Here’s What You Should Think About: Media Framing During The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum of 2016

Sammanfattning: This thesis uses the United Kingdom’s European Union membership referendum of 2016 to understand how, within the theoretical context of the hybrid media system, two prominent British media outlets framed their coverage for the British public. Using a typology of five news frames (attribution of responsibility, human interest, conflict, morality and economic consequences) the study applies a quantitative content analysis to a sample of 222 print news articles collected from The Guardian and The Daily Express newspapers and 209 online news articles collected from each media outlets official Facebook page, between the 9th June and 23rd June 2016. The results of the study found that both of the newspapers in their print cov- erage of the referendum framed news articles predominantly in terms of economic con- sequences and conflict. The findings also demonstrated that all five news frames displayed hybridity, and were reiterated across media platforms into the outlets online news articles. Lastly, the results then showed that frame salience differed between the media outlets print and online news articles, with the frames of human interest and attribution of responsibility the more prominent frames used in online news articles.