The short-lived hope for contagion: Brexit in social media communication of the populist right

Abstract

Brexit was perceived as a Pandora’s box moment by both Eurosceptic and pro-integration parties in the EU, as they expected it would embolden Euroscepticism by providing a paradigm to be followed. This article explores the initial reactions of nine Populist Radical Right parties to Brexit and how they evolved in tandem with the unfolding of negotiations. It also discusses possible reasons for the differentiation in the responses of those parties, from triumphant to moderated reactions. The empirical basis is a dataset that contains the public communications of these parties on Twitter between 2015 and 2020. The results show that although there was initial differentiation with some parties calling for referenda in their own countries, by 2017 every party’s communication on Brexit drastically decreased, and by the time the UK left the EU (January 2020), calls for secession had disappeared from their discourses.

Keywords:

• Euroscepticism
• Brexit
• radical right
• EU disintegration
• Twitter
• content analysis

Acknowledgements

We thank the three reviewers, the editors and Waltraud Schelkle, Giorgio Malet and Joseph Ganderson for their helpful comments on earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 At the time of writing, many uncertainties are still surrounding the final shape of Brexit, including the thorny issue of the Irish border and several aspects of the trade relationship between the UK and the EU.

2 The dataset is available from the authors.

3 One party member of the I&D group, the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, has not been included the analysis because it was not present on Twitter during the studied period.

4 To translate the tweets of the four parties (Flemish Interest, Party of Freedom, Finns Party, and Freedom and Direct Democracy) whose language we do not speak, we used automatic translator DeepL.

5 The dataset with all 1239 relevant tweets and associated claims is available upon request.

6 See the press releases on calling for membership referendums by the VB (https://www.vlaamsbelang.org/persberichten/2659), the FPO (https://www.wiwo.de/politik/europa/grossbritannien-wie-der-brexit-ploetzlich-mehrheitsfaehig-wird/13444840.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) and the PVV (https://www.pvv.nl/36-fj-related/geert-wilders/9601-heteuropadatwijwillen.html). Last accessed 2 January 2024.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council under the Synergy Grant number 810356 (ERC_SYG_2018), in the scope of the project SOLID – Policy Crisis and Crisis Politics, Sovereignty, Solidarity and Identity in the EU post-2008 and by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) under the Starter Grant, in the scope of the project NEST- Navigating the Storm: European Political Contestation in Geopolitical Transformation.

Notes on contributors

Joan Miró

Joan Miró is Assistant Professor in EU Politics & Policy at Pompeu Fabra University. His research interests lie in European integration, particularly the socioeconomic governance of the EMU, social policy, and international political economy. [[email protected]]

Argyrios Altiparmakis

Argyrios Altiparmakis is a Research Fellow at the European University Institute. His research focuses on party politics, political behaviour and the recent European crises. He is currently working on the SOLID-ERC project. [[email protected]]

Chendi Wang

Chendi Wang is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He works in comparative politics, political economy, political behaviour, and political methodology. [[email protected]]