Brexit-divided Britain: How people know what to think when political loyalties conflict

在我提议的研究中，我将调查在政党不团结的背景下，个人如何形成对复杂政治问题的看法。案例研究将是2016年英国脱欧公投前后的英国。鉴于英国主要政党的分裂性质，以及英国脱欧态度在两极分化但无党派路线上的分裂，我调查了个人持有某些态度，信仰和问题立场的机制。我特别关注媒体和政治精英的影响，提供了一种新的方法来理解在政党向选民提供明确的混合信息的背景下“动机推理”的作用。我的研究将有两个重要的潜在影响。首先，它将动机推理的有用理论扩展到一个相对陌生的环境。众所周知，在正常的政治环境中，个人通过党派“过滤器”处理新的信息和论点。通过考虑政党身份的相关性要小得多的背景下，在很大程度上是因为分裂的政党本身提供了相互矛盾的信息，我的研究将扩大我们的知识，通过个人处理信息的过滤器，其次，我的研究将有具体的经验意义，了解英国政治自2015年以来。通过特别关注媒体和政治精英，我的工作将有助于解决有关英国近期政治发展的一些典型问题。它还将有助于解决一些具体的经验难题。例如，为什么自英国脱欧公投以来移民问题有所下降？

In my proposed research I will investigate how, in the context of party disunity, individuals form opinions on complex political issues. The case study will be Britain in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Given the divided nature of Britain's major parties, and the division of Brexit attitudes across polarised but non-partisan lines, I investigate the mechanism by which individuals come to hold certain attitudes, beliefs, and issue positions. I focus particularly on the influence of media and political elites, providing a novel approach to understanding the role 'motivated reasoning' in contexts where political parties provide voterswith decidedly mixed messages.My research will have two important potential implications. Firstly, it will offer an extension of the useful theory of motivated reasoning to a relatively unfamiliar context. It is well understood that, in normal political contexts, individuals process new information and arguments through a partisan 'filter'. By considering a context where party identity has much less relevance, in large part because the divided parties themselves offer conflicting messages, my research will extend our knowledge of the filters through which individuals process information.Secondly, my research will have concrete empirical implications for understanding British politics since 2015. By focussing particularly on media and political elites my work will help tackle some of typical questions asked about recent British political developments. It will also help to solve some specific empirical puzzles. For example, why has immigration concern fallen since the Brexit referendum?