Identity, Belonging and the Role of the Media in Brexit Britain

自英国是否留在欧盟的公投以来，出现了一幅极具争议性的图景，即英国在种族、民族、阶级、地理和代际方面存在严重的两极分化。这一备受争议的形象的关键在于这样一种观点，即生活在英国后工业化地区的“白人工人阶级”，尤其是老一辈人，之所以投票脱欧，是因为他们反对移民，对失去国家主权感到不满；这与居住在英格兰东南部的年轻中产阶级“世界精英”形成了鲜明对比，他们被认为是支持留欧阵营的代表。尽管学术界对英国退欧的大部分关注都集中在媒体上相互竞争的叙事和政治精英之间的辩论上，但很少有人从民族志的角度关注英国退欧后的日常经历。我们的目的是与来自不同社会背景的不同研究参与者探讨他们在面对英国退出欧盟时对移民、当地、国家和欧洲归属问题的看法。为了做到这一点，我们将对来自英格兰不同地理区域(东北部、西南部和东米德兰)的居民以及来自不同种族、移民、年龄、民族、宗教和阶级背景的居民进行人种学研究。实地考察工作将包括对家庭成员和更广泛的社交网络进行深入采访，以探索研究参与者的态度如何在家庭内、跨代人、友谊网络和邻居之间分享和复制(或不分享)。重点将放在不同身份和地理位置的人在移民和国家归属感问题上分享相似或不同观点的方式，并将关注影响人们对属于或不属于英国和欧洲意味着什么的不同情感寄存器。由于媒体已经与政治和社会进程密不可分，我们的民族志研究在探索媒体的日常使用如何影响人们对这些问题的态度方面尤其具有创新性。我们的观点是，要了解媒体在传达人们对移民、归属感和身份认同的观点方面所扮演的角色，我们需要了解媒体对英国退欧的叙事是什么，以及人们在日常讨论中如何(或不)使用这些叙事。为此，我们将进行定量的媒体内容分析，以确定从公投运动开始到现在的媒体报道(包括电视新闻、地方和国家报纸以及推特)中的主题、图像、基调和框架。这一媒体分析将提供一个广阔的背景图景，在其中定位个人对移民和归属感的看法。我们还将在我们的实地采访和讨论中引入精选的媒体叙事，使我们能够探索个人动员哪些类型的知识来与不同的媒体代表就英国退欧进行接触。这一过程将结合参与者对个人日常媒体做法的观察，重点放在与英国退欧新闻及其结果相关的做法上。我们的发现将为：a)地方组织实施的应对实地社会两极分化和不平等的战略；b)国家政府关于社会凝聚力和移民的政策；c)媒体和议会关于媒体在影响公众理解和民主进程方面的作用的辩论，特别是在当前的“后事实”和支离破碎的媒体环境中；d)与英国公众就移民、民族和欧洲归属感以及媒体在塑造英国退欧舆论方面的作用进行辩论。鉴于全球对政治和媒体格局深刻变化的感觉日益增强，这些问题在国际上引起了共鸣。

Since the referendum on Britain's membership of the EU, there has emerged a highly controversial picture of Britain as deeply polarised along racial, ethnic, class, geographical and generational lines. Crucial to this much debated image is the idea that the 'white working class', and particularly older generations of people, living in post-industrial areas of Britain were motivated to vote Leave because they are anti-immigration and dissatisfied with the loss of national sovereignty; this is in contrast to the younger middle class 'cosmopolitan elite' that reside in the South East of England and who are thought to represent the pro-Remain camp.While much of the scholarly attention on Brexit has focused on competing narratives in the media and debates amongst political elites, little attention has been paid ethnographically to everyday experiences of post-Brexit UK. Our aim is to explore with a diversity of research participants from a wide range of different social backgrounds what they think about questions of immigration, local, national and European belonging in the face of Britain's exit from the EU. To do this we will conduct ethnographic research with residents from different geographical areas across England (the North East, the South West and the East Midlands) and from differing ethnic, migration, age, national, religious and class backgrounds. The fieldwork will include in-depth interviews with family members and within broader social networks to explore how research participants' attitudes are shared and reproduced (or not) within families, across generations, amongst friendship networks and neighbours. Emphasis will be put on the ways in which individuals across differing identities and geographical locations share similar or contrasting views on questions of immigration and national belonging, and attention will be paid to the differing emotional registers that shape people's engagements with what it means to belong or not to Britain and Europe. Because the media has become inseparable from political and social processes our ethnographic study is especially innovative in its exploration of how everyday uses of the media frame people's attitudes on these issues. Our contention is that to understand the role of the media in informing people's views on immigration, belonging and identity, we need to understand what the media narratives on Brexit are, and how people deploy these narratives (or not) in their everyday discussions. To do this, we will conduct a quantitative media content analysis to identify themes, images, tone and frames in the media coverage (including television news, local and national newspapers and Twitter) from the time of the referendum campaign to the present day. This media analysis will afford a broad contextual landscape within which to position individuals' views on immigration and belonging. We will also introduce selected media narratives into our fieldwork interviews and discussions allowing us to explore the types of knowledge individuals mobilise to engage with diverse media representations on Brexit. This process will be contextualised within participant observation of individuals' daily media practices with a focus on practices relating to news on Brexit and its outcomes. Our findings will inform: a) strategies implemented by local organisations to tackle social polarisation and inequality within the fieldsites; b) national government policies on social cohesion and migration; c) media and parliamentary debates about the role of the media on influencing public understanding and democractic processes especially in the current 'post-factual' and fragmented media environment; d) debate with British publics on issues of immigration, national and European belonging and the role of the media in shaping public opinion on Brexit. These are issues that resonate internationally given the growing global sense of profoundly shifting political and media landscapes.