Sticks and stones: Comparing Twitter campaigning strategies in the European Union referendum
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117700659 |
| Author | Katharine AM Wright,Simon Usherwood |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
Sticks and stones: Comparing
2017, Vol. 19(2) 371 –388
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117700659
DOI: 10.1177/1369148117700659
in the European Union
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
referendum
Simon Usherwood and
Katharine AM Wright
Abstract
Both camps made extensive use of social media during the referendum, both to mobilise existing
supporters and to convert new ones. However, the three main groups—Stronger In, Vote Leave
and Leave.EU—each took differing strategies within this. Drawing on tweets published by the
groups, the article compares the use of different positive and negative frames, as well as the
thematic content. While reinforcing other work that shows differentials in focus on specific
themes—economics for Stronger In, politics and immigration for the Leave groups—the analysis
also highlights the use on both sides of ‘sticks’ (capitalisation on the other side’s errors) and
‘stones’ (new issues and framings that the group brings to the debate). If the latter constituted the
pre-game plan, then the former became a substantial part of the practical application during the
campaign, a development reinforced by the nature of the medium itself.
Keywords
campaigning, EU referendum, European Union, social media, Twitter, voter mobilisation
Introduction
The 2016 referendum on British membership of the European Union (EU) had a substan-
tial element of social media activity. This was due not only to the increased pervasiveness
of such platforms in social and political interaction but also to the particular nature of the
European debate in the United Kingdom: for the past two decades, Eurosceptics have
found, and made much use of, online spaces to build contacts and community, as well as
to refine lines of argument. The relatively unexpected opportunity to make use of this
digital space presents an important and interesting element in our understanding of the
referendum’s conduct and outcome.
To this is coupled the comparative novelty of the referendum itself. While there
have been increasing numbers of votes on EU-related topics across the Union in the
Department of Politics, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, and Department of Politics and Society,
University of Winchester
Corresponding author:
Simon Usherwood, Department of Politics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK.
Email: s.usherwood@surrey.ac.uk
372
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(2)
post-Maastricht period, this vote is only the second to deal explicitly with the question of
membership, the first being the United Kingdom’s 1975 vote: thus there is a question-
mark over whether the dynamics of such votes apply in this current case (see Qvortrup,
2016). Moreover, while there has been a progressive increase in the use of referendums
in the British political system since the late 1990s (Reidy and Suiter, 2015), the EU vote
is only the third national instance and the first since 1975 to involve a relatively high level
of engagement by political actors. As a result, both the format and the content are rela-
tively novel, allowing for the potential emergence of unusual forms of campaigning.
This article considers the basic question of how and why the campaigns on the two
sides differed in their content and framing. We understand a frame as the emphasis of one
particular aspect of a topic over another, providing a means to understand an issue through
the way it is constructed and the mobilisation of certain values (Semetko and De Vreese,
2004: 92). As political activists around the world endeavour to make the most of this new
digital space, the lessons to be learnt from the EU referendum have wide interest. Similarly,
the increasing use of referendums as devices for taking major public policy decisions cre-
ates a very different space, as compared to elections: the choice is typically binary and the
composition and arrangement of political voices does not necessarily map onto political
parties. Thus, the EU referendum allows us to reflect on whether more historical assump-
tions about behaviour in referendums still holds true in the digital age: do new social media
reinforce or subvert the logics of campaigning that existed beforehand?
To answer this question, the article analyses the Twitter campaigns of the two official
referendum campaign groups—Vote Leave and Britain Stronger In Europe (‘Stronger
In’)—as well as the other notable online campaigning group, Leave.EU, drawing on a
dataset covering the 6 months prior to the date of the vote, 23 June 2016. After establish-
ing some hypotheses on the basis of other referendums, the article analyses the three
groups’ output across a variety of factors, including content, frame and engagement with
audiences, before concluding with some observations on the particularities and wider
lessons of the EU referendum.
Social media and referendums
Twitter has become one of the most popular social media sites in the political arena
(Vergeer et al., 2013: 479) and ranks as the 11th most popular website in the United
Kingdom and third most popular social media platform, after Facebook (first) and
YouTube (second), as measured by the user-base (SimilarWeb, 2016). The campaigns’
use of social media, and Twitter in particular, in the run up to the EU Referendum war-
rants examination. The success of Twitter as a social media platform can in part be attrib-
uted to the way it models key aspects of human relationships, notably the asymmetry
of dyadic bonds, setting it apart from other social networks (Porter, 2009). Although
Facebook has adapted its platform to emulate this ‘human centric’ approach, it nonetheless
remains somewhat of a one-way broadcast medium during political campaigns (Larsson,
2016; Williamson et al., 2010). This asymmetry is reflected in politicians’ different per-
ceptions of the two platforms, with Twitter perceived as attracting ‘political junkies’ and
Facebook a more diverse community (Ross and Burger, 2014: 204). One marker of this
difference is the extent to which Twitter has become a key part of ‘old media’ journalists’
activities, providing a gateway for setting news agendas (Parmelee, 2013). The open
nature of Twitter leads to the ‘asymmetric’ modelling of human relationships: a user can
‘follow’ another user without reciprocation (Porter, 2009). Moreover, by looking at
Usherwood and Wright
373
official accounts, it is possible to establish a benchmark of authorship between political
actors, which has become more complex in a multi-media environment (e.g. Overdorf
and Greenstadt, 2016). This complexity has the potential to make Twitter an excellent
platform for political interaction (Grant et al., 2010: 580).
Role and purpose of social media for political campaigning
The other issue to examine is the value of social media for political campaigning or, per-
haps more pertinently, its perceived value. There is a growing body of literature on the use
of Twitter in the political arena and for political campaigning specifically; however, it is
fragmented among the disciplines of political science, computer science and communica-
tion studies (Jungherr, 2014). In addition, most existing studies on Twitter and politics are
data centred, focusing on the description of empirics, with only a minority seeking to situ-
ate their research within wider theoretical debates (Jungherr, 2014: 4). This article seeks
to provide not only a novel dataset but also contextualisation within a specific political
milieu. In doing so, it contributes to the existing literature on social media and politics
which has addressed the use of social media by politicians seeking (re)election (Graham
et al., 2013; Vergeer and Hermans, 2013), by political parties (Baxter and Marcella, 2012)
and in referendums (Baxter and Marcella, 2013).
At first glance, social media appears to provide an opportunity to move to a more
interactive form of campaigning and away from the mere transmission of a message to
engagement with followers. However, so far this has not proved to be the case, for exam-
ple, in respect of the use of the platform by political parties in election campaigns
(Graham et al., 2013). Moreover, in the run up to the Scottish parliamentary elections in
2011, not only was there little two-way engagement or dialogue on social media but the
accounts frequently lacked any real policy comment (Baxter and Marcella, 2013). The
majority of the tweets by candidates, or just over one-third (31.6%), were in ‘primary
broadcast’ mode, where the accounts provided their own personal views on a range of
issues or were related to campaign activities (11.3%). This evidence supports the broader
finding that outside of campaign periods, politicians have also not used social media to
interact with ‘normal’ Twitter users (Kim and Park, 2012). The value of social media for
‘converting’ voters is therefore questionable.
The value of social media, and Twitter specifically, for political campaigning is not as a
‘conversion tool’ but rather as part of a broader promotional strategy. For example, during
the 2010 UK general election, Scottish candidates dedicated a significant proportion of
their tweets...
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