2010a). Furthermore, harm from online research can occur not just at the individual level but to classes of people and communities ( Hoffmann & Jones, 2016).

Another point of disagreement regarding privacy is the potential for content quoted verbatim to be tied back to the person who created it. In some early proposed ethical guidelines for Internet research, Bruckman (2002) put forth levels of "disguise" for using online content. For example, "light disguise" includes quoting content but does not include usernames or pseudonyms; she points out, however, that although it would take some effort, someone could unmask the content creator's identity (e.g., through a search engine). This re-identification could happen with a public tweet as well. In at least one case, a journalist in reporting on a research study searched for a tweet quoted in the paper and contacted the Twitter user, who was unaware of the study ( Singer, 2015).

In recent years, there have also been a number of research ethics controversies that gained public attention, such as the "emotional contagion" experiment that studied Facebook users without their consent ( Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014; McNeal, 2014) and the public release of non-anonymized OkCupid data scraped by a researcher against the site's TOS ( Zimmer, 2016). Although the Facebook study involved direct experimentation rather than collection of existing public data, the public outcry highlights the need for user voices in consideration of ethics ( McNeal, 2014; Schechter & Bravo-Lillo, 2014).

In addition, more public scrutiny toward ethics has inspired increasing discussions within the online research community, which in turn has highlighted the lack of consistent norms. Vitak et al. (2016) found that much of this disagreement is around how data subjects should be treated and represented, and similarly, Brown et al. (2016) emphasize the need for understanding the definition of harm in ethics. In addition to research that considers these norms and harms, there are also broader initiatives dedicated to helping researchers navigate increasingly complex ethical situations. For example, the Connected and Open Research Ethics (CORE) initiative in part connects researchers and regulatory bodies to help create guidelines, particularly, in the context of mobile health ( Nebeker et al., 2017).

Research, Audience, and Privacy on Twitter

Twitter is an appropriate venue for considering use of public data due to its prominence in social computing research. This popularity is partly due to availability. For example, although Facebook has many more users than Twitter, Facebook has considerably less public data and has stricter limits on its application programming interface (API; Fiesler et al., 2017). Tufekci calls Twitter the "model organism" of big data. Researchers study Twitter partly because (as with the fruit fly) it is easy to study; the platform makes data easily available ( Tufekci, 2014).

Twitter in turn has proven itself a highly successful platform for research, resulting in studies and knowledge gained on topics such as disease tracking ( Lamb, Paul, & Dredze, 2013; Signorini, Segre, & Polgreen, 2011), disaster events ( Kogan, Palen, & Anderson, 2016; Sakaki, Okazaki, & Matsuo, 2010; Starbird & Palen, 2011), and stock market and election prediction ( Bollen, Mao, & Zeng, 2011; Tumasjan, Sprenger, Sandner, & Welpe, 2010). This "data gold rush" has resulted in researchers using Twitter content (both tweets and profile information) to examine all sorts of aspects of human interaction ( Felt, 2016; S. Williams, Tarras, & Warwick, 2013; Zimmer & Proferes, 2014).

However, prior work suggests that many Twitter users have limited understandings of how their public content might be used. Proferes (2017) found that users are broadly unaware of the fact that APIs exist, that Twitter sells access to tweets via the "firehose," and that the Library of Congress archives tweets. As with many social media platforms, Twitter users also often have an "imagined audience" that may not match to reality ( Bernstein, Bakshy, Burke, & Karrer, 2013; Litt, 2012; Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Misalignment of imagined and actual audience can be dangerous when there are more eyes to catch a potential faux pas ( Litt, 2012). Moreover, some users may not realize that their tweets are publicly viewable at all ( Proferes, 2017), and even users who tweet under protected accounts (which limit Tweet visibility to approved followers only) may still endure privacy violations through re-tweets ( Meeder, Tam, Kelley, & Cranor, 2010). Privacy is also an issue on Twitter due to accidental information leaks by users, such as divulging vacation plans, tweeting under the influence, or revealing medical conditions ( Mao, Shuai, & Kapadia, 2011).

These open questions, points of controversy, and subjects of debate within the social computing research community led to our conclusion that to move forward with norm-setting, we need more data-which include an empirical understanding of how the "participants" in this type of research understand it and feel that it may impact them.

This study elicited Twitter users' responses to hypothetical situations involving the use of tweets for academic research. As this is an area that lacks extensive prior work, we used an exploratory approach. In exploratory surveys, the research question remains open-ended without a specific testable hypothesis driving the study ( Adams, 1989). Instead, research proceeds through inductive analysis using descriptive statistical analysis and inferential statistical analysis techniques to explore response trends.

Population of Interest

This study's primary interest is in Twitter users. A challenge in studying this population is that true random sampling is difficult, and furthermore, recruitment presents bias toward those interested in participating in research. In fact, any method for recruiting participants to study how people feel about research would be necessarily and systematically biased. Logically, those willing to participate in a research study may have different attitudes about research than those who are not.

We therefore turned to a recruitment method for which we had a clearer idea for the type of potential bias we could encounter: Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). MTurk is a crowdwork system where workers (or "turkers") complete small tasks for micro-payments ( Hitlin, 2016). Because it is a platform for general crowdwork, turkers may complete research tasks as part of their work but are likely not there for the express goal of participating in research. They have the additional extrinsic motivation of completing more tasks and being paid. We also speculated that if Twitter users familiar with academic research are hesitant about the idea of being studied, this will tell us something interesting about general trends that would give us important directions for further research. Although MTurk has its drawbacks, turkers have performed comparably to laboratory subjects in traditional experiments ( Paolacci, Chandler, & Ipeirotis, 2010). A known limitation is that participants may be less likely to pay attention to experimental materials ( Goodman, Cryder, & Cheema, 2013), although this can be somewhat mitigated by the use of "attention checks" such as the one we will describe in our survey design ( Hauser & Schwarz, 2016).

Survey Instrument

The survey instrument begins by asking participants about demographic characteristics and Twitter use. Participants provided information about how often they tweet, when they first signed up for Twitter, and an open-ended question about how they perceive their Twitter audience. Next, the survey provides some information about how researchers use tweets as part of research, using the following language:

Sometimes scientists and other academic researchers conduct studies using Twitter. Sometimes they study tweets in order to understand things like how people communicate within social groups, what people are saying about a given subject, or are trying to predict things like changes in the stock market. Most often, the people whose tweets are used are never told.

The survey then asked respondents to consider different contextual factors and rate their level of comfort with the scenario on a Likert-type scale. Factors included, for example, how many tweets were in the dataset, whether or not users whose tweets were used were told about the study, whether the tweets would be quoted, whether the tweets used had since been deleted by the users, and so on (see Table 3 for a full list). The survey then provided respondents with a number of qualitative open-text responses to allow them to expand on their answers.

The survey questions, and, in particular, the choice of these contextual factors, were based on the tension points around use of public data that have surfaced in prior work ( Shilton & Sayles, 2016; Vitak et al., 2016) and workshop discussions ( Fiesler et al., 2015). Next, the survey asked respondents about whether they think researchers must receive different kinds of permission to use data from Twitter. Finally, it questioned whether respondents had been aware before they took the survey that researchers use tweets in academic research and whether, now that they had taken the survey and knew for sure, they would opt out of having their tweets used for research if given the option.

Participants were allowed to skip questions, with the exception of the initial informed consent. To improve reliability and validity, we used an attention check question in the latter third of the survey. Attention checks are a common mechanism in MTurk surveys to ensure that respondents are reading the questions and instructions rather than simply checking random boxes ( Goodman et al., 2013; Hauser & Schwarz, 2016).

Procedures

In recruiting participants through MTurk, we specified only that they had to be current or former Twitter users. We deployed the survey in July 2016. To increase the validity of the survey, we piloted it with roughly a dozen undergraduate and graduate students at the authors' institutions. These students (not involved with the project) provided feedback on wording and survey flow, which we incorporated into the final survey design. Student responses were not included in the dataset and were used for piloting purposes only. We deployed the survey on MTurk and paid participants US$1.50 for completing the survey. Our piloting revealed that it took between 5 and 15 min to complete, ensuring a payment rate that corresponded with MTurk best practices. In total, 394 respondents completed the survey; 26 participants either failed or did not answer the attentiveness question or provided "gibberish" responses. The resulting dataset, therefore, included 368 respondents.

Data Analysis

We used descriptive statistical analysis to summarize numerical responses. Since the majority of questions contained in the survey elicited responses on an ordinal scale of measurement, we used chi-square tests for independence to explore whether response choices are independent, or if there is a relationship between the two. To not violate the expected cell counts requirement of chi-square tests, we recoded several questions to combine semantically similar response categories (e.g., collapsing some Likert-type scale responses). For correlational analysis with categorical and scale responses, we used Spearman's rho to test for relationships.

In addition to descriptive statistics, we conducted inductive, open coding on open-ended survey responses ( Charmaz, 2006). Researchers deliberated on conceptual themes and used these to supplement and organize statistical findings. Quotes included here are representative examples of broader themes.

Demographic Characteristics of Sample

Of the 368 valid survey responses, 268 participants stated that they use a "public" account as their most frequently used Twitter account, and 100 of the respondents indicated they used a "protected" Twitter account as their main account. This proportion of protected accounts is far higher than the general Twitter population, which, as estimated in 2013, is closer to 5% ( Fiesler et al., 2017). To limit the number of potentially confounding factors, we have chosen to focus our attention on the responses of users who mainly use public accounts. For the purposes of space and focus, we do not report the findings from protected account respondents but will note that overall, their attitudes about researchers using tweets were less favorable across the board.

Of the 268 public users, the sample's average age is 32.25 years ( SD  = 8.80), and (with gender reported using an open-text answer) men (60.4%) outnumber women (39.2%). A majority of participants (67.9%) reported either some undergraduate education or a completed undergraduate degree as their highest level of education. The majority (92.9%) of participants reported being in the United States.

Twitter Use

Generally, our participants are fairly active Twitter users who have been using the service for some time. Most respondents (80.2%) indicated they currently have only one Twitter account. When asked how often they access Twitter, 7.8% indicated they access it "Almost Never," 29.3% indicated "Occasionally," 35.0% indicated "Semi-regularly," and 27.8% indicated they access it "All the time." In total, 99.3% have sent a Tweet since becoming Twitter users, 86.2% have sent one in the last year, 64.6% in the last month, and 48.9% in the last week. Almost half of the sample reported using Twitter for 4 or more years.

We also asked participants to give us the number of tweets, following, followers, likes, and photos and videos they have on their account. Although as Table 1 shows, there was a high degree of variance, the average participant had sent roughly 2,000 tweets, follows about 350 accounts and has twice as many followers, had "liked" almost a 1,000 tweets, and had uploaded about 100 photos and videos. We also calculated an "influence score" determined by dividing the number of followers by the number of accounts following. A mean influencer score of 1.6 indicates that the average participant had 1.6 times as many accounts that follow them than accounts they follow.

General Awareness of Research Using Tweets

At the end of the survey, we asked participants whether, prior to this study, they knew that researchers sometimes use tweets for research purposes. Almost two-thirds (61.2%) of respondents ( n = 268) indicated they did not. If this pattern is representative of Twitter users more broadly, it suggests that users are often unaware of how the content they produce is collected and used by those beyond their followers. This finding complements prior work that suggests users are broadly unaware of how the content they create flows within a larger informational ecosystem that Twitter supports ( Proferes, 2017).

We also asked whether participants think researchers are permitted to use a tweet without permission from the user ( n = 267). Slightly over half (57.3%) indicated they believe researchers are permitted, while 42.7% indicated they believe researchers are not. Those who indicated not ( n  = 114) were given a follow-up question as to why they believed this. In total, 23.2% stated that Twitter's TOS forbid it, 10.1% believe researchers would be breaking copyright law, 60.9% believe that researchers would be breaking ethical rules for researchers, and 5.8% gave an "other" response. This finding suggests that many Twitter users incorrectly believe that researchers cannot use tweets at all or must ask permission from the users, and a majority of that group believe that this is an ethical rule for researchers.

Respondents who thought that Twitter's TOS prohibits researchers from using tweets were also incorrect; Twitter's policies actually specifically state that researchers do have access to public tweets. Twitter's privacy policy (current as of a June 2017 update) states,

Twitter broadly and instantly disseminates your public information to a wide range of users, customers, and services, including search engines, developers, and publishers that integrate Twitter content into their services, and organizations such as universities, public health agencies, and market research firms that analyze the information for trends and insights. When you share information or content like photos, videos, and links via the Services, you should think carefully about what you are making public.

Of course, it is not surprising that our respondents were unfamiliar with this warning. A great deal of prior work shows that people do not read TOS or other website terms and conditions ( Reidenberg et al., 2015), even turkers ( Fiesler et al., 2016).

Attitudes About Research Using Tweets

After the demographic questions, participants were asked how they feel about the idea of tweets being used in research. As shown in Table 2, the majority of respondents are somewhat comfortable or are ambivalent about the idea of tweets being used in research. However, participant responses shifted to much higher levels of discomfort when "your entire Twitter history" became the subject of study.

At the end of the survey, we asked respondents if they were given the possibility to opt-out of having their tweets used in all academic research, would they? A plurality (46.3%) indicated that they would not, 29.1% indicated they would, and 24.6% indicated that it would depend ( n  = 268). This suggests that contextual factors are important in users' decisions about wanting to be part of research.

We also asked respondents, "Regardless of whether you would want them to use your tweets specifically, do you think that researchers should be able to use tweets in research without user permission?" A majority (64.9%) indicated they should not, and 35.1% indicated that they should ( n  = 268). This result suggests that users feel strongly about the desire to have researchers seek consent or permission. Several respondents left qualitative feedback about this subject. For example, one wrote,

I would not want my tweets to be used in a study without being informed prior to such use.

Others highlighted the contextual nature of such a decision:

If my tweets were being used in a large scale study, I really wouldn't care. If anything was being personally picked out about me in a small study, I would care.

I would want to know how it was to be used, who would see it, whether my information would be kept anonymous and how long the tweet would be kept.

When asked if a university researcher contacted them and asked for permission to use a tweet of theirs as part of a research study, a majority (53.4%) indicated they would give permission, only 13.8% indicated outright they would not, and 32.8% indicated it would depend on some contextual factor ( n  = 268).

Contextual Factors

The majority of survey questions focused on different specific situational factors that would impact a respondent's level of comfort with the idea of their tweets being used in a research study. We asked contextual questions in two ways. First, we asked participants to place a check mark next to specific situations that would change how they feel about a tweet of theirs being used. Table 3 provides a breakdown of these responses. We also asked participants their level of comfort (on a Likert-type scale) if their tweet was used in a research study and a specific situational factor was in place. Table 4 reflects the results of those questions.

I think people at times tweet heatedly, and sometimes regret speaking so candidly, so I'd be a little concerned that faulty conclusions about one's nature or intent were being extrapolated by those tweets, especially if they had been later deleted.

Respondents were uncomfortable with the idea of profile information also being analyzed along with tweets. These tables also suggest that generally, users do not want to be directly attributed if quoted in a research article but are amenable to the idea of being quoted anonymously.

Other responses suggest that some users, despite sharing their content publicly, do not necessarily think that this means they are giving it away to the public. They may view their tweets as property that they are in the position to derive exclusive (or semi-exclusive) benefit from. In fact, several respondents mentioned that a reason why they do not want their tweets used is that they own them or might expect some benefit or compensation for their use. For example,

They are taking property and using it without permission, just don't think that is right.

[o]nly if they were offering me some kind of compensation. It is not fair to profit from MY ideas and offer me nothing.

Finally, we also asked respondents about two additional contextual factors: the content of the tweet being used and what the study is about. With respect to content, respondents were primarily concerned with private, personal, or offensive tweets, for example,

If it's personal, has identifying information, or embarrassing/offensive/private I don't want my tweets used.

Some of my tweets are personal and some are jokes. Using the jokes would usually be fine.

The purpose of the research study was also a dependency for many respondents. A number of respondents simply wanted to know whether it would help people. Others had more specific concerns, such as whether it were controversial, reflected a specific ideology, or would paint the user in a bad light.

If it was for a conservative cause I would be more forgiving. But that is unlikely with academic researchers, who are inherently biased, i.e., liberal slanted.

If I was made out to look poorly this would be against my wishes.

Attribution and Dissemination

As there has been some discussion within the research community about whether or not to attribute quotes when reporting the results of research, we asked participants whether they would want to be quoted in a published research paper with their username attributed or not (instead remaining anonymous). As seen in Table 4, a majority (58.2%) indicated they would not want their usernames attributed, 18.3% indicated they would want attribution, and 23.5% indicated they wouldn't care either way. Several respondents left qualitative responses, explaining concerns about whether or not tweets could be traced back to a "real identity." For example, one wrote,

The vast majority of my tweets are jokes and my username is my real name so I'd like the opportunity so provide explanation or context to the researcher to ensure it was understood if I thought my tweet would be widely quoted.

Another stated,

As long as my name wasn't tied to it I wouldn't care.

Another participant remarked on the potential for tweets to be used in a context they had no control over, stating,

It's a shitty thing to do; you'll never give the proper context to a tweet if it's quoted, that's for sure. There will be a level of judgment for or against the content and you can't act as if you're being scholarly; scholars have their biases, too, and just because they have a title or a degree, it doesn't place them in a place to manufacture an accurate or objective meaning to it.

It is also worth noting that under Twitter's Developer Agreement (which applies to anyone who uses the API), Twitter's "display requirements" require tweets to be presented verbatim and with usernames. Although this does not actually seem to be a practice that researchers follow, if Twitter decided to enforce the rule, it would force identification of Twitter users in published research.

Some respondents worried about how a study could bring attention from unwanted publics. For example, one respondent wrote that he or she would be uncomfortable with

how public the information regarding my tweet could become after the research, i.e. in media outlets.

This response is interesting because of the fact that "public" here is not a binary. Rather, it suggests some users conceptualize differing levels of "public," supporting Nissenbaum's (2004) idea of the importance of context for privacy norms. At the same time, other users had more binary views of what it means for content to be public:

. . . if I posted something on Twitter I know full well that this is the internet and anyone can come up and read it when i post it publicly like that. If I didn't want people to know, I wouldn't post it.

When asked if a tweet of theirs was used by a university researcher in a study, would they want to be informed, 79.5% indicated they would, 5.6% indicated they would not want to know, and 14.9% indicated that they would not care either way ( n = 268). When asked if they would want to read the academic article the researcher produced, 83.4% indicated they would, 3.4% indicated they would not want to know about it, and 13.2% indicated they would not care about reading it ( n  = 268). Perhaps summarizing the feelings of many of the participants, one respondent wrote,

I honestly wouldn't mind [if researchers used my tweets] as long as I was told up front and I had the option to read the findings.

We hypothesized that there may be an intervening relationship between demographic characteristics about participants and their level of comfort with the use of their data in research. This assumption was based on the stereotype that "Young people don't care about privacy" and the perception that perhaps those who tweet more are less likely to care about how their tweets are used. To examine this, we used chi-square tests for independence to explore whether response choice to the question "How would you feel if a tweet of yours was used in one of these research studies?" and demographic and Twitter use characteristics were independent, or if there is a relationship between the two. For correlational analysis with categorical and scale responses, we used Spearman's rho to test for relationships. We found no statistically significant relationships between questions response and age, r s = .047, p = .443; gender, χ ²(4, N = 266) = 2.841, p = .585; level of education, χ ²(20, N = 267) = 26.661, p = .145; how often they access Twitter, χ ²(12, N = 265) = 9.040, p = .699; the last time they posted a Tweet, χ ²(20, N = 267) = 15.252, p = .762; the number of tweets they had sent, r s = .034, p = .583; the number of followers they had, r s = .036, p = .557; or the "influence score," r s = .070, p  = .257. We therefore speculate that attitudes about Twitter research are more context-dependent.

Discussion

Our goal for this research was not to answer the binary question of "should researchers be using public tweets or not?" but rather to explore users' perceptions about research on Twitter and how they view contextual factors involved in this practice. Below, we first reflect on the major themes of our findings, then lay out some potential implications for both practice and design, and finally propose important future work implicated by this study.

As previously noted, the decades-old Belmont Report presents guiding principles for human subjects research and is relied upon by many researchers ( Vitak et al., 2016). In analyzing our findings, we uncovered themes that tracked well to the Belmont Report (despite, most likely, our participants having little or no knowledge of them), suggesting that these guiding principles are still highly relevant.

Respect for Persons

Three of the strongest and most interesting themes from our data are tied to the Belmont principle of respect for persons or the recognition that people should have the right to exercise autonomy. Respect for persons commonly manifests through practices such as informed consent. The other two themes in our data we saw related to beneficence were the idea of choice and dissemination of findings.

As noted previously, many online data researchers do not perceive informed consent as relevant for collecting public data such as tweets ( Bruckman, 2014; Vitak et al., 2016). However, based on open-text responses to our survey, we saw that the idea of consent or permission came from the underlying importance of respect for our respondents. Many respondents' attitudes relied heavily on whether or not permission was sought. For example, one respondent wrote,

The person who tweeted should be respected and asked about it being used first.

Many open-text responses we received emphasized respondents' desire to understand contextual factors, often remarking that levels of comfort and whether or not they would be willing to grant permission to researchers "depends." Factors included what and how many tweets are used, what the study is about, who is conducting it, or what methods researchers use. Many participants do not necessarily want to give a blanket answer about how they feel about Twitter research but want the control to consider research case-by-case.

Finally, a number of respondents specifically framed their desire to both know about the research and to see it when it's finished as an issue of respect. Informed consent can be seen as both informing and consenting, and for many respondents, the former would be sufficient.

Beneficence

The common ethical principle of "do no harm" is part of the Belmont Report as well in beneficence. Minimizing risk and maximizing benefit to participants is a large part of the ethical calculus that researchers often use. Our findings about dissemination could also be seen as part of this theme; given how much our respondents cared not just about being informed but about the opportunity to read published papers suggests that they may want the benefit of learning about the study, either for the sake of knowledge or for curiosity.

Our qualitative analysis also revealed a great many respondents suggesting ways to minimize potential harm, particularly with respect to privacy. Primarily, they mentioned things like being careful about anonymization, never using real names, and making certain that nothing could link published data back to a Twitter account.

They also wrote about forms of harm such as being embarrassed by something published about them. One comment that came up frequently in reasons to be wary of research was that single tweets lack context or that quoting and further disseminating tweets makes them more public than they were intended to be.

Finally, the idea of minimizing risk and maximizing benefit is the argument for not suggesting that the solution is to stop doing Twitter-based research. After all, many respondents were positive about research, with comments such as "if it is for science why not" and "well research is a noble pursuit." This suggests that they too are doing ethical calculus about whether a potential invasion of their privacy is worth it, for the benefit of research and science.

The Belmont principle of justice involves the assurance of reasonable, non-exploitative research methods that are administered fairly and equally to participants (and potential participants). Part of this, as explained in the Belmont Report, has to do with participant selection. However, it also involves fair (or at least equal) compensation to research participants. We are unaware of any studies of public Twitter data where the Twitter users have been monetarily compensated. Some participants stated their willingness to give permission would depend on compensation, or that commercialization of the research is a problem. They essentially saw this as a sort of exploitation. However, tying back to beneficence as well, it could be that providing a benefit to users-even if only what benefit is conferred by knowledge of the study and findings-would make these research practices seem less exploitative.

Implications for Practice and Design

The themes above suggest potential best practices or factors that researchers should consider in making ethical determinations about their research design. First, consider asking for permission if there is any reasonable way to do so. Since the study of public data may not fall under IRB or other regulatory purview, obtaining consent would not have to be a formal consent form. This would result in, as Brown et al. (2016) suggest, separating the legal from the ethical. Even simply the opportunity to "opt out" would be good practice-for example, tweeting at those whose tweet is included in the research and offering to remove their content from the dataset if they would prefer. Alternately, if a researcher does not seek permission beforehand, they could still consider informing the Twitter users after.

With respect to privacy, our findings point to some clear best practices: first, consider anonymizing identifying information when quoting tweets. Only a minority of our respondents stated that they would prefer for tweets to be attributed to them. Moreover, although from these questions we did not determine whether participants understand that verbatim tweets can be re-identified through Twitter search mechanisms even if their usernames are not disclosed, prior work suggests that many Twitter users are not aware of how widely available Twitter data are ( Proferes, 2017). This suggests that participants who are comfortable with anonymous quotes but not for quotes attributed to them might be uncomfortable with their tweets being re-identified outside the context of a publication as well. We therefore recommend not quoting tweets verbatim without reason and generally to consider Bruckman's (2002) levels of disguise when directly using content in a published work. This suggestion tracks to conclusions from M. L. Williams et al. (2017) on publishing tweets verbatim, that particularly if there is any personal information involved, researchers should consider obtaining consent.

However, attribution is also a decision where the subject matter of the study and population of participants should be considerations, as there may be contexts when attribution is appropriate and perhaps the most ethical course ( Brown et al., 2016; Bruckman, Luther, & Fiesler, 2015). However, those respondents concerned about their privacy and the potential harm of data being traced back to them were most vocal in our data, and in a harm/benefit analysis, it would make sense to focus on minimizing this harm. Therefore, we suggest that publication of user identity should only occur when the benefits of doing so clearly outweigh the potential harms, or with user permission.

Also regarding privacy, respondents were highly uncomfortable with their profile information being analyzed in tandem with tweets. We also recommend not using deleted content (which is also prohibited by Twitter's Developer Agreement [see Note 3]), due to the high level of discomfort expressed by our respondents, unless the benefit of doing so would justify violating users expectations.

In a general sense, our findings suggest users believe strongly in privacy by obscurity ( Hartzong & Stutzman, 2013) and that research has the potential to disrupt this. Users often felt more comfortable with research using larger data sets (with the exception of more of a single users' tweets, as respondents did not want researchers using their entire Twitter history). Furthermore, they felt more comfortable with the idea of tweets being analyzed by a computer rather than read by humans. However, both of these beliefs may be misguided, as re-identification is possible in large data sets ( Zimmer, 2010a), and computer algorithms can be biased in both design and application ( Friedman & Nissenbaum, 1996). Although we are certainly not advising against using qualitative methods in Twitter research, it is a situation where research design should be considered carefully, particularly, with respect to, for example, the subject matter of the study and content of the tweets.

Our primary proposal for best practices is for researchers to understand and reflect carefully on these contextual factors during study design. We suggest that researchers should most carefully think through ethics when research involves the more problematic factors listed above. For example, a study about sensitive topics such as medical conditions or drug use could be less appropriate for quoting tweets than a study about television habits. Within human-computer interaction (HCI) research, it is already common practice to take special precautions when working with vulnerable populations ( Brown et al., 2016), and we suggest that this should extend to Twitter users as well. In sum, this work suggests that in making decisions about ethical use of tweets, researchers should pay close attention to the content of the tweets, the level of analysis with respect to making the content more public, and reasonable expectations of privacy (e.g., deleted or protected content). They should also consider taking steps toward informing users about the research and providing them with opt-out options, if it would not compromise the research or researchers.

In addition to these suggestions for best practices, in line with work done by Bravo-Lillo, Egelman, Herley, Schechter, & Tsai (2013), our findings point to ways in which the development of automated tools could contribute to ethical practices. First, for Twitter itself or anyone designing a new social computing system: consider providing a way for users to opt-in or opt-out of particular forms of research. This could be, for example, a flag set in the user profile or a black/white list included as part of the API. Another potential design would be to build a system that could provide public notices when data collection begins from a specific hashtag, informs users when their tweets are included in a dataset, and/or links those who have had their tweets used back to a published paper based on the results. Both of these designs would be a way to benefit Twitter (or other social media) users as well as to support best ethical practices. Similar to a system like Turkopticon ( Irani & Silberman, 2013), we encourage others to think about symbiotic systems that would help empower users and research participants.

It is important to note, however, that we do not recommend that platforms solve this problem by making it impossible for researchers to collect public data. As expressed by many of our respondents, science and research is important. Over half indicated that if asked for permission, they would allow their tweets to be used without any dependencies and even more would give permission if they knew it was for scientific research. Therefore, we posit that disallowing use of public data in research altogether would be as poor an outcome as using it indiscriminately without any consideration for ethics.

Conclusion

We consider this exploratory study to be an important step in motivating future empirical studies of research ethics. These findings with respect to Twitter may or may not be generalizable for other platforms or contexts. One next step would be to look beyond Twitter. For example, do people feel different about their data being collected from Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram, or Facebook as opposed to Twitter? What factors affect these potential differences? How much do perceptions of the "publicness" of data impact comfort with the idea of being a research subject? In addition, how does the context of the use change perception? Outside of research, there are similar questions around, for example, journalism. If researchers are disrupting typical imagined audiences ( Litt, 2012), then so are marketers and journalists. Is finding out your tweet appears in a research paper more or less concerning than your tweet appearing in a news article? How do attitudes about research connect to other instances of unintended audience? Understanding what factors might make users more comfortable can help inform future best practices.

As noted previously, there is inherent selection bias in any data collected with consent. Therefore, the only way to study people who don't want to be studied is to do so without their consent. For example, in a study of early chat rooms, researchers told chat room participants that they were recording their conversations for a study of language online, when actually they were studying how those participants reacted to the idea of being studied ( Hudson & Bruckman, 2004). Consider a study design where the researcher replies to tweets with "your tweet has just been collected by a researcher!" to study the responses. Such a study would have to be carefully and ethically designed since it would require a waiver of consent for deception. We hope that this preliminary work will help in the design of such future work by providing data to help motivate and direct. We also encourage other researchers to explore research ethics from a variety of different methodological approaches. As researchers, we have the tools to tackle the problems that arise in our own practices in creative and rigorous ways.

Empirical work could also help us determine the reaction of researchers to these ideas to find the real tension points that could keep these practices from being taken up. We also think that it is important that researchers reflect on ethical choices as part of writing up research results. Ethics are not determined by majority opinion, and norms are just one part of deciding what constitutes ethical action. Having open conversations within the social computing research community, bolstered by outside voices such as the people we study, is critical.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Katie Shilton at the University of Maryland for feedback on an early version of this work.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Ongoing research in this space is funded in part by NSF award IIS-1704369 as part of the PERVADE (Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research) project.

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Author Biographies

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"Participant" Perceptions of Twitter Research Ethics - Casey Fiesler, Nicholas Proferes, 2018

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Social computing systems such as Twitter present new research sites that have provided billions of data points to researchers. However, the availability of public social media data has also presented ethical challenges. As the research community works to create ethical norms, we should be considering users' concerns as well.

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The critical juncture of Brexit in media & political discourses: from national-populist imaginary to cross-national social and political crisis

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(2019). The critical juncture of Brexit in media & political discourses: from national-populist imaginary to cross-national social and political crisis. Critical Discourse Studies: Vol. 16, “Brexit’ as a Social & Political Crisis: Discourses in Media & Politics, pp. 381-388.

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Bollocks first bollocks as most useless pm ever

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Bollocks first bollocks as most useless pm ever

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Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street

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Boris Johnson’s first speech as Prime Minister: 24 July 2019

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Boris Johnson gave his first speech as Prime Minister in Downing Street.

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Geoffrey Myers

@geoffreyMyers1

·

Apr 18

Replying to
@timfarron

Or perhaps sat outside a cafe today with my family and a man came up to me and said “If it wasn’t for Boris we’d all still be in #EU with no plan to stop illegals. Our economy wouldn’t be on the up , unemployment so low and likely not helping #Ukraine “#Ibackboris

Julie

@J_Cats_xx

Jan 19

#Ibackboris more & more. Yes, there were mistakes, but "Beer" Starmer & Bunter Blackford have equally broken rules. Boris has led us out of the pandemic, delivered Brexit & still has the charisma to appeal to the public & win the next GE. #Boris

Lady of the house

@SusanHarris80

·

May 13, 2020

Best PM since Churchill. We are lucky to have him at this moment in time. He's just what this country needs #ibackboris
Malcolm Cowing

@CowingMalcolm

·

19h

It’s all part if the establishment efforts to block #Brexit and return to #EU. #Remainers think if they get rid of #Boris they will succeed. Essential Tory MPs rally and #BackBoris

Susan Eacock Boris

@SusanEacock

·

Apr 17

Absolutely #UNBELIEVABLE! #Starner should never be in charge of country! We’re already over run with #ILLEGALimmigrants God help us if he gets  borders will be flung open, criminals and terrorists welcomed back with open arms! #NeverForget #NeverLabour #StarmerOut #BackBoris

Quote Tweet

Sue Mitch

@suemitch2017

· Apr 17

KEIR BACKS BEGUM: Stripping ISIS Bride of UK Citizenship "Wrong" Says Starmer https://politicalite.com/lab/labour/keir-backs-begum-stripping-isis-bride-of-uk-citizenship-wrong-says-starmer/… via @PoliticaliteUK While our PM fights to control our borders & deport Convicted Criminals ( which Labour try to block) @Keir_Starmer Labour are fighting to get Terrorists back!
Trish

@TrishHodkinson

·

Apr 17

The church is getting involved now regarding #rwanda .  Boris and Priti are taking on everyone and everything for what we voted for.   TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR BORDERS!  We say who comes and who doesn’t,  we’re not evil just fair and reasonable
17.3K Following

19.8K Followers

Susan Eacock Boris

214.1K Tweets

Susan Eacock ❤️Boris’s Tweets

ledpinkgen

@ledpinkgen
·
Apr 17

The Church/religion (of all faiths) have always been central to conflict! You'd have thought #JustinWelby  would keep his nose out of politics and allow our Government to deal with the day to day running of the UK! We can't continue to accommodate economic migrants indefinitely!

Susan Eacock Boris
@SusanEacock
· Apr 17
To #JustinWelby. If I wanted to live in #Muslim Country I would have emigrated! Can you imagine going to one and opening up Christian Church?  We need to preserve our way of life and customs not be drowned out by mass immigration coming across to our country illegally! #Rwanda

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41 comments | 36 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Roch Dunin-Wasowicz

August 6th, 2019

41 comments | 36 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

It's the English, stupid! Hudson Meadwell (McGill University) writes that the national structure of the UK and Britain, and the political organisation and expression of that structure, are keys to understanding Brexit.
Brexit is an English-centric phenomenon in which Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales appear as complications or afterthoughts. The sole constitutional voices in the Brexit process are English-dominated, first in the referendum itself, which aggregated the vote across national jurisdictions and in Parliament. Neither Northern Ireland, nor Scotland nor Wales are constitutionally empowered to express a voice on the matter of EU membership.

However, English political dominance is not something which can be directly acknowledged in political discourse. The language used by David Cameron and Theresa May in their letters, eighteenth months apart, to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, shows some of the political equivocations that result. Cameron's letter opens under the heading, "A New Settlement for the United Kingdom" and then twice refers to the 'British people'. May opens her letter with reference to the 'people of the United Kingdom' and then presents the referendum as a 'vote to restore, as we see it, our national self-determination'. These brief quotations should show just how slippery these signifiers are. The United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland but Northern Ireland is not British. Indeed, the notion of the 'United Kingdom' was repurposed in the 1920s in order to recognize the reality of Irish partition. May never refers to the British people but she does invoke national self-determination. Later, she again makes reference to the 'people of the United Kingdom' But to which nation is she referring; whose self-determination is she signifying? Is this just loose, sloppy language?

These kinds of ambiguities and equivocations in expression, in important documents written both to your negotiating adversary as well for a larger political audience, are revealing and call out for some diagnosis. Perhaps the political unconscious is slipping out. Or are we looking at strategically ambiguous political rhetoric embedded in plans, the elements of which are not self-evident in these documents? These are hard questions, in any case, particularly so here, when there is relatively little material, primary or secondary, to work with.

So, how to proceed? I'll advance a conjecture related to nationalism. If anything can be taken for granted and thus draw some of its force from its unarticulated everydayness and be articulated and enacted in a political plan, it's nationalism. Nationalism, as some of its theorists suggest, can be both banal and a self-conscious political project. That's not a contradiction, it is a measure of the sources of nationalism's social and political force.[1]

Hence the conjecture: Brexit is an expression of nationalism. Between Cameron and May in their letters, the latter is much more explicit, as she tried to invoke the legitimating power of national self-determination. But which nationalism? Who is more likely going to slip into the mentality that confuses their nation with 'Britain' or the United Kingdom?

This is a nationalist conceit but whose? It's not the Scots, nor is it the Irish, or the Welsh. It's the English.[2]That's fully compatible with the recurring theme of English exceptionalism in British history, which takes English dominance (if not superiority) as a natural birthright.[3] After all, who incorporated who?

That birthright has been challenged at different historical points, and each challenge marks an important political crisis. English identity has proven fairly resilient but each crisis has left its mark. English dominance is not as natural a birthright as it used to be.

Irish resistance and eventually revolution still casts a long shadow in the form of Irish partition, even if England retained its dominant position in what is now known as the United Kingdom. In hindsight, partition perhaps bought England some (considerable) time but it looks now like that particular colonial legacy has come home to roost. Northern Ireland, drawing indirect and direct support from the EU and Ireland, and despite the support the Democratic Unionist Party has provided the Conservatives in Westminster, is now limiting England's political degrees of freedom, much to the chagrin of Brexiteers.

Scotland is no longer particularly tractable and successfully induced the English to concede an elected assembly and, not long after, a first referendum on independence. This may be more a running problem than a crisis, if you prefer your crises to be episodic; nonetheless, the Scottish question will be part of the calculations of the Conservative government in their negotiations, up to and after the run-up to October 31, of a Labour government in the event of an electoral defeat of the Conservatives, at some point, whether post-Conservative transition or post-withdrawal and, naturally, of the SNP. There is no resolution of the Scottish question in sight.

Then there are the cumulative long-run effects of the rise of American power culminating in its post-1945 hegemony, the loss of blue-sea colonies, and more recently, the incremental deepening and enlargement of the EEC/EU after British entry. All of this changed the international standing of Britain and the UK and their imperial core - England.

English dominance thus is vulnerable: There are standing internal challenges to the borders of the political shells it maintains, and membership in the EU threatens its ability to control these interior spaces through the British parliament. These challenges can work in tandem as well as separately. 'Scotland in Europe' captures dramatically the instrumental relationship between Scotland's national aspirations and EU institutions. Both the EU and Ireland have tangible stakes in Northern Ireland.

England has seen off various challenges to its dominance but its day of reckoning does seem to be drawing closer. It's now much harder to separate challenges and deal with them as one-offs.

However, imperial cores don't often reform themselves in the aftermath of empire. The current imbroglio does not look like the expression of a politically-healthy ruling class. There is no appetite for reform in the English ruling class. It's a little like watching for regime change in autocratic contexts, looking for signs of a crack in the regime and the emergence of challengers to its hardliners. But there is not much sign of this in the party system, at least not yet.

The Conservative Party appears now all in for withdrawal, although it has been debating different scenarios. However, some of these scenarios are contrived. The Conservative party does not hold many cards, now that an agreement has been negotiated and ratified by one of the two parties in the negotiation.

On the other side of the House, the main political alternative - Labour - has been, at best, ambivalent about EU membership in the run-up to Brexit and afterwards. We can't really say that Brexit has polarized the two major parties until relatively recently, as its leader pledged to support Remain in the event of a new referendum. Yet this was a rather half-hearted, rather than fully-voiced position. It likely will be overwhelmed by internal party division.

Labour is led by a longtime MP and activist who came to political maturity in pre-Thatcher Britain in a period in which ('old') Labour had not fully cast off its dream of 'socialism in one country'. Membership in the EEC/EU, and the long march of English and British political history may not have put fully paid to that dream (even a weaker version of it) in Labour. Hence, withdrawal could be seen as an opportunity to return to roads not taken. That is also quite consistent with the general argument on the left that the EU is a neo-liberal dead end. So, the narrow national vision that underpins the Conservative position is not completely alien to Labour. If something like this is the choice on offer - if these are the two little Englands on offer - unification for the Irish and separation for Scotland may look more attractive.

This brings me back to where I started: the language of the letters written to Donald Tusk by Cameron and May. Perhaps, then, it is the political unconscious speaking in those letters even if the most recent challenge to English political dominance that continued EU membership represented has provoked a nationalism that is anything but banal.

No doubt, like his predecessors, the new Prime Minister will take the opportunity to write, whether to the President of the European Council or the President of the European Commission. Whatever is being said privately between the two negotiating parties, we can expect such a letter to be written partially for a domestic audience and hence to be made public.

How will he put it? In such a letter, will Johnson repeat in different words, his first public communication after being named Conservative leader, and invoke 'the awesome foursome that are incarnated in that red white and blue flag who together are so much more than the sum of their parts'?

Part of this is generic, boilerplate nationalism, 'rally around the flag' rhetoric. Yet most of it is distinctively English nationalism - the denial of challenges to English dominance which an acknowledgement of national disunity would represent, coupled with an appeal to the unbroken coherence of the United Kingdom (the 'awesome foursome'), all of which studiously skirts political reality.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor the LSE. Hudson Meadwell is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University. Image © Copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
[1] Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage, 1995); Michael Skey and Marco Antonisch (eds.), Everyday Nationhood. Theorizing Culture, Identity and Belonging After Banal Nationalism (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2017), Political Geography. Special Issue, Banal Nationalism 20 Years On. 54 (September, 2016).

[2] Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity. Englishness and Britishness in Comparative and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Michael Skey, National Belonging and Everyday Life (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2011).

[3] Tom Nairn, The Enchanted Glass. Britain and Its Monarchy (London: Verso, 2011, rev. ed), Leah Greenfeld, Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity, (Cambridge, MASS.: Harvard University Press, 1992), chapter 1, Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT.: Yale University, 2009, rev. ed.)

About the author

Roch Dunin-Wasowicz

Posted In: Culture and civil society | Exit negotiations | Featured | UK politics

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It's the English, stupid! Brexit is an expression of English nationalism

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41 comments | 36 shares Estimated reading time: 5 minutes 41 comments | 36 shares Estimated reading time: 5 minutes It's the English, stupid! Hudson Meadwell (McGill University) writes that the national structure of the UK and Britain, and the political organisation and expression of that structure, are keys to understanding Brexit.

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"Fake news and disinformation distorting public opinion from real, checked facts is one of the biggest threats facing today's democracies. In this must-read book, Rawlinson lucidly describes how emotions - sometimes unrelated to the real subject matter of the vote - gained the upper hand and brought an entire nation to a decision potentially harming its own interests." (Enrico D'Ambrogio, Policy Analyst, EPRS - European Parliamentary Research Service)

"This book makes and important argument, not about the way in which the UK public was misled during the EU referendum, but about the way they had been served distortion for decades. What had been condoned as irrelevant tabloid cheekiness helped re-frame the real world. Clear, cool and well researched it is a sorry tale." (Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History, University of Westminster, UK, and Official Historian of the BBC)

"This timely book revisits the major controversies over sovereignty, immigration and related issues that helped Leave win in 2016. Written by a former European Commission official, it offers a passionate yet informative critique of the case made for Brexit by many British newspapers. The book also provides valuable insights into how these papers developed and articulated their Eurosceptic message over the decades prior to the referendum." (Dominic Wring, Professor of Political Communication, Loughborough University, UK)

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How Press Propaganda Paved the Way to Brexit

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This book traces how right-wing newspapers in Britain, like the Telegraph, Mail, Sun and Express, helped shape public opinion about the EU over the course of the 20 years preceding the EU referendum in 2016. Written by an EU insider, it debunks myths on EU laws, budget contributions and immigration.

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In its contemporary understanding, however, populism is most often associated with an authoritarian form of politics. Populist politics, following this definition, revolves around a charismatic leader who appeals to and claims to embody the will of the people in order to consolidate his own power. In this personalized form of politics, political parties lose their importance, and elections serve to confirm the leader’s authority rather than to reflect the different allegiances of the people. Some forms of authoritarian populism have been characterized by extreme nationalism, racism, conspiracy mongering, and scapegoating of marginalized groups, each of which served to consolidate the leader’s power, to distract public attention from the leader’s failures, or to conceal from the people the nature of the leader’s rule or the real causes of economic or social problems.

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Populism, political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favourable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment. Populism usually combines elements of the left and the right, opposing large business and financial interests but also frequently being hostile to established socialist and labour parties.

William Jennings Bryan: presidential campaign poster Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3g02112u)

The term populism can designate either democratic or authoritarian movements. Populism is typically critical of political representation and anything that mediates the relation between the people and their leader or government. In its most democratic form, populism seeks to defend the interests and maximize the power of ordinary citizens, through reform rather than revolution. In the United States the term was applied to the program of the Populist Movement, which gave rise to the Populist, or People's, Party in 1892. Many of the party's demands were later adopted as laws or constitutional amendments (e.g., a progressive tax system). The populist demand for direct democracy through popular initiatives and referenda also become a reality in a number of U.S. states.

In its contemporary understanding, however, populism is most often associated with an authoritarian form of politics. Populist politics, following this definition, revolves around a charismatic leader who appeals to and claims to embody the will of the people in order to consolidate his own power. In this personalized form of politics, political parties lose their importance, and elections serve to confirm the leader's authority rather than to reflect the different allegiances of the people. Some forms of authoritarian populism have been characterized by extreme nationalism, racism, conspiracy mongering, and scapegoating of marginalized groups, each of which served to consolidate the leader's power, to distract public attention from the leader's failures, or to conceal from the people the nature of the leader's rule or the real causes of economic or social problems. In the second half of the 20th century, populism came to be identified with the political style and program of Latin American leaders such as Juan Perón, Getúlio Vargas, and Hugo Chávez. In the early 21st century, populist authoritarian regimes arose in Turkey, Poland, and Hungary, among other countries.

Juan Perón and Eva Perón Everett Collection/Shutterstock.com

The term populist is often used pejoratively to criticize a politician for pandering to a people's fear and enthusiasm. Depending on one's view of populism, a populist economic program can therefore signify either a platform that promotes the interests of common citizens and the country as a whole or a platform that seeks to redistribute wealth to gain popularity, without regard to the consequences for the country such as inflation or debt.

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Populism, political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, by contrast with a real or perceived elite. It combines elements of the left and the right, opposing large business and financial interests but also frequently being hostile to established socialist and labor parties.

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The great moving Boris show: Brexit and the mainstreaming of the far right in BritainOwen Worth 2022

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The great moving Boris show: Brexit and the mainstreaming of the far right in BritainOwen Worth 2022

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The great moving Boris show: Brexit and the mainstreaming of the far right in Britain

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(2022). The great moving Boris show: Brexit and the mainstreaming of the far right in Britain. Globalizations. Ahead of Print.

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Post Brexit and Post-Covid: Reflections on the Contemporary Conservative Party Gillian Peele 2021

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Post Brexit and Post-Covid: Reflections on the Contemporary Conservative Party Gillian Peele 2021

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Overview of challenges facing Bumface

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faced calls for his resignation over the holding of parties at Number 10 Downing Street during lockdown. Andrew Ryder argues the scandal runs much deeper than the work culture at the heart of government or Boris Johnson's personal failings. It is emblematic of a decline in public standards that has sharply escalated since the Brexit referendum.
Public standards or what can be termed the principles of public life are: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. Britain was once envied and seen as a model for such standards. Sadly, that record has been deeply tarnished by a number of actions in British political life, in particular the actions of the present Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

The ongoing 'partygate' controversy is part of a sequence of scandals that have their origins in Brexit, the decision by the UK to leave the European Union. As many will no doubt be aware, the British political establishment and indeed public have been deeply shaken by the stories of parties being held at Number 10 Downing Street in contravention of rules to halt and stem the flow of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As is often the case in great political scandals, it is not so much the crime but the coverup that has escalated the crisis. First Johnson denied there were any parties during lockdown, then evidence was produced to prove otherwise, then there were claims it was a working meeting within the rules, then an email emerged from Johnson's private secretary inviting guests to bring their own booze, then the Prime Minister claimed no one had told him it was a party despite by his own admission attending the event for around 25 minutes and despite these being the rules he had introduced and was responsible for.

We now await the results of an internal investigation by the civil servant Sue Gray. Leaks suggest she might in part pin the blame on the organisational 'culture' in Number 10 Downing Street. The Conservative party co-chair Oliver Dowden has said, in an admission of a dysfunctional culture, that he was "committed to upping our game" and that there was a need for a culture change. But the problems run much deeper than the office work culture at the heart of government or Johnson's moral failings. They are an endemic feature of a decline in public standards, a decline that has sharply escalated since the Brexit referendum.

In a post-truth age of populism, facts and figures seem to be trumped by emotion and sharp practice.

In the Brexit referendum, numerous falsehoods were paraded by both sides, but some of the most glaring came from the Leave campaign. Claims were made that Turkey would be joining the EU and lead to Turkish immigrants flooding into the UK. Although Turkey has been an official EU candidate state since 1999, talks have long since stalled and there is no realistic prospect of the country joining the EU in the foreseeable future.

There was also the famous claim emblazoned on the side of the Leave campaign battle bus that the UK would take back control of "roughly £350m a week" and that this could be diverted to the NHS. The figure was described by the UK Statistics Authority as " a clear misuse of official statistics ". As a Leave campaigner, Boris Johnson actively supported these false claims and others. A cavalier disregard for integrity was established during the referendum and it has become a marked feature of the Johnson premiership.

This was perhaps most marked in the decision to prorogue parliament. In 2019, parliament had been nudging towards supporting a second referendum or a softer version of Brexit. In response, Johnson suspended parliament, raising fundamental questions about the nature of British democracy. Scotland's Court of Session concluded that Johnson's advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament had been "motivated by the improper purpose of stymying parliament". The Supreme Court in London ruled that a lengthy parliamentary suspension at that time was unlawful.

Then we had the 2019 election, with Johnson and the Conservatives centring their campaign on a pledge to "get Brexit done" and claiming to have an "oven ready deal". In reality, Johnson negotiated and signed the withdrawal agreement with the EU in bad faith as he has consistently sought to renege on that agreement by rewriting and reinterpreting aspects of the deal. This has exasperated the EU and tarnished Britain's reputation for honouring international agreements.
Andrew Ryder is the author of Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP - European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Britain and Europe at a Crossroads: The Politics of Anxiety and Transformation (Bristol University Press, 2022)
Before the election, Johnson had promised unionists there would be no need to fill in extra paperwork when sending goods across the Irish Sea. After the election, he has claimed the withdrawal agreement undermines Northern Ireland's place in the union and must be changed. It was clear from the start that the agreement meant many goods flowing between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would require forms to be filled in and increased bureaucracy. The price of this could be escalating tensions in Northern Ireland.

At the heart of this decline in public standards is a style and approach to government that is rooted in populism. In a post-truth age of populism, facts and figures seem to be trumped by emotion and sharp practice. When Johnson goes, Britain will still be confronted with a Conservative Party that is unwilling to exorcise itself of the populist phenomenon. However, the hope is that partygate might be the first step toward a much-needed reckoning and process of national transformation.

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Boris Johnson, Brexit, and the decline of public standards

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faced calls for his resignation over the holding of parties at Number 10 Downing Street during lockdown. Andrew Ryder argues the scandal runs much deeper than the work culture at the heart of government or Boris Johnson's personal failings.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures during the Conservative Party Spring Conference (Photo: REUTERS/Phil Noble)

Even by Boris Johnson's standards, appearing to compare Ukraine's fight against Vladimir Putin to the UK's Brexit vote was quite a provocative move.

A key line in his speech to the Tory spring conference - that the EU referendum result showed it was "the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom" - certainly sparked a backlash.

European diplomats were furious. In what looks like a snub, the EU this Thursday has invited President Biden to join them to discuss Ukraine, while Johnson is very much not on the guest list. There was even dismay from Brexiteers who said the PM's words were "an insult" to the "bravery and sacrifice" of the people of Ukraine.

As the row rumbled on, one No 10 insider suggested Johnson regretted making the comparison, saying the line "sounded better written down than it did when spoken".

Yet the message I've picked up from Downing Street is a very different one. "He knew what he was saying. There was no equating of Ukraine struggles and Brexit," one senior source tells me. "The Ukraine ambassador applauded at the time. [President] Zelensky was glowing about Boris [on Sunday night]. There's been a totally twisted distortion of what he was saying. So, no regrets."

Some critics think that the PM is making the classic mistake in politics of "fighting the last war", believing he can repeat his 2019 triumph at the next election by flagging up Brexit as a defining issue of his premiership.

There is certainly some evidence to suggest the public don't put the issue of Europe or Brexit high on their current list of priorities. As Sunder Katawala, of the British Future think tank, puts it: "In 2019, the salience of Brexit (72 per cent) was its highest since 1972. In February [2022] it was 13 per cent, its lowest since December 2015. It will be very difficult to fight the next election as if it's 2016-19."

There is also the danger that any reference to Brexit will simply highlight that it could have been "done" better. The slump in trade with the EU, extra red tape for business and supply chain shortages of goods and workers ( like lorry drivers) all risk adding to the problems caused by the Covid pandemic.

In the coming local elections, the Conservatives could face very specific consequences. In flagship London boroughs like Westminster, upto 15 percent of voters in some wards are EU citizens. Although they are barred from general election voting, they are eligible to take part in the locals and they may punish the party over "Boris's Brexit".

But there are very good reasons, from Johnson's point of view, in trying to resurrect Brexit as an issue.

The first is that it is among Leave voters that the Tories have seen their biggest drops in support since 2019. It is currently down 21 per cent, whereas Labour's Leave vote has gone up 10 per cent (Lib Dems, Greens and Reform all benefited too). Getting them back on board is an urgent necessity for the PM.

And perhaps just as important is that even though Brexit is not in the headlines, British voters still very much identify themselves as "Remainers" or "Leavers".

Crucially, six long years after that EU referendum, those identities are even stronger than their party identities, according to research by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. Recent polls showed 69 per cent of people still "strongly" identified with either Remain or Leave.

With Leave voters concentrated in marginal seats, it makes electoral sense for Johnson to target them once more. In his spring conference speech, he once more boasted the UK had the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe. Virtually every PMQs, he accuses Keir Starmer of being a "Remoaner" who wanted the UK to stay in the European Medicines Agency.

Elections expert Lord Hayward also pointed out today that although Johnson's personal ratings have been very volatile, his rating as "best Prime Minister" has been relatively stable. Some voters have 'priced in' their dislike of him.

A Tory who canvassed in the East End of London recently revealed the reaction of one voter on the doorstep. "They said: 'Boris is a liar, a cheat and a serial c***. But I'm still going to vote for him'. And that is an indication of the sort of hold that he has on people."

Still, many Tory MPs fear "Partygate" will reignite if Johnson is fined by the police. If the cops' verdict comes before the local elections, the real test will be at the ballot box on 5 May. Over time, personal unpopularity really does drag down a party.

Importantly, some Johnson admirers think he ought to try and unify the nation instead of dividing it again over the EU. And they think the model should stem from 2016 itself. Between February that year (when he came out for Brexit) and May (when he stood down as Mayor of London), even his overwhelmingly pro-Remain staff at City Hall backed him.

"Ninety-eight per cent of the building were Remainers, but they basically just fell in behind him," my source says. "Everyone was like 'that's what the Mayor wants, okay on we go'." Monthly opinion trackers showed Brexit didn't harm him. "He left with stratospheric approval ratings."

Yet there is also a lesson there too. Johnson's record on crime, transport, the environment, Olympic delivery and other issues was what drove his popularity as Mayor. To have even a shot at unifying the nation as much as he did the capital, he's going to have to deliver on "levelling up" and the cost of living crisis as much as he is on claiming Brexit has been a success.

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Comparing Brexit to war in Ukraine shows Boris Johnson is worried about the Leave vote

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Even by Boris Johnson's standards, appearing to compare Ukraine's fight against Vladimir Putin to the UK's Brexit vote was quite a provocative move. A key line in his speech to the Tory spring conference - that the EU referendum result showed it was "the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom" - certainly sparked a backlash.

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Boris Johnson's remaking of the Conservative Party. There have been some big changes in who votes Conservative, in the composition of the parliamentary party, and in Conservative policies and ideas. Is this still the Conservative Party? I

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The Remaking of Conservativism: Boris Johnson and the Politics of Brexit

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Why has the Conservative Party been such a successful political party? One of the reasons lies in the ability of its leaders to understand and navigate the pressure of the politics of power and the p...

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'Boris' Peter Womak 2021 CRITICAL QUARTERLY, VOL. 63, NO. 3

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'Boris' Peter Womak 2021 CRITICAL QUARTERLY, VOL. 63, NO. 3

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The tabloidization of the Brexit campaignPower to the (British) people?Author(s): Franco Zappettini1ORCID icon View AffiliationsSource: Journal of Language and Politics, Volume 20, Issue 2, Mar 2021, p. 277 - 303DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19103.zap

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The tabloidization of the Brexit campaignPower to the (British) people?Author(s): Franco Zappettini1ORCID icon View AffiliationsSource: Journal of Language and Politics, Volume 20, Issue 2, Mar 2021, p. 277 - 303DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19103.zap

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'We are all children of the commonwealth': political myth, metaphor and the transnational commonwealth 'family of nations' in Brexit discourse - British Politics

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Political myths contribute to effective political communication in their ability to render a social group's world and experiences more coherent by providing stories or narratives that explain where it came from, how it came to be in its present condition, and what its future holds.

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Language representation of the concept “britishness” in the post-brexitbritish media discourse Darya M. Kostina3Natalia I. Kostina4Vladislav A. Kuchmystyy5Olga Y. Romashina6Natalia A. Sheifel 2018

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Language representation of the concept “britishness” in the post-brexitbritish media discourse Darya M. Kostina3Natalia I. Kostina4Vladislav A. Kuchmystyy5Olga Y. Romashina6Natalia A. Sheifel 2018

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View of Language representation of the concept "britishness" in the post-brexit british media discourse

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Return to Article Details Language representation of the concept "britishness" in the post-brexit british media discourse

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David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the ‘populist hypothesis’ in the British Conservative PartyAgnès Alexandre-Collier Comparative European Politics (2022)

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David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the ‘populist hypothesis’ in the British Conservative PartyAgnès Alexandre-Collier Comparative European Politics (2022)

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David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the ‘populist hypothesis’ in the British Conservative Party - Comparative European Politics

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Brexit was often associated with a recent upsurge of populism in Western democracies, with the idea of re-engaging with the people being construed as a populist strategy to disengage from Europe. This article seeks to explore the populist hypothesis by stepping outside the dominant literature on pop…

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English Nationalism, the 2019 Election and the Future of the British StateMichael Kenny

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English Nationalism, the 2019 Election and the Future of the British StateMichael Kenny

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The colonial remains of Brexit: Empire nostalgia and narcissistic nationalismCaroline Koegler,Pavan Kumar MalreddyORCID Icon &Marlena TronickePages 585-592 | Published online: 28 Oct 2020

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The colonial remains of Brexit: Empire nostalgia and narcissistic nationalismCaroline Koegler,Pavan Kumar MalreddyORCID Icon &Marlena TronickePages 585-592 | Published online: 28 Oct 2020

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Since the formal end of colonialism, perhaps no single political event has been as influential in shaping British narratives of national and transnational identity as the United Kingdom's (UK) departure from the European Union (EU). The elusive, protracted, and unceremonious slew of events - with their vague beginnings in the Treaty of Lisbon and an equally indeterminate ending wagering on the empire's vestigial hold in the Commonwealth - that came to be known as "Brexit" in popular parlance, continues to frame assessments of difference and sameness, freedom and dependence, regional alliances and cultural entitlements, and discourses of national health and viral threat. Brexit has triggered large-scale speculations about social insecurities and national trauma. It has given racism a free pass, and hate speech a broader acceptance in society. It has bolstered populism, prejudice, and homophobia - and yet also instilled a sense of hope and renewal, not least among its apologists, lobbyists, and also sizeable sections of the British population. The convergence of these mutually reinforcing discourses has often been attributed to the turmoil of the British Referendum on EU membership on June 23, 2016 which, for many, was a moment of reckoning - the day when Britain's deep social divisions became visibly manifest. In literary criticism, the ensuing coinage of "BrexLit" (Day ; Shaw ; Ferguson ) as a catch-all phrase to describe what appeared to be a novel body of texts, even a "new landscape of British fiction" (Day , n.p.), similarly implied that the result of the Referendum was entirely unanticipated, triggering a sustained sense of cataclysmic change and sociopolitical emergency. This special "Brexit" issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing moves away from any such temporal or generic framing of Brexit as a novel, even unforeseeable "event". Instead, it identifies and historicizes Britain's departure from the EU as the result of a long-standing process, rooted in persisting imperial attitudes and, arguably, narcissistic yearnings.

To be sure, Brexit is not a bona fide postcolonial event. But, as the articles in this special issue demonstrate, it represents a moment when anxieties about harnessing and unleashing colonially engineered power structures and cultural hierarchies crystallized. If Britain's departure from its colonies marked the end of colonialism as we knew it, then, for some, Britain's departure from the EU marked the end of yet another kind of colonialism. In his resignation letter as Foreign Secretary on July 9, 2018, Boris Johnson warned that Theresa May's Brexit plan would reduce Britain to "the status of a colony" (Buchan , n.p.). Johnson was not alone in ruminating on the perks of being or holding a "colony" - Tory backbenchers, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), and the Leave campaigners repeatedly, at times habitually, tapped into colonial nostalgia, conjuring images of a glorious imperial past of global dimensions. What was formulaic about Johnson's projection was the sheer imaginary bankruptcy: a colonizer assuming the role of the colonized. This is by no means unique to Johnson or the Leave campaign; other populist leaders across Europe - Marine Le Pen of France, Giuseppe Conte of Italy, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Björn Höcke and Alice Weidel of Germany - have enjoyed a moderate success in appropriating the language of oppression and victimhood, repeatedly wielding it against EU membership, to advance their own populist agenda. In Heroic Failure: Brexit and The Politics of Pain, the Irish critic Fintan O'Toole () reads this doubling act of the Leave campaign as both the victim and beneficiary of a supposed Brussels dictatorship as a play of "the political erotics of imaginary domination and imaginary submission [which] are the deep pulse of the Brexit drama" (25). Sure enough, the doxa of Britain-becoming-a-colony was further exacerbated during the interregnum of Brexit, flanked by familiar references to World War II. In their commentary on Brexit and nostalgia, Campanella and Dassù () quip: "having defeated the French and the Spaniards throughout the centuries, having stopped Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev from permanently disrupting global order, London was now primed to roll back Brussels' technocrats" (107). Populist appropriations of the COVID-19 pandemic, too, are rolled into this logic, as in public appeals that Britain should muster warlike endurance to extricate itself from both the clutches of the coronavirus and the grip of the EU. As this confluence of empire imaginary, anti-EU sentiments, and paradoxically deep identitarian investment in European history already indicates, Theresa May's "truly global Britain" may not be all that global in outlook but poised on a selective, if not a skewed, representation of Britain's role in colonial history that postcolonial studies is best equipped to articulate.

Populist campaigns built around the commingled tropes of Brexit, empire, and World War II have proven highly effective across various sections of British society, and have exerted a particular force amongst those who witnessed the gradual crumbling of empire after the war. As John McLeod notes in his contribution to this special issue - "Warning Signs: Postcolonial Writing and the Apprehension of Brexit" - World War II was the last large-scale political and military event affording untainted heroism before the empire collapsed entirely - and with it, if more gradually and more uncertainly, its moral legitimacy. As such, World War II was the last incarnation of a kind of British imperial fortitude that continues to facilitate a safe and legitimate sense of national attachment, particularly in times of upheaval. Given the affective investment in Britain's victory (one that bars critical examination of colonialism up until this day), "devolving power to the EU [has been] experienced as especially destabilizing to nationalists' sense of self-esteem and progression" (Beaumont , 380). In a twist or two, resistance to EU policies has become a way of preserving British exceptionalism, carried over from empire's "last days of innocence". For the populist camps, Britain's EU membership has helped to sustain a victim-like, sacrificial, and defensive position, giving ample opportunity for constructing the country as having to fend off unjust, inferiorizing "onslaughts" of EU bureaucrats, and abject invasions of European immigrants. In the process, as Sarah Franklin () observes, the "recommemoration of lost British soldiers [has been brought] to a reforgetting of how British imperialism, Orientalism, and racism set the stage for the globally catastrophic losses of the two world wars", thereby "displac[ing] the violent legacies of enforced racial hierarchy, military subjugation, and theft of resources from colonized peoples around the globe" (51-52). In its continuing predilection for self-aggrandizing visions of empire, as well as a lack of critical self-positioning in relation to its imperial history, Britain remains vulnerable to "the threat posed by injured white nationalism" (52). Eurosceptic manoeuvring of the EU into the phantasmatic position of the colonizer, and of Britain itself into the position of the resisting and retaliating colonized, is symptomatic of such predilection and lack. It reveals not only the perverse flexibility of populist discourses - to arrogate, appropriate, and even claim the discursive position of the colonized - but also a continuing inability to conceive of transnational cooperation outside the framework of domination and victimhood. Therefore, in more than one sense, and for more than one reason, as John McLeod remarks in his article in this issue, such positionings reflect a "failure of the imagination".

Likening Britain's current, post-Referendum position to the varied and often violent resistance movements in former colonial territories not only makes a compelling case for populist myth-making, but also bespeaks a potent blend of imperialism, narcissism, and exceptionalism. Given its grievances over the perils of domination and perceived victimhood, parts of the Brexit debate are narcissistically invested in hierarchical, controlling relationships ("take back control"), rather than more balanced, inclusive, and socially just models of cooperation. In her essay "The Disaster of Colonial Narcissism", Simone Drichel () fruitfully conjoins clinical thought on narcissism and postcolonial theory, in particular Leela Gandhi's () research on "affective communities". Drichel flags what Gandhi names colonialism's "crisis of nonrelation" (184) and the "antirelational basis of imperialism" (185) which stand in the way of more meaningful (affective) politics based on relationality. Drichel also accentuates Diane Simmons's () study, The Narcissism of Empire, which paints a pathological "portrait of narcissism [as] a grandiose sense of superiority alternating with feelings of loss, rage and revenge" (1). According to Simmons, as an antidote to these infirmities of negation, "subject peoples" serve as a physic mirror to "their conquerors, as they could be compelled in a variety of ways to reflect back to the imperialist a grandiose self-image" (1).

With the loss of its colonies that in many ways shaped Britishness and its cultural boundaries through annexation and exclusion, it seems that empire's narcissistic disposition, as defined by Simmons, has been preserved. In an age of public apologies, colonial reparations, restorative justice, and truth and reconciliation, it may serve us well to read shame and guilt as potentially enabling affects, as opposed to their presumed complicity with passivity, docility, or the politics of victimhood (Malreddy , 311). If shame can be defined as "one's shortcomings" in relation to the social standards a person "identifies" with (Striblen , 478), and guilt as a recognition of one's wrongdoings to others, then, as Wüschner () posits, a shame that does not transform into guilt can effectively lead to a "narcissistic rage that does not really care for the ones who have been wronged but only grieves the loss of social recognition" (99). Applied to the context of imperial demise, Wüschner's reasoning suggests that, for Britain, this rupture in the affective pact between shame and guilt represented an abject loss of its recognition worldwide. Furthermore, resistance movements, equally worldwide, waged an unrelenting campaign against colonial rule to expose its wrongful injuries, wrought in the name of a "civilizing mission". In short, accepting empire's modus operandi as the cause of a " wrongful injury to others " (Murphy , 235; emphasis in original) would prove damaging to the narcissistic self. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the appropriation of the colonized position by none other than Britain's current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is neither innocent nor premediated, but an unfortunate consequence of his inability to come to terms with empire's injurious past that ultimately shaped the Leave campaign's exceptionalist logic.

In this introduction, then, we wish to frame Johnson's dramatic usurpation of a scenario of "reverse-colonization" as symptomatic of repressed anxieties surrounding empire nostalgia and narcissistic shame. Whilst the narcissistic forces of empire hang in the balance and, eventually, might have been more constructively resolved while Britain was still an EU member, Brexit has for now forestalled any such possibility. Indeed, it has revived those remains of empire's narcissistic nationalism that now militate against the very idea of Europe. Cultural productions concerning Brexit in many ways register the affective upheavals - a sense of doom and relief about the nation's much-anticipated "independence" - that the decision to quit the EU has produced throughout British society. In one peculiar instance, the "Irish Border" () itself has joined forces with literary and cultural productions on Brexit, authoring an autobiography under the rubric of "I am the Border, so I am", as if reaffirming its corporeal presence, territorial absence, and existential erasure - all at once. Other striking examples, some of which are discussed in greater detail by individual contributors, include neo-historical films about particularly "heroic" chapters of British national history such as Christopher Nolan's () Dunkirk and Joe Wright's () Darkest Hour. Both these films rehearse the empire nostalgia and narcissistic nationalism we have outlined above - or, as Robert Eaglestone () puts it, the "cruel nostalgia" with which World War II as a subchapter of Britain's imperial history is remembered. Sam Mendes's () much-lauded 1917, though marketed as an anti-war movie, similarly positions Britain in the role of the heroic underdog that emerges victorious over an all too powerful, external (German) aggressor. All these cultural productions feed on both empire nostalgia and apocalyptical scenarios of World War II-type post-war austerity.

In turn, the rich body of novels that either explicitly interrogate Brexit's colonial entanglements, or else are discussed in this context, consist of such wide-ranging texts as Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet (), Mohsin Hamid's () Exit West, Anna Burns's () Milkman, Sam Byers's () Perfidious Albion, or Bernardine Evaristo's () Girl, Woman, Other. Theatrical works that negotiate the nostalgic notions of long-lost colonial influence as well as the anxieties surrounding migration that have fuelled anti-EU sentiments include Zinnie Harris's () How to Hold Your Breath (Royal Court Theatre), Mike Bartlett's (2017) Albion (Almeida Theatre), and Sharon Watson's () dance work Windrush: Movement of the People (Phoenix Dance Theatre) - as does Billy Bragg () with his album Bridges, Not Walls (see Reinfandt ). From the field of art and photography, Martin Parr's () exhibition Only Human at the National Portrait Gallery and Anish Kapoor's () artwork A Brexit, A Broxit, We All Fall Down exhibited at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery bear testimony to "a garish scar [which] opens as Britain's inner geography is mutilated by violently redrawn borders" (Ghoshal , 3).

The contributions to this special issue do not "write back to the empire", so to speak, but write into, away from, and against the colonial underpinnings of the Brexit discourse. They trace and critique the present day's empire nostalgia and populist myth-making in the UK through a wide range of literary and cultural productions, and remind readers of the proleptic potential of postcolonial writers in identifying the residual ideologies of imperialism in the lead up to and after the Brexit campaign. With their vast geographical as well as diverse linguistic reach - India, Britain, Pakistan, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Barbados, Eastern Europe, and Greece, among others - the articles featured here make a productive contribution to postcolonial literary discourse. A number of contributors employ Paul Gilroy's () concept of "postcolonial melancholia" as Britain's lingering grief over a lost empire and the "heroic" chapters in British history. If melancholia is a product of the loss of the object of national desire or the erasure of "whole segments of national past [ ... ] leaving destructive blank spaces in individual autobiographies" (Gilroy , 107-108), then nostalgia is best understood as an attempt to retrieve, recreate, and, where needed, reinvent such lost objects through populist myth-making, as evinced in the Leave campaign's promise of a return to past imperial glory in the guise of a "truly global Britain".

Ronald Cummings's article "Ain't No Black in the (Brexit) Union Jack" complicates the question of borders upon which the entire Brexit discourse rests. Through an original reading of Paul Gilroy's There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack (1987) and Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack (2005), Cummings offers a critique of the narrow formulations of British national identity in Brexit discourse by delineating the exclusion of black subjects from the Union Jack since the time of HMT Empire Windrush and the annexation of colonies as part of empire's cultural heritage. John McLeod's article offers an equally refreshing historical perspective on Brexit literature, arguing that postcolonial literatures have long anticipated the advent of an event such as Brexit. McLeod reads Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore (2003), Zadie Smith's NW (), and John Lanchester's Capital (2012) as prime examples of anticipatory texts that unveil the historical, racial, and socio-economic "origins and depth of a crisis brought by the long formation of Brexit's post-imperium". Within this historicist frame of Brexit, Lindsay Moore's "Brexit Literature's Present Absentees: Triangulating Brexit, Antisemitism, and the Palestinian Crisis" reads two texts - British Jewish author Linda Grant's A Stranger City (2019) and British Palestinian author Raba'i al-Madhoun's Fractured Destinies: A Novel (2018) - that shed light on Britain's colonial interventions in the Middle East from the 1917 Balfour Agreement to present-day discourses of Zionism and anti-Semitism. Moore contends that the empire's fork-tongued policy "accrues [new] meaning when read in awareness of British colonial intervention in the Middle East and in the context of its divisive departure from Europe".

Shazia Sadaf's "'We Are All Migrants Through Time': History and Geography in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West" leaps from historical contingencies to speculative postcolonial futures shaped by Brexit. Sadaf argues that, despite its dystopian setting and the trials and tribulations of its characters through disjointed times and spaces, Exit West ends on a hopeful note and gestures towards a seamless assemblage of races, geographies, and technologies that must learn to live together. Vedrana Velickovic's "'Eastern Europeans' and BrexLit" examines the postcolonial vacuum occupied by the Eastern European migrants in Britain. Velickovic's broad corpus - Adam Thorpe's Missing Fay (2017), Amanda Craig's The Lie of the Land (2017), Carla Grauls' Occupied (2012), Andrew Muir's The Session (2015) and Agnieszka Dale's short stories - reveals the sites and sources of postcolonial paranoia and the subsumption of Eastern European migrants to an imperial logic, even if they do not find a place within the history of British colonialism.

Marlena Tronicke's "Imperial Pasts, Dystopian Futures, and the Theatre of Brexit" returns to the contested turf of the British Isles, albeit with a focus on drama. She mediates Mike Bartlett's (2017) country house drama Albion and Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman (2017), set during the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, through Gilroy's notion of postcolonial melancholia, suggesting that only through a constructive engagement with the colonial past can a post-Brexit Britain be envisaged. Birte Heidemann's "The Brexit Within: Mapping the Rural and the Urban in Contemporary British Literature" draws on Amanda Craig's The Lie of the Land (2017) and Ali Smith's Autumn (2016), while reversing the gaze on the inequalities within British society. By linking Raymond Williams's thesis on the discrepancies between "city and the country" to the structural divide between metropolis and the colony, Heidemann reads the two novels as postcolonial commentaries on the multiple entries and exits - across class, culture, and race - within and among British society. Jan Rupp's "Writing Back to Brexit: Transcultural Intertextuality, Refugees, and the Colonial Archive from Chaucer to Kipling" holds that a refraction of the colonial archive helps understand how the refugee figures are both written in and written out of the colonial narratives. Against this, Rupp argues that contemporary accounts of refugee literature, largely occasioned by the Leave campaign's xenophobia and ethnic exclusionism, write back the wandering and vagrant migrant figures into the colonial canon. Clelia Clini's "'We Are Here For a Greater Purpose': Brexit, Britishness and the Re-production of Imperial Fantasies on Screen" turns to the cinematic representations of imperial desires through a close reading of the 2017 historical film Victoria & Abdul. The film, drowned in the nostalgic effluvia of Victorian glory, turns a blind eye to the jarring inequalities between its Indian character and Queen Victoria, thereby reaffirming the dated view that colonialism is, at its best, a benign enterprise.

Although the articles featured in this special issue make a strong case for reading Brexit through the lens of colonialism and postcolonial discourse, they do not necessarily exhaust other ways of readings the events leadings up to UK's departure from Europe: the rise of right-wing populism on both sides of the Atlantic; the use of social media technologies in swaying public opinion; the internal inequalities and divisions within the EU; the dwindling fate of regionalisms and local governance structures in the face of global capitalism; and, last but not least, the proliferation of fake news, "alternative facts" and "post-truth" discourses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for Pavan Malreddy [grant number MA 711911-1].

Notes on contributors

Caroline Koegler is assistant professor of British literary and cultural studies at the University of Münster. She is the author of Critical Branding. Postcolonial Studies and the Market (2018) and co-editor of Locating African European Studies: Interventions-Intersections-Conversations (2020), Law, Literature and Citizenship (forthcoming), and "Queering Neo-Victorianism Beyond Sarah Waters" (special issue of Neo-Victorian Studies, 2020). Current articles include "Queer Home-Making and Black Britain. Claiming, Ageing, Living" ( Interventions, 2020) and "Follow the Hatred: The Production of Negative Feeling in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847)" ( NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, forthcoming). She is also working on a monograph on the politics of emotion in literature of the long 18th century.

Pavan Kumar Malreddy teaches English literature at Goethe University Frankfurt. His recent publications include a monograph, Orientalism, Terrorism, Indigenism: South Asian Readings in Postcolonialism (2015), a co-edited collection, Reworking Postcolonialism: Globalization, Labour and Rights (2015), and a co-edited volume, Violence in South Asia: Contemporary Perspectives (2019). He has co-edited special issues of Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2012), ZAA: Journal of English and American Studies (2014), Kairos (2018), and European Journal of English Studies (2018) and has authored over 30 essays and chapters on terrorism, political violence, and postcolonial theory in journals such as The European Legacy, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Intertexts, and AlterNative, among others. He is currently working on a monograph titled Insurgent Cultures.

Marlena Tronicke is assistant professor of British literary and cultural studies at the University of Münster, Germany. Her areas of research and teaching include early modern as well as contemporary British drama, Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, and adaptation studies. Her first monograph, Shakespeare's Suicides: Dead Bodies That Matter, was published in 2018. She is co-editor of Black Neo-Victoriana (with Felipe Espinoza Garrido and Julian Wacker, 2021) and "Queering Neo-Victorianism Beyond Sarah Waters", a special issue of Neo-Victorian Studies (with Caroline Koegler, 2020).

1. A case in point: on the campaign trail for Brexit, Nigel Farage "would ride into town in a purple campaign bus playing the soundtrack from classic Second World War film The Great Escape " (Beaumont , 385-386), so as to warm up his audience.

2. The author of this avant-garde enterprise is the same person who founded the Twitter account @BorderIrish, and chooses to remain anonymous.

References

Beaumont, Paul . 2018. "Brexit, Retrotopia and the Perils of Post-colonial Delusions." Global Affairs 3 (4-5): 379. doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1478674.

Buchan, Lizzy. 2018. "Boris Johnson warns 'Brexit dream is dying' in scathing resignation letter". The Independent, July 09. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-letter-resignation-latest-theresa-may-brexit-statement-a8439346.html

. 2017. "Brexlit: The New Landscape of British Fiction." Financial Times, July 28. https://www.ft.com/content/30ec47b4-7204-11e7-93ff-99f383b09ff9

Eaglestone, Robert . 2018. "Cruel Nostalgia and the Memory of the Second World War." In Brexit and Literature, edited by Robert Eaglestone, 92-104. Abingdon: Routledge.

Ferguson, Donna . 2019. "From Epic Myths to Rural Fables, How Our National Turmoil Created 'Brexlit'." The Guardian, October 27. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/27/brexlit-new-literary-genre-political-turmoil-myths-fables

Irish Border. 2019. I Am the Border, so I Am from the Twitter Hit @ BorderIrish. London: HarperCollins.

Murphy, Jeffrie G. 1999. "Shame Creeps through Guilt and Feels like Retribution." Law and Philosophy 18 (4): 327-344.

Reinfandt, Christoph . 2019. "Brexit and the Lost Cause of Progressive Patriotism: Some Thoughts on Billy Bragg." Journal of the Study of the British Cultures 26 (2/19): 207-220.

Smith, Ali. 2016-20. Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer). London: Hamish Hamilton.

Striblen, Cassie. 2007. "Guilt, Shame and Shared Responsibility." Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (3): 469-485.

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The colonial remains of Brexit: Empire nostalgia and narcissistic nationalism

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Since the formal end of colonialism, perhaps no single political event has been as influential in shaping British narratives of national and transnational identity as the United Kingdom's (UK) departure from the European Union (EU).

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ABSTRACT
Of the many dilemmas faced by Theresa May in negotiating Britain's withdrawal from the EU, finding a workable narrative to explain Britain's new world role post-Brexit proved one of the most intractable. She and her top government ministers alighted on the idea of "Global Britain". Giving it the shorthand GlobalBritain™, the article interprets the vision using qualitative discourse analysis. It begins by positioning the article as a contribution to constructivist foreign policy analysis. Next, it explains the method used to select the relevant sources, develop the codebook and interpret the data. The third section outlines the policy architecture intended to make GlobalBritain™ practical reality. The final section demonstrates the rhetorical techniques through which GlobalBritain™ is framed as the story of Britain escaping a damaging period of confinement inside the EU "prison". The central argument is that GlobalBritain™ puts a marked Eurosceptic twist on a long-standing UK grand strategy aimed at a global leadership role in which "Europe" has always played an ambiguous part. The conclusion critically reflects on the research we can now conduct to discover more about this foreign policy narrative in-the-making.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the two anonymous journal reviewers plus the following for their insightful comments on previous drafts: John Bew, Hannah Pembury, Patrick Porter and Ian Wash.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Oliver Daddow is Assistant Professor in British Politics and Security and an Affiliated Researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge. He is the author of Britain and Europe since 1945 (2004), New Labour and the European Union (2011), International Relations Theory (3rd edn, 2017) and co-edits Politics UK (9th edn, 2018).

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GlobalBritain™: the discursive construction of Britain's post-Brexit world role

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ABSTRACT Of the many dilemmas faced by Theresa May in negotiating Britain's withdrawal from the EU, finding a workable narrative to explain Britain's new world role post-Brexit proved one of the most intractable. She and her top government ministers alighted on the idea of "Global Britain".

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Modality or how to personalize a nationalistic discourseModality or how to personalize a nationalistic discourseAuthor(s): Cristina Vâlcea 2016

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Modality or how to personalize a nationalistic discourseModality or how to personalize a nationalistic discourseAuthor(s): Cristina Vâlcea 2016

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Author(s): Cristina Vâlcea
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov
Keywords: modality; ideology; representation

Summary/Abstract: Modality is a linguistic means which attenuates and models the straightforwardness of one's intention (Palmer, 1986) due to either politeness or secrecy. With interesting implications at the morphologic level and vital determinations at the discursive level (Bybee & Fleischman, 1995), modality stands out as a major criterion in the encryption and decryption of the message beyond words. Provided with a generous array of signified items, modality plays a crucial role in the construction of the political message which requires convincing arguments when building up a political vision. Given a politically heated context, modality demonstrates its power in political debates by going far beyond its linguistic context and well into audience's mental. Fears, tensions, conflicts are awakened in shrewdly modalized messages meant to convince people of the truthfulness of one's vision. Consequently, this piece of research aims at identifying the modalizers in the discourse of the main two supporters of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union: Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson by highlighting the role the modal structures play in the rounding up of the "leave" message.

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download central and eastern european journals

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Author(s): Cristina Vâlcea Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies Published by: Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov Keywords: modality; ideology; representation Summary/Abstract: Modality is a linguistic means which attenuates and models the straightforwardness of one's intention (Palmer, 1986) due to either politeness or secrecy.

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The Diverse and Dynamic World of‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Political Discourse 2016 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplineshttp://cadaad.net/ejournalVol 8 (1): 23 – 37VICTORIA WIRTH-KOLIBA

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The Diverse and Dynamic World of‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Political Discourse 2016 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplineshttp://cadaad.net/ejournalVol 8 (1): 23 – 37VICTORIA WIRTH-KOLIBA

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Methodology: last 6 months of tweets - what's been going on w/ Bozza - e.g. partygate, economic crisis, Ukraine etc. He's exposed and hanging on. Not using war or policy related tweets as these are obviously pro-govt.

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Calhoun 2017 The Rhetoric of Nationalism, 2017M. Skey and M. Antonsich (eds.), Everyday Nationhood,DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_2  pp.17-30

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Calhoun 2017 The Rhetoric of Nationalism, 2017M. Skey and M. Antonsich (eds.), Everyday Nationhood,DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_2  pp.17-30

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The Brexit referendum: how trade and immigration in the discourses of the official campaigns have legitimised a toxic (inter)national logicF Zappettini1 September 2019

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The Brexit referendum: how trade and immigration in the discourses of the official campaigns have legitimised a toxic (inter)national logicF Zappettini1 September 2019

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through the institutional framing of the referendum campaign in antagonistic camps, the ideological articulation of discourses of trade and immigration engendered and legitimized a new toxic (inter)national logic of Brexit: by leaving the EU, Britain ‘takes back control’ to pursue mercantile policies whose benefits ‘outsiders’ should be excluded from.

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Imagined Communities

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[PDF] Discursive Representation of the EU in Brexit-related British Media | Semantic Scholar

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Coverage of the Brexit referendum dominated UK media in the summer of 2016. Previous research has focused on the Leave-leaning press and the representations of politicians within that debate. Analysing the British media representation of the EU is paramount in understanding dominant, conflicting discourses regarding the decision of British voters in the period preceding the referendum.

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Anthony Ridge-Newman, Fernando León-Solís, Hugh O’Donnell

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This edited collection brings together leading international scholars to explore the connection between Brexit and the media.

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ABSTRACT
Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject in the British public debate, The relationship between Britain and Europe was mostly regarded as extremely cautious and parochially nationalist; however, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s opposition to the European Economic Community (ECC) was predominantly led by intelligentsias and maverick politicians, the present-day debate seems less intellectually-driven and academic in his language. This article draws attention to the role of traditional and online media in re-narrating the European question. Within this process, the re-semioticization of the role of Great Britain in the international scenario vis-à-vis the historical and cultural discourses of borders between the UK and the Continent play a pivotal function. Starting from here, the article considers, on the one hand, how the current re-narration of the European question is reproducing and reinterpreting historical arguments vis-à-vis old clichés. On the other, it deals primarily with the response to the profound transition taking place in the political landscape.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marzia Maccaferri is Associate Lecturer in Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests lie at the intersection of European political history (Twentieth century) and intellectual history. Her work has a particular focus on the history of Italian and British intellectuals and on the relationship between intellectuals, public sphere, and journals and media. Her forthcoming publication is The Democracy of Affluence. Intellectuals and the Affluent Society in Britain, Italy, and the US, 1958-1979, to be published by Routledge in late 2019.

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Splendid isolation again? Brexit and the role of the press and online media in re-narrating the European discourse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ABSTRACT Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject in the British public debate, The relationship between Britain and Europe was mostly regarded as extremely cautious and parochially nationalist; however, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s opposition to the European Economic Community (ECC) was predominantly led by intelligentsias and maverick politicians, the present-day debate seems less intellectually-driven and academic in his language.

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The tabloidization of the Brexit campaign

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Abstract Consistent with a populist script, evoking the people has been a nodal point in the discursive unfolding of Brexit and its legitimation. This paper focuses on the mediatization of the Brexit referendum campaign in a corpus of online British tabloids to address the critical question of how the people in whose name Brexit was (de)legitimised were discursively constructed and mobilized.

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ABSTRACT
We estimate the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on the UK (un-)employment rate up to January 2020 by comparing the observed performance of the indicators in the UK with those of a synthetic control. The decline in the UK unemployment rate recorded after the referendum mimics the trend of the synthetic indicator and, similarly, the increase in UK employment follows the trend of the synthetic control. Overall, we find that the Brexit referendum has had little effect on the UK (un-)employment rate.

I. Introduction

On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom electorate decided that the UK would leave the European Union (EU). The surprising outcome of the Brexit referendum was the culmination of a bitter political campaign between 'Leavers' and 'Remainers'. In particular, there have been accusations to both camps of misleading the voters regarding the way Brexit would pan out and its socio-economic implications. Of particular concern for the 'Remain camp' were economic impacts due to protracted uncertainty and restricted access to the EU's single market. Remainers also stressed the geopolitical security implications arising from a 'divorce' from strategic (and geographically proximate) allies. On the positive side, the proponents of the 'Leave camp' emphasized the increased policy space and the return of sovereignty that the UK citizens would gain, coupled with the liberation of the UK from the yoke of Brussels bureaucracy.

Independently of ex-ante expectations and predictions, Brexit constituted a (potentially consequential) policy experiment and a unicum since no other country to date has left the EU. Several estimates of the economic consequences of the decision to leave exist. These include estimates of economic costs of Brexit in terms of GDP loss (Born et al., 2019; Fetzer and Wang 2020) and the impact on foreign direct investment towards the UK (Simionescu 2018) and on its financial markets (Opatrny 2021) and labour productivity (Farid 2020). However, no study has applied impact evaluation techniques focusing on employment. We apply the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), which is particularly apt to study and quantify the impact of single major events (as in the case of significant policy decisions); we do this in the context of the Brexit referendum in order to estimate the difference that the 2016 Brexit referendum made on UK employment in the short term. The issue of unemployment is particularly salient since, apart from being an important factor for social and individual well-being, some of the arguments made for and against Brexit focused precisely on the impacts that leaving the EU would have on jobs (Mortiaux 2018).

II. The synthetic control method

We are making use of SCM to discern and quantify the effect of the Brexit referendum on UK employment. SMC is a statistical technique gaining increasing popularity in the field of impact evaluation, given its potential to attribute impacts to specific interventions (see Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller 2010; Abadie and Gardeazabal 2003; Kahane and Sannicandro 2019; López-Cazar, Papyrakis, and Pellegrini 2020; Pellegrini, Tasciotti, and Spartaco 2021). SCM is a data-driven technique that constructs synthetic comparative units via combining other sample units (typically referred to as 'donors' or 'donor pool') that did not experience the same treatment. The intervention here is the referendum to withdraw from the EU. The synthetic unit is constructed with an optimal combination of donor weights (based on an algorithm) that minimize the distance (the root mean squared of the prediction error) for a specific outcome variable - (un)employment, in our case - between the treated unit (that experiences the intervention) and its corresponding synthetic unit. This is formally presented in Equation (1), where X corresponds to the labour-market outcome variable, m indicates the number of donor countries (ranging between 1 and n) and W is an (m × 1) vector of non-negative weights which sum to one. m i n(X U K −∑ m=1 n X m W)2 s u b j e c t t o w m ≥0(1) (1)

For our analysis, SCM produces a synthetic control unit that imitates the (un)employment patterns of the UK economy before the intervention (i.e. prior to the 2016 Brexit referendum). Any deviations (in (un)employment) in the aftermath of the intervention can then be attributed to the treatment, and their statistical significance is typically derived through ex-post tests. The estimated gaps between the UK and its synthetic counterpart approximate how the two indicators on the UK labour market would have performed - had the 2016 referendum not been in favour of leaving the EU - by using the estimated synthetic values as a counterfactual.

III. Data

We make use of the SCM to estimate the effect of Brexit-related uncertainty on two labour-market indicators for the UK, namely the unemployment rate (monthly series) and the employment rate (yearly series). Our donor pool consists of 27 OECD countries, for which complete time-series data exist for our labour-market outcome variables (see Appendix 1). Our period of analysis is between January 2012 and January 2020 for the monthly unemployment series and between 2008 and 2019 for the yearly employment series. Data comes from the Eurostat database .¹ Our analysis uses a list of predictors to construct the synthetic control unit ( Table 1); the predictor variables have been identified based on their ability to forecast the time evolution of the un(employment) outcome variables in the pre-Brexit referendum period and the best pre-intervention match between the synthetic and treated units. In line with earlier synthetic control analyses (e.g. see Ando 2015; Villar and Papyrakis 2017), we also include lagged (pre-intervention) values of the dependent variables in the list of their covariates, as this controls for unobservable characteristics and helps to produce a better-fitting pre-intervention model.

Impacts of the Brexit referendum on UK employment: a synthetic control method approach

29 March 2022

IV. Analysis

Figure 1 shows how the monthly unemployment UK indicator behaves vis-à-vis the synthetic one in the period between January 2012 and January 2020 (the estimated weights per donor country are presented in Appendix 1); we interrupt the analysis before the Covid-19 pandemic since it created an exogenous shock that affected OECD countries differently at different points in time, potentially creating confounding effects. The black vertical line indicates the time of the intervention (namely, June 2016 when the Brexit referendum took place). The small difference between the pre-intervention values for the observed and synthetic series signifies a good pre-intervention fit for our synthetic control model (with the difference being smaller than 7.5% of the average unemployment rate, see also Bonander, Humphreys, and Degli Esposti 2021). In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the UK unemployment appears to be consistently higher in relation to the synthetic unit; the gap also seems to widen over time although it remains modest, close to approximately half a percentage point (of additional unemployment) about a year later. The statistical inference suggests that this moderately sized gap between observed and synthetic control unemployment is insignificant. This is based on placebo tests that replicate the exact synthetic control exercise for each of the donor pool countries; the calculated p-values correspond to the share of donor countries that have an estimated effect at least as large as to the one of the UK economy.

Impacts of the Brexit referendum on UK employment: a synthetic control method approach

Figure 2 presents the actual and synthetic values for yearly employment between 2008 and 2019 for those aged 20-64 (donor weights are again presented in Appendix 1). Results are largely in line with Figure 1 but less pronounced. The British labour market could be marginally underperforming when compared to the synthetic unit. The gap is small (less than half a percentage point) and is not statistically significant (the placebo graphs and the p-values of the statistical inference are available from the authors upon request).

Impacts of the Brexit referendum on UK employment: a synthetic control method approach

As a robustness check, we varied the timing of the intervention. Given that the Brexit referendum was announced about a year before it took place, it is of interest to assess the presence of any anticipation effects that could arise prior to the actual referendum. For this reason, we replicated the synthetic control exercise by adopting intervention points 6 and 12 months prior to the referendum. Similarly, we also replicated the synthetic control procedure for two later cut-off points 6 and 12 months after the referendum to check whether there is any delayed effect following the Brexit referendum (instead of an immediate one), as markets started factoring in the related uncertainties. In all cases, all post-intervention effects are consistently statistically insignificant.

V. Concluding remarks

Our results suggest that the 2016 Brexit referendum had little effect on the UK labour market. While the UK experienced a decline in unemployment and an increase in employment rates after the referendum, the observed trends are similar to those of the synthetic control that we constructed on the basis of the performance of other OECD countries. Existing studies, while overlooking the impact of Brexit on (un-)employment, have estimated the economic costs associated with the uncertainty generated by the process of withdrawing from the EU. In particular, the impact in terms of GDP growth has been estimated to be negative (Born et al., 2019). Our results can be reconciled with this evidence since, facing uncertainty, companies might have postponed capital investment and (partially) substituted investment with a larger workforce (as reflected in the declining UK labour productivity post-Brexit, see Farid 2020). This substitution effect is likely to be temporary, and the long-term effects of Brexit on (un-)employment remain to be seen.

Unemployment, monthly rate
(in %)

Yearly employment for those aged 20-64 (in %)

Lagged unemployment, monthly rate (in %)

Lagged yearly employment for those aged 20-64 (in %)

Part-time employment and temporary contracts (in logs)

Tertiary education (levels 5-8) (in %)

Wage-adjusted labour productivity (in %)

Population (in logs)

Average personnel cost in the manufacturing industry (in thousand euros)

General government gross debt (as % of the GDP)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the no funder.

Notes

References

Abadie, A. , A. Diamond, and J. Hainmueller. 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program." Journal of the American Statistical Association 105: 493-505. doi:https://doi.org/10.1198/jasa.2009.ap08746.

Abadie, A. , and J. Gardeazabal. 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country." American Economic Review 93: 113-132. doi:https://doi.org/10.1257/000282803321455188.

Ando, M. 2015. "Dreams of Urbanization: Quantitative Case Studies on the Local Impacts of Nuclear Power Facilities Using the Synthetic Control Method." Journal of Urban Economics 85: 68-85. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2014.10.005.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Impacts of the Brexit referendum on UK employment: a synthetic control method approach

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ABSTRACT We estimate the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on the UK (un-)employment rate up to January 2020 by comparing the observed performance of the indicators in the UK with those of a synthetic control.

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Banal and everyday nationalisms in children's mundane and institutional lives

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Nationalism in many parts of the world takes new shapes merging with populist, far-right, nativist and green agendas illustrating how political evocations of the nation enjoy growing electoral succ...

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The tabloidization of the Brexit campaign

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Abstract Consistent with a populist script, evoking the people has been a nodal point in the discursive unfolding of Brexit and its legitimation. This paper focuses on the mediatization of the Brexit referendum campaign in a corpus of online British tabloids to address the critical question of how the people in whose name Brexit was (de)legitimised were discursively constructed and mobilized.

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Vote Leave - Why Vote Leave - Page 10 - Created with Publitas.com

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Great Britain is a great country * We are the 5th biggest economy in the world * We are the 4th largest military power in the world * We are one of 5

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Abstract

Previous analyses of the 2016 Brexit referendum used region-level data or small samples based on polling data. The former might be subject to ecological fallacy and the latter might suffer from small-sample bias. We use individual-level data on thousands of respondents in Understanding Society, the UK's largest household survey, which includes the EU referendum question. We find that voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction. These results coincide with corresponding patterns at the aggregate level of voting areas. We therefore do not find evidence of ecological fallacy. In addition, we show that prediction accuracy is geographically heterogeneous across UK regions, with strongly pro-Leave and strongly pro-Remain areas easier to predict. We also show that among individuals with similar socio-economic characteristics, Labour supporters are more likely to support Remain while Conservative supporters are more likely to support Leave.

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Who voted for Brexit? Individual and regional data combined

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Previous analyses of the 2016 Brexit referendum used region-level data or small samples based on polling data. The former might be subject to ecological fallacy and the latter might suffer from small-sample bias. We use individual-level data on thousands of respondents in Understanding Society, the UK's largest household survey, which includes the EU referendum question.

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Costs of Economic Nationalism: Evidence from the Brexit Experiment*

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Abstract. Economic nationalism is on the rise, but at what cost? We study this question using the unexpected outcome of the Brexit referendum vote as a natural

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4. Practical recommendations Viewing Internet users as amateur artists highlights certain key features of the ethical situation: • The need to balance – the right of Internet users to receive credit for their creative and intellectual work, and – the need to protect vulnerable human subjects in research studies. • The “semi-published” nature of much Internetbased communication, making traditional notions of “published” and “unpublished” inadequate for analysis. Based on this perspective, I propose the following practical guidelines. These ideas emerged from a combination of personal experience (section 2) and theoretical reflections (section 3). These are not meant to be hard and fast rules, but “rules of thumb” to guide both researchers and IRBs in their decision making. Proposed Guidelines for Treatment of Names and Online Pseudonyms in Published Accounts Before the start of a study involving Internet-based research, the researchers and their IRB must decide whether subjects’ identities will be disguised, and if so to what degree. These guidelines assume we begin with material gathered via ethical means. (Ethics of data collection is beyond the scope of this discussion.) Online Pseudonyms: • Note that online pseudonyms function similarly to real names, and should be treated in the same way one treats real names, because: – They are often de facto traceable to real names. – People care about the reputation of their pseudonyms. – In other words, they function for most purposes just like real names, and should be treated the same way. Levels of disguising: There is a continuum of possibilities from no disguise to heavy disguise. Where is selected along this continuum affects not just whether names and other identifying details are changed, but also the content of what may be published. Four spots along the continuum are characterized: No disguise The Internet is rather like a playground for amateur artists. In many cases, people deserve credit for their creative work. In such situations: • Pseudonyms and real names may be used with permission of the individual. • The individual’s claim to copyright over the work is respected. • The real author of the work is verified. (Some work may be copied or highly derivative, meaning credit belongs to the original author.) • The researcher should omit details that would be harmful to the subject if revealed. Example: Suppose you are studying artwork posted online, and discover that one of the most prolific artists rarely leaves his house and has few friends, devoting all his time to online art. You probably should omit that from the written account, even if it significantly contributes to your readers’ understanding of the work being studied. 230 AMY BRUCKMAN Light disguise • The group is named. • Names, pseudonyms and some other identifying details (place names, organizational and institutional names, etc.) are changed. • Verbatim quotes may be used, even if they could be used to identify an individual. • Group members themselves may be able to guess who is being discussed. • An outsider could probably figure out who is who with a little investigation. • Details that are harmful to individuals should be omitted. Example: the author used light disguise in her study of MOOSE Crossing, the educational online environment for kids she created. While sensitive details (for example a particular child’s difficulties in school) would have enriched the written accounts of learning on the site, they were omitted. Moderate disguise • A compromise position is chosen, incorporating some features of light disguise and some of heavy disguise, as appropriate to the situation. • Details of the specific compromise are reviewed by the researcher’s IRB (as they are in all levels). Heavy disguise • The group is not named. • Names, pseudonyms and other identifying details are changed. • Verbatim quotes are not used if a search mechanism could link those quotes to the person in question. • Some false details may be deliberately introduced. – For example, if you are studying a support site for a chronic disease, you might change the disease in published accounts. • No one would likely recognize the subject (except perhaps the subject him/herself). • Someone deliberately seeking to find a subject’s identity would likely be unable to do so. • Details that would be harmful to the subject if disclosed may be revealed, because the subject has been carefully anonymized.

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Studying the amateur artist: A perspective on disguising data collected in human subjects research on the Internet - Ethics and Information Technology

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In the mid-1990s, the Internet rapidly changedfrom a venue used by a small number ofscientists to a popular phenomena affecting allaspects of life in industrialized nations. Scholars from diverse disciplines have taken aninterest in trying to understand the Internetand Internet users.

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As a journalist, Boris Johnson is an inveterate metaphor addict, and, while even fellow politicians find him untrustworthy and duplicitous, some of those who read his articles are addicted to their mixture of humour, moral reasoning and linguistic originality, as...