The Role of Media in Constructing Geopolitical Discourse (on the Example of Brexit)

Geopolitical discourse is a rather abstract term in the popular consciousness that defines how we approach the discussion of political, economic and social issues related to the interaction between various actors in the international arena — alliances, regions and nation states. It is assumed that geopolitical ideas and narratives are able to form a collective identity, our perception of the world, regions, countries and categories of people, as well as regulate the power dynamics and international relations. However, many aspects of the construction of geopolitical discourse, namely in the media, have not been comprehensively studied yet. Moreover, existing works generally focus on the events of the 20th century and have a US-centric approach. This research aims to partially fill in these scientific gaps. The study is carried out in the case-study format and focused on one of the most notable and significant geopolitical events of the 21st century — the UK's withdrawal from the European Union (abbreviated as Brexit). The purpose of the work is to identify the functions of the British media in communication strategies and the construction of the geopolitical discourse of "Remain" and "Leave" supporters. The empirical base consists of 170 articles that were published in four British media newspapers and tabloids (The Guardian, Financial Times, Daily Mail and The Sun) in the last week before the EU referendum, from 15 June to 22 June 2016. The main method is qualitative frame analysis, although quantitative content analysis is also used during several stages of the research. According to the results of the study, the main functions of the media, key ideas and narratives, as well as techniques used by the British media to construct geopolitical discourse were identified and described.