‘This loopy idea’ an analysis of UKIP’s social media discourse in relation to rurality and climate change

Abstract

This paper focuses on the way that United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) attempted to communicate its policies and messages about the topic of renewable energy during 2013–2014. Renewable energy is a fruitful topic to consider as it has a strategic importance in the discussion of the future of the UK. The emergent theme from the analysis was not only rurality and renewable energy but the connection of the issue to scepticism about climate change. This paper uses the qualitative analyses the social media posts and a sample of the linked materials, with newspaper coverage, to reveal the key themes in the UKIP discourse.

Keywords:

• UKIP
• climate change
• renewable energy
• social media
• rural

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Matthew Reed is a Senior Research Fellow at the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire. He studies social movements, farming families, rural communities and the interactions of technology with food.

ORCiD

Matthew Reed http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1105-9625

Notes

1. No assumption is made as to the authorship of the tweets, only that they are on the approved account of the name politician. Goodwin and Milazzo report that Farage’s account at times is operated by members of his staff (Goodwin & Milazzo, 2015).