scholarly journals The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco T. Bastos ◽  
Dan Mercea
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Shelf Life ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The United Kingdom

In this article, we uncover a network of Twitterbots comprising 13,493 accounts that tweeted the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, only to disappear from Twitter shortly after the ballot. We compare active users to this set of political bots with respect to temporal tweeting behavior, the size and speed of retweet cascades, and the composition of their retweet cascades (user-to-bot vs. bot-to-bot) to evidence strategies for bot deployment. Our results move forward the analysis of political bots by showing that Twitterbots can be effective at rapidly generating small- to medium-sized cascades; that the retweeted content comprises user-generated hyperpartisan news, which is not strictly fake news, but whose shelf life is remarkably short; and, finally, that a botnet may be organized in specialized tiers or clusters dedicated to replicating either active users or content generated by other bots.

scholarly journals The politics of embedding and the right to remain in post-Brexit Britain

Ethnicities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146879682091341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Sotkasiira ◽  
Anna Gawlewicz
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
The Other ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

The European Union membership referendum (i.e. the Brexit referendum) in the United Kingdom in 2016 triggered a process of introspection among non-British European Union citizens with respect to their right to remain in the United Kingdom, including their right to entry, permanent residence, and access to work and social welfare. Drawing on interview data collected from 42 European Union nationals, namely Finnish and Polish migrants living in Scotland, we explore how European Union migrants’ decision-making and strategies for extending their stay in the United Kingdom, or returning to their country of origin, are shaped by and, in turn, shape their belonging and ties to their current place of residence and across state borders. In particular, we draw on the concept of embedding, which is used in migration studies to explain migration trajectories and decision-making. Our key argument is that more attention needs to be paid to the socio-political context within which migrants negotiate their embedding. To this end, we employ the term ‘politics of embedding’ to highlight the ways in which the embedding of non-British European Union citizens has been politicized and hierarchically structured in the United Kingdom after the Brexit referendum. By illustrating how the context of Brexit has changed how people evaluate their social and other attachments, and how their embedding is differentiated into ‘ties that bind’ and ‘ties that count’, we contribute to the emerging work on migration and Brexit, and specifically to the debate on how the politicization of migration shapes the sense of security on the one hand, and belonging, on the other.

scholarly journals Between the crises: Migration politics and the three periods of neoliberalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Mulvey ◽  
Neil Davidson
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
European Community ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Migration Politics

Between the two UK referendums on European Community/European Union membership, the issue of migration came to dominate the entire debate. The period between 1975 and 2016 corresponds almost exactly to the neoliberal era in capitalism, in its British manifestation, and this is not coincidental. This article traces the shifting periods of neoliberalism (‘vanguard’, ‘social’ and ‘crisis’) across these 40 years, focusing in each case on how the policies associated with them specifically impacted migration into the United Kingdom. In particular, it will argue that the current migration crisis is at least partly an aspect of the wider crisis of neoliberalism as a form of capitalist organisation. It concludes that current levels of anti-migrant sentiment are a displaced expression of hostility to the social effects of neoliberalism, and which may nevertheless cause difficulties for British capital through the imposition of anti-free movement policies to which it is opposed.

Sovereignty versus Influence

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teemu Häkkinen ◽  
Miina Kaarkoski
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
European Unity ◽  
Political Struggles

It is not a coincidence that perceptions of sovereignty were key reasons why the United Kingdom referendum on European Union membership ended in a victory for the Leave side. In this article, we will apply methods of conceptual history to parliamentary debates in order to trace the development of sovereignty as a political concept in Europe-related debates through studies of four periods between 1945 and 2016. We will show that both supporters and opponents of European unity deliberately used the British position on sovereignty in political struggles throughout the analyzed period. The concept was used above all to describe the traditional view of the supremacy of British parliamentary sovereignty, but it was also used for different purposes to create a perception of how sovereignty could or could not be modified in dealing with an integrating Europe.

scholarly journals Managing differentiated disintegration: Insights from comparative federalism on post-Brexit EU–UK relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 136914812096851
Author(s):  
Andrew Glencross
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Comparative Federalism ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Centripetal Forces ◽  
Stable Outcome ◽  
The Eu

This article applies insights from comparative federalism to analyse different models for managing future EU–UK relations. The argument is that the stability of the EU–UK relationship before as well as after Brexit is best understood by examining the presence of federal safeguards. Drawing on Kelemen, four types of safeguards are identified as the means for balancing centrifugal and centripetal forces. During the United Kingdom’s European Union membership, the strong glue provided by structural and judicial safeguards was undone by the weakness of partisan and socio-cultural ones. However, each post-Brexit scenario is characterised by weaker structural and judicial safeguards. The most stable outcome is an indeterminate Brexit that limits the incentive to politicise sovereignty and identity concerns by ending free movement of people and reducing the saliency of European Union rules. Such stability is nevertheless relative in that, from a comparative perspective, federal-type safeguards were stronger when the United Kingdom was still in the European Union.

scholarly journals Brexit and British Business Elites: Business Power and Noisy Politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-131
Author(s):  
Magnus Feldmann ◽  
Glenn Morgan
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Business Elites ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
Business Power ◽  
Business Influence ◽  
Business Involvement

This article analyzes business power in the context of noisy politics by comparing business involvement in two British referendum campaigns: one about membership in the European Communities in 1975, and the Brexit referendum about European Union membership in 2016. By exploring these two contexts, the article seeks to identify the conditions under which business elites can and cannot be effective in a context of noisy politics. Three key factors are identified as determinants of business influence during periods of noisy politics: the incentives to get directly involved in noisy politics; the legitimacy of business involvement; and, finally, the capacity to act in a cohesive way. The article shows that these factors have changed substantially over the last four decades because of wider changes in the nature of capitalism, and their impact on business power in the United Kingdom and more generally is discussed.

scholarly journals SNP - LABOUR COALITION: A DREAM OR A REALITY?

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-23
Author(s):  
D. A. Kozlova
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Internal Interaction

This article is an attempt to analyse the collaboration between the Labour and the Scottish nationalists in the context of the formation of the modern British political agenda. The participants of the British political space, being concerned about the questions of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, inevitably face a number of challenges, and the problem of their internal interaction remains one of the most significant. Opposition parties are at an impasse: the Brexit negotiations seem as good as paralysed. The Prime Minister is being put in a very difficult position: a motion of no confidence in December, the failure of her proposals for the Brexit deal in January. The ruling conservative party itself is deeply divided. Every now and then there are some calls for a second United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. And in that event, to which extent is the opposotion coalition possible - the Labor Party and the Scottish nationalists? And if so, what are its future prospects?

Euratom and Brexit: Could the United Kingdom Maintain One Foot in the European Union? Current Scenarios and Future Prospects of British withdrawal from the EAEC

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-151
Author(s):  
Andrea Circolo ◽  
Ondrej Hamuľák
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Independent Solution ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Status ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Energy Community ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The paper focuses on the very topical issue of conclusion of the membership of the State, namely the United Kingdom, in European integration structures. The ques­tion of termination of membership in European Communities and European Union has not been tackled for a long time in the sources of European law. With the adop­tion of the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), the institute of 'unilateral' withdrawal was intro­duced. It´s worth to say that exit clause was intended as symbolic in its nature, in fact underlining the status of Member States as sovereign entities. That is why this institute is very general and the legal regulation of the exercise of withdrawal contains many gaps. One of them is a question of absolute or relative nature of exiting from integration structures. Today’s “exit clause” (Art. 50 of Treaty on European Union) regulates only the termination of membership in the European Union and is silent on the impact of such a step on membership in the European Atomic Energy Community. The presented paper offers an analysis of different variations of the interpretation and solution of the problem. It´s based on the independent solution thesis and therefore rejects an automa­tism approach. The paper and topic is important and original especially because in the multitude of scholarly writings devoted to Brexit questions, vast majority of them deals with institutional questions, the interpretation of Art. 50 of Treaty on European Union; the constitutional matters at national UK level; future relation between EU and UK and political bargaining behind such as all that. The question of impact on withdrawal on Euratom membership is somehow underrepresented. Present paper attempts to fill this gap and accelerate the scholarly debate on this matter globally, because all consequences of Brexit already have and will definitely give rise to more world-wide effects.

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