BU academics have published an analysis of the EU Referendum campaign.
Dr Dan Jackson and Dr Einar Thorsen from BU, along with Professor Dominic Wring from Loughborough University, invited 100 of the UK’s leading experts and academics to contribute to EU Referendum Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign.
Published a mere 10 days after the historic vote with the support of the Political Studies Association, the 79 short, accessible pieces capture the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the 2016 Referendum.
Despite the consistently close polls, the verdict delivered on Friday 24 June still came as a shock to many experts. In the lead up to the vote determining Britain’s place in the European Union, former Education Minister and Leave campaigner Michael Gove argued, “People in this country have had enough of experts”.
The team commented on the rationale behind their new publication: “Michael Gove claimed that people have had enough of experts. Well we disagree. Now more than ever is a time for evidence, expertise and careful reflection. This report has all three in spades.”
Featured authors provide authoritative analysis of the campaign, including research findings or new theoretical insights to bring readers original ways of understanding the referendum and its consequences. Contributions also bring a rich range of disciplinary influences, from political science to fan studies, journalism studies to advertising.
The strategy behind the publication and the speed it was produced was explained by the editorial team: “The academy has an important role to play in contributing to public understanding, to policy discourse, and to the practice of political campaigning, journalism and opinion polling. But one of our collective failures to date has been the speed in which we respond to and intervene in major policy debates or set-piece events such as elections and referendums.
“For us, it is a question of identifying new and innovative ways of producing timely interventions for non-academic audiences.”
BU undergraduate student Luke Hastings was also part of the team who edited and produced the project which is now available as a downloadable PDF, as a website and as a printed report.
The team behind the publication will be hosting a launch event at the House of Commons on Monday 18 July and also host an open event on Brexit as part of the IAMCR pre-conference in Leicester.
