Discursive Dimensions of the EU Referendum 2016 Press Coverage in Portugal

Abstract

This chapter explores the coverage of the 2016 EU referendum by three Portuguese newspapers, Correio da Manhã, Público and Expresso, between 4 June and 4 July 2016. Critical discourse analysis was used to analyse the way in which Portuguese journalists and columnists represented the question of political agency, namely: (1) the degree of prominence and framing power of each of the British actors involved in the referendum ‘battle’; (2) the interpersonal relation/evaluative attitude of the press in relation to the opposing social actors at European level, that is, the ‘doers’ (David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage) on one side and, on the other, the ‘done-tos’ in the process (particularly the EU). The study found that the emphasis on the confrontational framing (UK vs EU) effaced the importance of the intraparty power struggle among the Tories; it blurred the peculiar nature of so-called British ‘awkwardness’ regarding the process of European integration; and it re-centred the reader’s attention even more vigorously on the struggle between the sovereign will of a nation state and the supranationalism of the European project to the point that the EU ended up being constructed as ‘Other’.