Contesting Cosmopolitan Europe

The project of European integration has undergone a succession of shocks, beginning with the Eurozone crisis, followed by reactions to the sudden growth of irregular migration, and, most recently, the Coronavirus pandemic. These shocks have politicised questions related to the governance of borders and markets that for decades had been beyond the realm of contestation. For some time, these questions have been spilling over into domestic and European electoral politics, with the rise of “populist” and Eurosceptic parties. Increasingly, however, the crises have begun to reshape the liberal narrative that have been central to the European project. This book charts the rise of contestation over the meaning of “Europe”, particularly in light of the Coronavirus crisis and Brexit. Drawing together cutting edge, interdisciplinary scholarship from across the continent, it questions not merely the traditional conflict between European and nationalist politics, but the impact of contestation on the assumed “cosmopolitan” values of Europe

Social media use, online political discussion and UK political events 2013-2018: a phenomenographic study

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D.Social media has had observably significant effects on the way many ordinary people participate in politics and appears both symptomatic and causal of a changing landscape. Research, often data-led, has shown marked trends in online behaviour, such as political polarisation, the tendency to form echo chambers and other distinct patterns in the way people debate, share opinions, express their self-identities, consume media and think critically, or otherwise, about political issues. A review of the literature shows that current research in this area across disciplines explores an increasingly wide range of potential influencing factors behind these phenomena, from the social to the psychological to the physiological. However, there have been – far - fewer phenomenological or phenomenographical studies into people’s lived experience of being part of this cultural shift, how their own inclinations, practices and behaviour might be helping to shape the bigger picture, and to what extent they understand this. Starting from an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, and based on in-depth conversations with 84 mostly UK-based adults spoken to one-to-one or in focus groups and webinars over an 18-month period, this study asked people’s about their own perceptions and understanding of their online engagement, focusing on recent major UK political events between 2013 and 2018, (including the Scottish Independence Referendum, The EU Referendum and the Labour Party leadership contests) and considers some of the inferences that might be drawn from people’s own insights. It shows:  People’s experiences are varied, influenced by a range of factors but there is a focus on personal needs and concerns as much as wider political ones  Participants often struggle with behavioural self-awareness and understanding of the motives and actions of others  They can have profound emotional responses owing to the difficulties of using social media but still value it as a medium for political learning and self-expression  A lot of activity takes places in covert, limited or private spaces  Social media itself is an unprecedented learning environment where people begin to understand their own behaviour better and adap

Working consumers: Co-creation of brand identity, consumer identity and brand community identity

The creation of identity, in terms of both consumer identity and brand identity, is a core topic in marketing theory. Based on participant ethnography of Yes Edinburgh North & Leith, part of Yes Scotland, the national referendum campaign supporting Scottish independence, this paper explores identity co-creation among three entities: the brand, the individual consumer, and the brand community. The findings suggest that the interactions among these entities co-create their identity, primarily through the actions of highly motivated working consumers. This paper identifies the main dialectic relationships and shows how the effects move beyond the dyads to affect the other entities, including the symbols used in the process of co-creation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for brands, individual consumers, and brand communities

Framing Brexit: a comparative study on agenda and frame building in coverage of the United Kingdom’s EU referendum

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4684464*es

Introduction to the second international symposium of platial information science

People ‘live’ and constitute places every day through recurrent practices and experience. Our everyday lives, however, are complex, and so are places. In contrast to abstract space, the way people experience places includes a range of aspects like physical setting, meaning, and emotional attachment. This inherent complexity requires researchers to investigate the concept of place from a variety of viewpoints. The formal representation of place – a major goal in GIScience related to place – is no exception and can only be successfully addressed if we consider geographical, psychological, anthropological, sociological, cognitive, and other perspectives. This year’s symposium brings together place-based researchers from different disciplines to discuss the current state of platial research. Therefore, this volume contains contributions from a range of fields including geography, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and cartography

#GE2019 – Labour owns the Tories on Instagram, the latest digital battlefield

How did political parties make use of Instagram during the UK General Election of 2019

“They just don't understand us”: The role of felt understanding in intergroup relations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Psychological Association via the DOI in this recordWe report 5 studies examining the unique role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. In intergroup terms, felt understanding is the belief that members of an outgroup understand and accept the perspectives of ingroup members, including ingroup members’ beliefs, values, experiences, and self-definition/identity. In Studies 1 (Scotland–U.K. relations; N = 5,033) and 2 (U.K.–EU relations; N = 861) felt understanding consistently and strongly predicted outcomes such as trust, action intentions, and political separatism, including participants’ actual “Brexit” referendum vote in Study 2. These effects were apparent even when controlling for outgroup stereotypes and metastereotypes. Felt understanding was a unique predictor of outgroup trust and forgiveness in Study 3 (Catholic–Protestant relations in Northern Ireland; N = 1,162), and was a powerful predictor of political separatism even when controlling for specific, relational appraisals including negative interdependence and identity threat in Study 4 (Basque–Spanish relations; N = 205). Study 5 (N = 190) included a direct manipulation of felt understanding, which had predicted effects on evaluation of the outgroup and of ingroup-outgroup relations. Overall, the findings provide converging evidence for the critical role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. We discuss future research possibilities, including the emotional correlates of felt understanding, and its role in intergroup interactions

Evaluating the role of media in fostering political engagement among young people in the UK: a comparative analysis of social and legacy media coverage of political events and contribution to feelings of political empowerment

The following thesis examines the impact of social and legacy media on young people’s political engagement as well as on their attitudes to, feelings towards and beliefs about politics. This was accomplished using a three-tiered design which integrated both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The aim of this design was to ensure that young people were afforded a voice in the ongoing debate around youth apathy. To this end, a direct comparison of social and legacy media coverage of various case studies was undertaken. This initial comparison was accompanied by a series of interviews using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009). The interviews focused on individual engagement with politics and social and legacy media, in order to get a sense of each individuals understanding of their role in British politics as well as the feelings and attitudes towards media and politics more widely. The three-tiered design concluded with a quantitative questionnaire assessing governmental trust, political efficacy, self-efficacy, and self-esteem by way of a series of standardised measures. From this mixed-methods approach, two main findings arise. Firstly, that social media such as Twitter hold the potential to facilitate political engagement in young people, beyond what is currently achieved by the British legacy media. The second finding suggests that there has been fundamental paradigmatic shift of youth conceptions of politics from what could be considered traditional political behaviours (such as voting and party membership; Strømsnes, 2009) to lifestyle orientated choices (such as boy/buycotts; Copeland, 2014; Gil de Zúñiga, Copeland & Bimber, 2014), mediated by social media. Overall the results of the thesis foster a dualistic understanding of British young people who are simultaneously engaged with and apathetic toward “politics” dependant on how the term is defined

Britain in psychological distress: the EU referendum and the psychological operations of the two opposing sides

Διπλωματική εργασία--Πανεπιστήμιο Μακεδονίας, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2019.There are numerous analyses trying to explain the outcome of the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. The aim of this dissertation is to examine the circumstances under which voters’ attitudes were formed, and ultimately reflected in their choice on polling day. The study focuses particularly on the referendum campaign and the various psychological operations applied to British citizens, shaping their opinion and affecting their final decision. First of all, this contribution attempts to develop the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PSYOP), which have been known by many other names or terms, including Propaganda. The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the objective of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people. Various techniques are used, aiming to influence a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behaviour. In this context, the first chapter defines the word ‘propaganda’ and presents significant facts about its origins and examples of its usage in history. Subsequently, based on an extensive literature review, it provides a thorough analysis about a wide range of propaganda devices. This includes tactics involving language manipulation, as well as non-verbal techniques, such as opinion polls and statistics. In accordance with the above, the second chapter elaborates on Britain’s EU referendum and attempts to explain the Brexit result. Unlike other academic research, this paper considers the outcome of the referendum within the broader context of a detailed analysis of public attitude towards the EU. This attempt requires examining the circumstances which gave rise to the plebiscite before turning to the issue of how the various strategies that were employed during the referendum campaign influenced the position of British electorate on polling day. The paper gives a concise but rich survey of the development of Euroscepticism in Britain, a phenomenon that provoked considerable debate on the UK’s membership in the EU, and eventually led to the resolution of holding a national referendum on the matter. Following that, it devotes a fair number of pages describing the referendum campaign itself – its personalities, principal themes and arguments – and seeks to identify the particular tactics that were used by the two opposing sides to sway voters. It highlights David Cameron’s failure to secure a substantive deal regarding Britain’s terms of membership with the EU and outlines the key messages of the Remain and Leave campaigns, with the former focusing on the economic and security risks of leaving, and the latter on immigration and sovereignty. Most importantly, the study emphasizes the prevalence of propaganda techniques throughout the referendum campaign, with reference to the insight of some of the key players on both sides. Last but not least, based on a review of the campaigns’ strategies, there is an attempt to determine all those factors that may have attributed to the result of Brexit, and caused a historical moment in British history