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UK voted to leave the EU

On 23 June 2016 the UK voted to leave the EU. This historic move sent tremor waves through the country: for some people waves of excitement, while for others they were waves of terror. Regardless of what side you voted for, we can safely say that things will not be the same again.

The results of the referendum weren’t confined to the decision to leave the EU, within 24 hours of the results, David Cameron has announced he will step down as Prime Minister, the Pound dropped to a 30 year low against the US Dollar, and Norther Ireland and Scotland have announced that they would like to hold further referendums to leave the UK (though no time frame has been given for these). As this tweet by @H_L_Thompson puts it in perfect dry British humour “slow news day”

But could we have gotten a hunch about the results from social media? “Perhaps” - from 1 - 23 June Leave made the most noise on a whopping twenty days, while Remain was the majority voice on only three days.

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Polling day

With the outcome of the Referendum too close to call, 23 June was a tense day for everyone on both sides of Brexit. The weather seemed to feel this as well with torrential downpours sweeping through parts of the UK.

So what did polling day look like on social media for Leave v Remain? For the second day running, Remain made more noise than Leave. But is this too little too late for the Remain campaign? For the bulk of the campaigning period Leave has been much more vocal. We will see tomorrow if this last minute change on social media is indicative of the outcome.

What were the top hashtags on the 23rd?

Unsurprisingly the most mentioned hashtags were #EUref and #Brexit. In a change from the overall trend for the day the single hashtag #VoteLeave was used more than #VoteRemain. But, regardless of which way people voted, 69,000 people shared the fact that they had voted with #iVoted.

Check out our live Leave v Remain tracker

What did the final days of campaigning look like?

With only days left until the Referendum both sides made their final push to try to convince voters to vote one way or the other.

Leave v Remain

With less than 24 hours until polls opened Remain tweets significantly overtook Leave for the first time since we started collecting data (31 May). Is this this is an indication for how the vote will go? Check back in on the 24th to find out!

Looking at the 950K odd Leave v Remain messages sent between 20 - 22 June, you can see that both camps are tweeting about the same amount, 53% for ‘Leave’ and 47% for ‘Remain’.

The most important Brexit topics

The Brexit question has centered around a handful of major topics. While which topic(s) may be most important to you, the Economy, followed by Immigration have been the two most talked about topics.

In fact Immigration only overtook the Economy as the most talked about topic on three days: 1 June, 5 June and 19 June.

Check out our live Leave vs. Remain tracker

The Theatrical Events Surrounding the Flotilla and the Tragic Death of Jo Cox MP

With the Brexit vote inching closer, this week has already been one of extremes.

On Wednesday 15 June, Nigel Farage and Sir Bob Geldof engaged in a standoff in a flotilla on the Thames. The next day, Jo Cox MP for Batley and Spen was attacked and fatally wounded outside a library in Birstall, West Yorkshire. Cox’s tragic death shocked the nation and both sides temporarily suspended their campaigns out of respect.

The Brexit Flotilla

On Wednesday 15 June, Nigel Farage sailed to the House of Commons with a fleet of some 50 Leave-backing vessels in protest of EU fishing regulations. He was met by Remain supporters including Sir Bob Geldof.

What followed wouldn’t have been out of place in any pantomime. Insults flew in both directions. The song “In With the In Crowd” blasted from Remain speakers. And Leave-backing vessels, in turn, responded with water cannons.

With so much excitement, which naval leader had the biggest impact?

Unsurprisingly, this spawned some great memes on social media. Twitter’s highlight collection will make you giggle.

Attack on Jo Cox MP

On Thursday 16 June, only a day after the flotilla spectacle, Remain supporter Jo Cox MP was fatally shot and stabbed in Birstall, West Yorkshire. In the wake of this horrific act, both Leave and Remain camps suspended their campaigns until Sunday 19 June.

Cox’s death sparked an outpouring of sympathy and show of support. On social media, thousands tweeted using the hashtags #thankyouMP and #JoCox.

Check out our live Leave v Remain tracker

The Week of the ITV Cameron-Farage and Sturgeon-Johnson Debates

The closer the vote draws, the more lively the debates are becoming with both sides engaging in some mud-slinging both during the televised debates, and on social media.

With such heated debates this week, you would expect the people from the debates (in particular Sturgeon, Farage and Johnson) to be the most talked about people this week. However, it looks like we are also interested in the opinions of more general famous figures: Sir James Dyson had nearly 12,000 mentions on 11 June after he announced he supported the Leave campaign.

Beside who we talked about, what we talked about was also surprising.

Immigration was nearly twice as popular a topic on social media than traditional news and blog sites (26% of all conversation on social media compared to 15% on news and blog sites).

Lastly the Sturgeon and Johnson debate on 9 June generated a lot of conversation across social media and news sites. Which topics were the hottest during the debate? The first half generated noise around Immigration, while the Economy & Business were talked about the most during the second half.

You can see ITV’s coverage of their debate here

Check out our live Leave v Remain tracker

The Week of the Sky TV Cameron and Gove Q&A Sessions

This week, Sky TV hosted two live Q&A sessions, one with PM David Cameron on 2 June, and one with Justice Secretary Michael Gove on 3 June. With the EU referendum in less than a month’s time, these Q&As generated a lot of buzz on the intent.

Leave supporters made a lot of noise during both Q&A sessions. Cameron faced a hostile audience who accused him of “scaremongering” over outcomes of leaving the EU. Leave supports came out again during Gove’s session, this time with a friendly voice, to show support for key leave figure.

Immigration and the economy are the two biggest topics in the EU referendum debate. While both sides of the campaign are interested in both topics, pro-leave supporters such as Gove are particularly pushing the immigration issue.

While the mentions of these key election topics were relatively stable in the lead up to the sessions, mentions of immigration fluctuated as a result of Q&A sessions.

Want to see what the leaders said? Watch Sky TV’s highlights:

Who's Making the Most Noise?

The debates and Q&A sessions get people talking online. It doesn’t seem to matter who is talking in the debate or Q&A. Leave is making the most noise—but will all this activity translate into votes on June 23?

About

We’re looking at what buzz Brexit is creating across the web. From the key issues to the most talked about politicians, this site uses data from multiple social media channels and online press sites to pull out key trends and insights in the lead up to the UK EU Referendum.

Powered by Tableau and Talkwalker maintained by Sophie Sparkes (@sophie_sparkes).

What are we tracking?

We are tracking mentions of Brexit across ten different social networks (including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube) and 150 million websites and blogs across the world.

How are we doing this?

We are tracking mentions of keywords “Brexit” or “EU referendum”. To make sure we capture the different ways that people might use these terms in a sentence, we are also capturing any time “EU” and “referendum” are mentioned within five words of each other. To cover how this term is used on different social channels we have included “#EURef” as a keyword on channels that use hashtags.

The statistics are provided by Talkwalker, if you want more information about how they are being calculated please get in touch with them at marketing@talkwalker.com

All visualisations on this site are made using Tableau, if you want to learn more about Tableau please visit their website

What counts as one mention?

If a keyword is mentioned at least once in and social media post/tweet, or at lease once in any article/blog post then we count that as one mention. If there are multiple mentions of the keywords in any post/article we still only count it as one mention.

Each mention is counted for the day that it is posted. If an article is backdated, then it will be counted for that backdated time.

What makes up “Remain” or “Leave”?

We classify a tweet as “Remain” or “Leave” if it contains

Remain: #INtogether, #StrongerIn, #VoteRemain, #StayinEU, #yes2eu, #yestoeu, #betteroffin, #votein, #ukineu, #bremain, #leadnotleave, #remain

Leave: #VoteLeave, #LeaveEU, #BetterOffOut, #GrassrootsOut, #No2EU, #leave, #notoeu, #voteout, #britainout, #beleave, #loveeuropeleaveeu  

What’s missing?

We have done our best to capture all mentions of Brexit across our streams. However the web is an ever changing and unpredictable environment and, while we will endeavour to capture the essence of what is happening, there may be some trends and stories that we miss.  

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