What are the media really saying about Brexit?

Finding clarity surrounding Brexit feels like winning a small lottery at the moment. With so much doubt over the details of our leaving the EU, I looked into how the coverage of different topics has changed over the last few months. Analysing the 1.6 million articles on Brexit since September, I used the Signal platform to track which withdrawal plans are being covered the most each week, as well as which public concerns are picking up the most traction. Here’s what I found:

1. The extremes are the most popular, and May’s deal is dead on arrival

• It seems like the British public are getting further and further away from agreeing on a Brexit deal. The two most mentioned options for the UK are the ones that involve no plan being agreed.
• The discussion of a ‘No-deal Brexit’ (orange) picked up the most coverage every single day last month, with 183.77k mentions in total.
• The possibility of a Second Referendum (green) was the second most covered option with 77.73k articles,

Theresa May’s 535-page withdrawal agreement (red) made up the top three, with 52.46k articles. But the trend suggests it’s now dead as an idea, with under a thousand articles a day in the last week before Christmas. Not great news for the delayed 'meaningful vote'.

2. The narratives have changed - and Norway is on the up

Looking at the data with a week-by-week comparison, it also seems like there has been a change in narrative surrounding the plans:

• All the deals are receiving more coverage each months, but relative to each other their prevalence is shifting.
• As seen in the bump chart above, articles mentioning a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit are being overtaken by more specific plans, such as May’s deal or the ‘Norway Plus’ option.
• It looks like the ‘Norway Plus’ deal may continue to gain traction in the first few months of 2019, gaining 98x more coverage last week than it did this time last month.

3. Immigration and Ireland top the worry list...

Ireland and immigration have consistently been the most talked-about concerns post-Brexit.

• The topic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland border spiked three times, reaching a final peak of 32.29k articles within one week.
• This followed the Irish border backstop being included in Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, announced earlier this month.
• The most notable spike in coverage surrounded the treatment of Gibraltar (red) - the British territory located on the Spanish coast.
• 70% of the articles mentioning this complication came within one week in November, when the Spanish government threatened to veto Britain’s withdrawal agreement, demanding a say on the future of the headland.

4. … and nothing is going to change

Ultimately, however, the concerns discussed in the media today are exactly the same as they were three months ago. The list of problems sat in the same order on the 1st of October as they did in the week before Christmas, and all with far more mentions than before. None of these issues have been addressed to the satisfaction of the media, and it doesn’t look like they are going to be any time soon. With no clarity over the treatment of key issues, the media is increasingly discussing the possibilities of a no-deal Brexit or a second referendum, and has quickly moved on from plans like the one Theresa May presented - and still hopes to pass in January. Ironically, perhaps, by allowing these concerns to worsen, the government has managed to fuel the two plans they want least.  

All the data used in this article was found using the Signal media monitoring platform.