Brexit and misinformation

Ken Frieser

Academic English 12-02-18 Academic English Argumentative Essay Ken Frieser

Brexit and misinformation

On 23 June 2016, a small majority of 52% of the British people voted to leave the European Union. The result came to many as a shock, a lot of people did not expect a majority to vote to leave. Of course, with such a small majority and a turnout of 72%, the result could have been completely different if there were some change in the composition of the turnout. For this reason, it is important to look at how the electorate was informed on the issue of European Union membership, and under what conditions a majority of them voted to leave. The decision to leave the EU happened because the British government let ordinary people decide on such an important and complicated issue as the membership of the EU, and ordinary people can become manipulated with false promises, alternative facts and populist one-liners which were used by the Leave camp.1 “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others” is a famous quote by Winston Churchill.2 It summarises a very rational view on democracy: knowing it has strengths, such as taking into account the interests of minority groups, but also that it has weaknesses. People can easily get influenced by false promises and lies, which could change the way they vote. One example of this is a promise , a prominent advocate of the Leave camp made prior to the referendum: taking back control of £350 million per week the UK pays to the EU, and spending it on their National Health Service (NHS) instead.3 Not only did he come back to this promise a day after the referendum,4 the notion of the UK ‘taking back control’ over £350 million also turned out to be a false one.5 Some Leave campaigners had also promised people that the UK would stop giving money to the EU after Brexit,6 a statement one of these campaigners came back to only after the vote: the UK will either have to contribute to the EU budget, or it will lose access to the single market.7 These incidents illustrate how a referendum can be flawed: it is only a snapshot of how people are thinking at the time it is held, influenced by the information they have at that moment. The

1 Luyendijk, “Brexit.” 2 Langworth, “Churchill by Himself,” 574. 3 Stone, “Video evidence.” 4 Stone, “Farage backtracks.” 5 Stone, “Brexit lies.” 6 Gove, “Statement.” 7 Newton Dunn, “Boris Johnson.”

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British people have voted to leave under the condition of taking back control £350 million every week. As soon as the referendum had ended, prominents from the Leave camp dropped this promise. If the people would have known this before the referendum, they might have voted to remain in stead of leave. Misinformed people make the democratic proces flawed: As Levente Littvay points out in the journal Nature, attempts to disinform people can lead to them voting against their own interests.8 Misinformation has always been a flaw of democracy, but it gets more exposed, one might even say amplified nowadays, as fewer people are getting their information from mainstream media and alternative sources such as social media are getting more dominant in information provision for ordinary people. Social media have also caused people to be more and more in an information bubble of their own interests. As I mentioned before, the shift in information provision from mainstream to social media has amplified the problem of misinformed people voting against their interests. This problem becomes more serious when marketeers can target a certain audience using big data provided by these social media. This is exactly what a company named has done during the Brexit campaign. Cambridge Analytica specialises in making psychological profiles based on the data provided by social media such as , and uses this to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly.9 This way of targeted marketing can prove to be extremely efficient. Using the big data provided by Facebook, Cambridge Analytica was able to target people high in neuroticism, showing them images of masses of immigrants entering the country,10 thereby manipulating them to vote to leave. The idea organisations are now able to target mentally weak people through the data provided by social media is not only a frightening notion, it is also illustrative for the weaknesses a democratic system can have. With technology and data, entire populations can be manipulated, fitting people into a certain psychological category and target them in the most effective way possible. A vote on such an important issue as the British EU membership should be made by people who are well informed about the pros and cons of such a decision, and what it would mean for their interests. In stead, people have been targeted on their emotions and psychological profile, steering them into voting leave, thereby deciding on the vote in the interests of others, maybe not even knowing how this could negatively impact on

8 Littvay, “Lessons from Brexit,” 488. 9 Cadwalladr, “Robert Mercer.” 10 Cadwalladr, “Brexit robbery.”

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their own interests. Cambridge Analytica has also been linked to meddling with the 2016 US presidential elections, and its former vice president is , former Chief Strategist in the Trump White House administration.11 Cambridge Analytica can also be indirectly linked to Russia.12 There have also been signs the campaign was directly influenced by Russians,13 which would not be surprising. The Russian government by all means wants to destabilise the EU and would gladly see it be dissolved altogether. This is yet another example of people voting against their own interests because they have been manipulated to vote in the interests of others, in this case conservative organisations and the Russians. Due to the ease of manipulating people with lies and misinformation, especially in times in which people get their information through social media, voting on important issues should be done by elected representatives, who are educated, well informed and know what is in the best interests of their electorate. Organising a referendum should only be done in rare occasions: a referendum is a gesture from a government to the people that an issue is better decided on by the people than by the politicians themselves. For a highly complicated issue such as the British membership of the European Union, this should have not been the case. As I have demonstrated, the debate has been dominated with misinformation, and the British people have voted leave under conditions that would never be fulfilled. Organisations have also used big data to efficiently target mentally unstable people in order to mobilise them to vote to leave. Knowing this all, it can be assumed the British people have voted to leave the EU because they have been supplied with misinformation, given false promises, and psychologically manipulated, rather than having come to this decision in a rational way.

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Titcomb, “Facebook launches investigation.”

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Bibliography

Cadwalladr, Carole. “The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked.” , May 7, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/ the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy. Cadwalladr, Carole. “Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media.” The Guardian, February 26, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ 2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel- farage. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill by Himself. Edited by Richard M. Langworth, New York: PublicAffairs, 2008. Gove, Michael, Boris Johnson, and Gisela Stuart. “Statement by Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Gisela Stuart for The Sun - Vote Leave to cut VAT on fuel.” Vote Leave, May 31, 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20161002203144/http:// www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/ statement_by_michael_gove_boris_johnson_and_gisela_stuart_for_the_sun_vote_lea ve_to_cut_vat_on_fuel.html. “Lessons from Brexit.” Nature 535, no. 7613 (July 25, 2016): 487–89. http:// www.nature.com/news/lessons-from-brexit-1.20306. Luyendijk, Joris. “Brexit op basis van leugens, manipulatie en racistisch gehits.” NRC, March 29, 2017. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/03/29/brexit-land-is-niet-kalm-en-het-doet- maar-wat-7699282-a1552252. Newton Dunn, Ton. “Boris Johnson joins forces with Liam Fox and declares support for ‘hard’ Brexit which will “liberate” Britain to champion free trade.” The Sun, September 30, 2016. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1889723/boris-johnson-joins- forces-with-liam-foxand-declares-support-for-hard-brexit-which-will-liberate-britain- to-champion-free-trade/. Stone, Jon. “Brexit lies: The demonstrably false claims of the EU referendum campaign.” The Independent, December 17, 2017. http://www.independent.co.uk/infact/brexit-second- referendum-false-claims-eu-referendum-campaign-lies-fake-news-a8113381.html. Stone, Jon. “Nigel Farage backtracks on Leave campaign's “£350m for the NHS” pledge hours after result.” The Independent, June 24, 2016. http://www.independent.co.uk/

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news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-result-nigel-farage-nhs-pledge-disowns-350-million- pounds-a7099906.html. Stone, Jon. “Video evidence emerges of Nigel Farage pledging EU millions for NHS weeks before Brexit vote.” The Independent, June 25, 2016. http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-referendum-nigel-farage-nhs-350-million-pounds-live- health-service-u-turn-a7102831.html. Titcomb, James. “Facebook launches investigation into Russian influence in EU referendum.” The Telegraph, January 17, 2018. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ technology/2018/01/17/facebook-launches-investigation-eu-referendum-interference/. Wintour, Patrick. “Russian bid to influence Brexit vote detailed in new US Senate report.” The Guardian, January 10, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/ russian-influence-brexit-vote-detailed-us-senate-report.

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