Britain in psychological distress: the EU referendum and the psychological operations of the two opposing sides

Abstract

There are numerous analyses trying to explain the outcome of the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. The aim of this dissertation is to examine the circumstances under which voters’ attitudes were formed, and ultimately reflected in their choice on polling day. The study focuses particularly on the referendum campaign and the various psychological operations applied to British citizens, shaping their opinion and affecting their final decision. First of all, this contribution attempts to develop the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PSYOP), which have been known by many other names or terms, including Propaganda. The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the objective of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people. Various techniques are used, aiming to influence a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behaviour. In this context, the first chapter defines the word ‘propaganda’ and presents significant facts about its origins and examples of its usage in history. Subsequently, based on an extensive literature review, it provides a thorough analysis about a wide range of propaganda devices. This includes tactics involving language manipulation, as well as non-verbal techniques, such as opinion polls and statistics. In accordance with the above, the second chapter elaborates on Britain’s EU referendum and attempts to explain the Brexit result. Unlike other academic research, this paper considers the outcome of the referendum within the broader context of a detailed analysis of public attitude towards the EU. This attempt requires examining the circumstances which gave rise to the plebiscite before turning to the issue of how the various strategies that were employed during the referendum campaign influenced the position of British electorate on polling day. The paper gives a concise but rich survey of the development of Euroscepticism in Britain, a phenomenon that provoked considerable debate on the UK’s membership in the EU, and eventually led to the resolution of holding a national referendum on the matter. Following that, it devotes a fair number of pages describing the referendum campaign itself – its personalities, principal themes and arguments – and seeks to identify the particular tactics that were used by the two opposing sides to sway voters. It highlights David Cameron’s failure to secure a substantive deal regarding Britain’s terms of membership with the EU and outlines the key messages of the Remain and Leave campaigns, with the former focusing on the economic and security risks of leaving, and the latter on immigration and sovereignty. Most importantly, the study emphasizes the prevalence of propaganda techniques throughout the referendum campaign, with reference to the insight of some of the key players on both sides. Last but not least, based on a review of the campaigns’ strategies, there is an attempt to determine all those factors that may have attributed to the result of Brexit, and caused a historical moment in British history.