Politics & media · Media ownership & influence

The referendum as a media case study

The most closely measured campaign in British media history — and the limits of what the measurement shows.

View shareable visual summariesMedia sectionThe Brexit sectionWhat it does not prove

Introduction

Why the referendum is the right case study

It is the only recent UK political event where the media coverage was systematically content-analysed at scale by academics at the time. Every claim on this page comes from that study, which measured 14,779 articles across 20 outlets and every national front page over 10 weeks. It is evidence about coverage, not about persuasion, and this page is careful about the difference throughout.

The scale of the coverage

14,779

referendum articles

Across 20 national news outlets in 10 weeks.

195

front-page leads on Brexit

Out of 550 front pages — 35% of all national front pages.

65%

of those from Leave-backing papers

Almost two-thirds of referendum front-page leads.

63%

published in the second half

Coverage accelerated sharply towards polling day.

Which papers put it on the front page

Referendum front-page lead stories, 10-week campaign

Counts of lead stories, not percentages. Daily and Sunday titles are grouped as the study grouped them.

  • The Daily Telegraph / Sunday Telegraph Leave41
  • Daily Express / Sunday Express Leave33
  • Daily Mail Leave25
  • The Guardian / The Observer Remain24
  • The Sun / The Sun on Sunday Leave22
  • The Times Remain18
  • Financial Times Remain16
  • Daily Mirror / Sunday Mirror Remain5

Bars share one scale, set by the highest count (41). Colour indicates the position the study recorded and is never the only signal — every bar carries its own text label. Moore, M. and Ramsay, G., UK media coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum campaign ↗

The starkest single comparison. The Sun published 22 referendum front pages. The Mirror published five. Two mass-market tabloids on opposite sides of the argument, and one of them barely fought it on the front page at all.

Which issues dominated

Articles by issue, across all 20 outlets

Counts of referendum-related articles mentioning each issue. Not percentages — the scale is set by the largest count.

  • Economy (7,028 articles)100%
  • Immigration (4,383 articles)62%
  • Health (1,638 articles)23%

Scale: 0–100%. Moore, M. and Ramsay, G., UK media coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum campaign ↗

Front-page leads by issue

Counts of front-page lead stories. Prominence rather than volume — and it reverses the ranking above.

  • Immigration (99 front pages)100%
  • Economy (82 front pages)83%

Scale: 0–100%. Moore, M. and Ramsay, G., UK media coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum campaign ↗

Volume and prominence disagree, and prominence won.The economy generated 60% more articles than immigration, but immigration led 99 front pages to the economy’s 82. Of those 99 immigration front pages, 78 — 79% — appeared in Leave-backing papers. Coverage of immigration more than tripled over the campaign, faster than any other issue.

Three framing findings worth more than the counts

  • “Scaremongering” appeared 737 times

    Overwhelmingly applied to economic warnings. A frame that converts a forecast into an accusation, and one of the most effective rhetorical devices of the campaign — with lasting consequences for how official economic analysis is received.

  • The £4,300 claim got 365 articles; the £350m claim got 147

    The Remain campaign’s cost-per-household claim was discussed in nearly two and a half times as many articles as the Leave campaign’s bus figure. What is remembered as the defining message of the campaign was not the most-covered one — which is a warning about reading coverage counts as influence.

  • Sovereignty appeared in almost 2,000 articles; law-making powers in 6% of them

    In almost half the articles referencing sovereignty, it appeared as “taking back control”. The most successful frame of the campaign was almost never accompanied by discussion of which powers were actually at issue.

Where each title stood

The 2024 column is here for a reason: it shows how much these positions move. Eight years after the referendum, most of the same titles endorsed a Labour government.

  • The Daily Telegraph / Sunday Telegraph

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: ConservativeReferendum front-page leads: 41

    Published more referendum front-page leads than any other title in the KCL study.

  • Daily Express / Sunday Express

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: ConservativeReferendum front-page leads: 33

  • Daily Mail

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: ConservativeReferendum front-page leads: 25

    The Daily Mail backed Leave while its Sunday sister title backed Remain — under the same owner, the same week.

  • The Mail on Sunday

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: Conservative

  • The Sun / The Sun on Sunday

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 22

    Switched to Labour on 3 July 2024, its first Labour endorsement since 2005.

  • The Sunday Times

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: Labour

    Backed Leave in 2016 and Labour in 2024 — the same publisher as The Times, which did neither.

  • The Times

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: No endorsementReferendum front-page leads: 18

  • The Guardian / The Observer

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 24

    The only Remain-backing title to publish more than four immigration front-page leads during the campaign.

  • Financial Times

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 16

    Its 2024 endorsement was its first for Labour since 2005.

  • Daily Mirror / Sunday Mirror

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 5

    Published five referendum front pages to the Sun’s 22 — the starkest asymmetry in the study.

  • The i Paper

    2016 referendum: No position2024 election: No endorsement

    Has a standing policy of never endorsing a party. Now owned by DMGT, which also publishes the Daily Mail.

What none of this establishes

The KCL study measured how much was published, how prominently, and how issues were framed. It did not measure whether any of it changed a single vote, and it does not claim to. Anyone citing it as proof that the press delivered Brexit is citing it for a finding it does not contain.

The central methodological problem is selection. Readers choose newspapers that already agree with them, so a correlation between what a paper printed and how its readers voted is exactly what you would expect if the paper had changed nobody’s mind. Disentangling the two requires a design nobody has been able to run on a national referendum.

The research literature does support the weaker claims: that outlets shape which issues are salient, and how those issues are described. On the referendum specifically, the strongest defensible statement is that the press made immigration the most prominent issue of the campaign — and that the campaign was decided by 1,269,501 votes, in an electorate where immigration attitudes were already among the strongest predictors of vote choice before a single front page ran.

Media was one driver among many

The research identifies several correlated drivers of the Leave vote, most of them stronger and better evidenced than media coverage.

  • EducationStrong and consistent
  • AgeStrong and consistent
  • Deprivation, individual and neighbourhoodStrong but confounded
  • Attitudes to immigrationStrong but confounded
  • Sovereignty and national identityStrong and consistent
  • Distrust of institutions and expertsModerate
  • AusterityContested
  • Media coverageContested

The full analysis of why people voted as they did is in the Brexit section, with the confounders attached to each factor.