European Journal of English Studies

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The human component in social media and fake

news: the performance of UK opinion leaders on
Twitter during the Brexit campaign

Maximilian Höller

To cite this article: Maximilian Höller (2021) The human component in social media and fake
news: the performance of UK opinion leaders on Twitter during the Brexit campaign, European
Journal of English Studies, 25:1, 80-95, DOI: 10.1080/13825577.2021.1918842

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2021.1918842

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES
2021, VOL. 25, NO. 1, 80–95
https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2021.1918842

The human component in social media and fake news: the

performance of UK opinion leaders on Twitter during the
Brexit campaign
Maximilian Höller
Department of Political Science, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT Brexit; Twitter; fake news;
Ever since David Cameron announced the UK’s EU referendum in opinion leaders; mis-
information
February 2016, discussions about Fake News during the Brexit
campaign have been thriving and sparking debates on the role of
social media in the run-up to Brexit. So far, research on this topic
has mainly focused on the automatic spread of false information,
through bots, for example. Building on the assumption that political
leaders accounted for Fake News as well, my analysis adds a human
component: I screened more than 1400 tweets posted by David
Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage during
the Brexit campaign. Using fact-checking platforms, I verified each
leader’s top three arguments for Remain or Leave. As the results
show, some political leaders turned out to be part of the Fake News
epidemic surrounding Brexit: Johnson and Farage shared multiple
arguments that were clearly misleading, while Corbyn and
Cameron mostly stuck to the facts (although some of their points
were speculative). Furthermore, my analysis provides insights into
the prevalent arguments used by the respective leaders and their
performance on Twitter in general.

Introduction
The rise of social media has tremendously changed the nature of electoral campaigns,
opening up new ways of communication between leadership and electorate and bypass­
ing traditional gatekeepers, such as journalists. While providing new means of political
participation and thus playing an ever growing role in democracies, social networks are
increasingly prone to misuse, ranging from election meddling to the spread of so-called
Fake News. Several research projects, for example studies by Howard and Kollanyi (2016) or
Gorodnichenko, Pham, and Talavera (2018) (see State of the Art), have analysed the
implications of social media on major campaigns such as the 2016 Brexit referendum.
However, these studies mostly focused on mis-information spread by professionally orga­
nised trolls or automated bot armies. My article will add a human component to this
discussion by analysing tweets posted by political leaders, who are usually at the forefront
of public opinion and followed by a massive number of users. One of the guiding questions
will be whether they have themselves spread Fake News during the Brexit campaign.

CONTACT Maximilian Höller maximilian.hoeller@student.uibk.ac.at

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med­
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 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 81

For the subsequent analysis, I screened more than 1400 tweets posted by David
Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage between 20 February 2016
and 23 June 2016. In a four-step process, I first eliminated all non-Brexit related posts,
followed by those that do not make an argument and are therefore non-fact-checkable
(such as campaign photos, go-to-vote messages or event reminders). I then categorised
the remaining tweets according to their overall topic. As a final step, I fact-checked the
three most common statements in those categories, using trusted and independent
sources. To avoid the notorious term Fake News, I applied Wardle and Derakhshan’s
Information Disorder Framework (2017), which proposes a new set of definitions for
research, namely mis-, dis- and mal-information.
In the following, I will briefly assess the state of the art by reviewing studies that have
already analysed the role of social media during Brexit. I will then outline the Information
Disorder Framework, especially the classification of content into mis-, dis- and mal-
information. Next, I will discuss my methodology, particularly the separation of argument-
and non-argument-based tweets and offer a few examples to demonstrate the classifica­
tion process and clarify the handling of ambiguous tweets. Following a short depiction of
prevalent topics and the rhetoric of the four politicians in focus, I will analyse each leader’s
feed in detail. I will begin with a breakdown of the leaders’ general performance on
Twitter, i.e. the number of followers, the ratio of Brexit-related tweets and the density of
posts. I will then proceed to an analysis of frequently used arguments and their accuracy
before discussing the results.

State of the art

Publications on the function of social media during Brexit mostly deal with bots or trolls
and rely on hashtags and machine learning for an assessment of posts. One of the first
studies that examined the role of bots, which are able to autonomously interact on social
networks, was published by Howard and Kollanyi (2016). Based on a sample of more than
1.5 m tweets, they argue that “less than 1% of sampled accounts generate[d] almost
a third of all the messages,” making the role of bots during Brexit “small but strategic” (1).
A further study by Gorodnichenko, Pham, and Talavera (2018) focuses on bots as well,
analysing the flow of information on Twitter. They find evidence for the existence of so-
called echo chambers, where the efficiency of bots “depends on whether bots’ informa­
tion is consistent with humans’ preferences” (21). The authors conclude that “social media
could indeed affect public opinions in new ways,” especially by “reinforcing humans’
beliefs” (21). A massive Brexit-Botnet of more than 13,000 accounts was uncovered by
Bastos and Mercea (2017), who see the main function of such a network in “trigger[ing]
small to medium-sized cascades” of information (25). Although they do not see any
evidence for a systematic mis-information campaign, they find the botnet to be “feeding
and echoing user-curated and hyperpartisan information” (25). A study by Grčar et al.
(2017) focuses on human interaction on Twitter, analysing a vast dataset of more than
4.5 m tweets. Following a classification in pro- and contra-Brexit posts, the results show
a “considerably stronger Twitter activity of the ‘right-wing’ Leave camp” (17). Hänska and
Bauchowitz (2017) come to the same conclusion, studying 7.5 m tweets. They find
Brexiteers on Twitter to be “much more active and motivated in advancing their cause”
(30) compared to Remainers, but at the same time “less open [. . .], indicating important
82 M. HÖLLER

hallmarks of an echo-chamber” (29). To examine these new phenomena on social media,

Wardle and Derakhshan (2017) have developed a new framework, which will be used in
the following analysis and will therefore be discussed in more detail.

Information disorder framework

In order to avoid the notorious term Fake News, which “is woefully inadequate to describe
the complex phenomena of information pollution” and has “begun to be appropriated by
politicians [. . .] to describe news organizations whose coverage they find disagreeable,”
Wardle and Derakhshan introduce a new conceptual framework (2017, 5). It proposes
three types of information: mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. Those
types are again grouped in two spheres: false and harmful content. While mis-information
is primarily false and not intentionally harmful (such as misleading content), mal-
information can be grounded in facts, but is published to induce damage (such as
leaks, for example). Dis-information stands at the intersection of false and harmful con­
tent: it includes both elements and occurs when manipulated content is published, for
example. Apart from these new definitions, Wardle and Derakhshan incorporate the
evolution of content (creation-production-distribution) and the necessary components
(agent-message-interpreter) into their framework, too (cf. 20–22).
For the subsequent analysis, I will mostly refer to dis- and mis-information. It is not the
primary objective of this study to assess the leaders’ intent to harm, but to fact-check the
accuracy of their posts on Twitter. As to the categories proposed by Wardle and
Derakhshan, three of them are especially relevant for this paper: [1] misleading content
that consists of the “[m]isleading use of information to frame an issue or individual,” [2]
false connections, especially “[w]hen headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the
content” and [3] false context, “[w]hen genuine content is shared with false contextual
information” (17). For arguments that are per se not false or harmful, but cannot be
verified to their full extent, I have added a further category, namely speculative content.
This only applies to arguments that depend on future political decisions and are therefore
notoriously hard to predict.

Methodology
For the subsequent analysis, I focused on those opinion leaders, that were at the forefront
of the Brexit campaign and leading their respective movements: David Cameron as Prime
Minister and Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party for Remain, Boris Johnson as
Major of London and Nigel Farage as the leader of the UKIP for Leave. Together, they
reached more than 2.5 m followers on Twitter (following historic data from the Wayback
Machine n.d.a., n.d.b., n.d.c., n.d.d.) and posted 1,454 tweets in total, as Twitter’s advanced
search function shows. However, as not all their tweets were relevant for the study,
I disregarded all non-Brexit related tweets, leaving 876 posts to analyse. I then manually
grouped the remaining posts into posts that make an argument (that is a verifiable
statement) and those that do not, such as campaign photos, go-to-vote messages or
event reminders. Finally, I classified the tweets according to their overall topic, such as
immigration, the economy (including the UK’s rebate and payments to the EU), the rights
of citizens, and enlargement. As a last step, I screened the three most common statements
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 83

of each leader in those groups for mis- and disinformation, using trusted fact-checking
platforms, such as the independent website Full Fact. Additionally, I worked with informa­
tion provided by the BBC’s Reality Check, as well as other trusted newspapers. In some
questionable cases, I also added a source-check to complete the picture. The analysis itself
focuses on written statements and does not include videos, links or attachments. This is
due to the text-centredness of Twitter, which is mainly used to post short messages with
a maximum of 140 (280 as of 2020) characters, which is Twitter’s distinctive feature.
To minimise errors, I screened all tweets by hand, especially as hashtags were not used
consistently by the four leaders. During that process, the separation of argument- and non-
argument-based posts turned out to be the biggest challenge: the diversity of tweets and their
respective claims complicated the categorisation. To clarify the methodology used and to
demonstrate the demarcation between verifiable argument and simple claim, I will offer
a few examples in the following. On the non-argument side, tweets were ranging from abstruse
statements like “Project Fear now so absurd that I expect pro-EU establishment to claim
a plague of locusts will descend if we Leave EU,” posted by Nigel Farage on 1 March 2016, to
unverifiable claims like “Americans would never accept EU restrictions – so why should we?,”
written by Boris Johnson on 14 April 2016. I also sorted out tweets which consisted of generic
slogans such as “Britain is stronger, safer & better off in a reformed European Union,” used
multiple times by David Cameron (in this example on 26 February 2016) and posts that mainly
offered links to a video or another website, such as the one by Jeremy Corbyn, posted on
21 June 2016, which referred to a short video: “[t]oday in Manchester I explained why I – and the
Labour Party – are in for Britain.” Instead, I categorised (and later fact-checked) those tweets as
arguments, that consisted of a verifiable statement for or against Brexit. On the Leave side, for
example, this included Nigel Farage’s post on 29 February 2016, which claimed that “EU
membership costs the UK £55 million every single day,” as well as Boris Johnson’s statement
on 3 June 2016, that the “Bank of England has confirmed that wages are partly held down by
uncontrolled immigration.” Arguments for Remain included posts like “[m]illions of families face
higher prices for the weekly shop if we leave the EU,” written by David Cameron on
21 June 2016, or that the “EU gave us rights to paid annual holiday, paid maternity/paternity
leave, equal pay & anti-discrimination laws,” published by Jeremy Corbyn on 27 February 2016.
Overall, the range of topics covered by the leaders was rather narrow and mostly focused on
just a few key points, as the analysis shows.

Prevalent topics
As to the arguments most frequently used to campaign for Remain and Leave, the four
leaders stuck to their political ideologies, essentially (Table 1). On the Remain side, David

Table 1. The leaders’ top arguments.

Cameron Corbyn Farage Johnson
Argument 1 Risk of recession and Protection of (workers’) Turkey joining EU UK’s payments to the
loss of jobs rights EU
Argument 2 Higher prices Functioning of NHS Terrorists coming through Negative effects of
open borders immigration
Argument 3 Endangered pensions Risk of loss of jobs Misleading migration EU’s democratic
statistics structures
84 M. HÖLLER

Cameron’s top three arguments were all centred on the economic outcomes of Brexit
(slowing growth and a loss of jobs, higher prices and endangered pensions), while Jeremy
Corbyn mainly posted about the protection of (workers’) rights through the EU. He also
mentioned a potentially negative impact on the NHS (National Health Service) and the risk of
a loss of jobs as arguments to Remain. On the Leave side, Boris Johnson kept posting about
the UK’s payments to the EU, but also used arguments related to immigration and the EU’s
democratic structures to campaign for Brexit. Nigel Farage covered a wide range of topics on
his Twitter feed, linking everything from tampon taxes to energy prices to the EU. However,
most of his arguments were on immigration. He frequently warned of Turkey’s accession to
the union (and an increase of migrants thereafter) and terrorists coming to the UK through
the EU; he also questioned official migration statistics in general. Other topics occurring
across political ideologies were trade deals, border controls and bureaucracy, for example.
It is also remarkable to observe which topics were not mentioned by the four leaders.
Most notably, universities, science, and research and the subsequent implications of Brexit
on those areas were not covered at all. Although Cameron and Corbyn mentioned the role
of young people in the referendum in a few tweets (saying that they “will be most affected
by [the] outcome,” [Corbyn on 13 May 2016]), not a single tweet of all 876 analysed was
about academia. The same is true for issues like the border between Northern Ireland and
the Republic of Ireland, which was not mentioned either.
As to the rhetoric used in general, the tweets were rather moderate in tone. Only Nigel
Farage used quite aggressive language and attacked his opponents directly, targeting
especially David Cameron multiple times. The EU was portrayed by all – except for
Cameron – as an institution mainly defending the interests of big business, or as Farage
bluntly put it on 12 April 2016: “[t]his is all about big banks & establishment protecting
their interests within a cosy EU cartel that looks after multi-national corporations.”
Especially the wording of a pro-EU establishment or “the elites vs the rest” was frequently
used by the Leave side, for example by Johnson on 3 June 2016. The Remainers, in
contrast, often had “a reformed EU” after the referendum in mind (like Cameron wrote
on 20 February 2016) and used their plans for such a reform as an argument to stay in the
union. They also quoted experts and celebrities quite frequently – especially Cameron
posted statements ranging from Christine Lagarde to David Beckham.

The leaders’ performance

Boris Johnson
As the mayor of London, Boris Johnson was one of the most prominent faces of the Vote
Leave campaign. Surprisingly, he did not make much use of Twitter during the Brexit
campaign. Not only did he tweet less than the other leaders analysed for this study: he
also had considerably less followers. In between 20 February 2016 and 23 June 2016, he
just tweeted 84 times in total, or 0.7 times per day. Of those 84 tweets, only 47 were Brexit-
related, and most of them (36) were posted in June. At the same time, the number of his
followers went from 78,000 in mid-February to 134,000 in mid-June, still leaving him far
behind Nigel Farage, who started out with 257,000 followers in February.
Overall, Johnson did not use Twitter frequently at the time, even less so to make the
case for Brexit. At the beginning of the campaign, he tweeted just a few times per month,
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 85

mostly sharing links to his posts on Facebook, which are not part of this analysis. In April,
for example, Johnson wrote just a single tweet about Brexit. It was only at the end of May
that he started to post actual content and to use trending hashtags like #VoteLeave or
#InOrOut. On 3 June 2016, Johnson issued a round of tweets – twenty-one in total –
commenting on Justice Secretary Michael Gove’s performance during a EU referendum
debate on Sky News, his highest number of daily posts during that time. He also started to
post campaign-related tweets, such as reminders about events and photos with suppor­
ters. In total, Johnson used only few of his forty-seven Brexit-tweets to present actual
arguments against the EU. Following an analysis of those tweets, I found the three
dominant topics of Johnson’s feed to be the UK’s payments to the EU, immigration, and
the EU’s democratic structures.
For his first major argument, the UK’s payments to the EU, Johnson used three different
numbers: on 29 February 2016, he spoke of “[a] chance to [. . .] save £8bn a year,” on
3 June 2016, he argued that “[i]t is perfectly reasonable to use the £350 m figure – actually
it is an underestimate,” and on the same day he stated: “in any case we send £10bn a year
net.” As the independent fact-checking website Full Fact notes, “[t]he claim that the UK
sends £350 million per week to the EU is wrong,” as it does not include the rebate granted
by the EU, which “is effectively an instant discount” and therefore never paid. According
to Full Fact, the UK’s weekly contribution 2015 “was £250 million” roughly, but, as the UK
“receives money back from Brussels” as well, the “‘net contributions to the EU budget’
were £9.8 billion” in 2015 (Full Fact Team and UK in a Changing Europe Fellows 2016c).
I have therefore found Johnson’s claim of £350 m to be misleading, as he used it to frame
the UK’s payments to the EU, which were significantly lower. His claims regarding net
contributions, however were accurate.
Another dominant topic of Johnson’s tweets was immigration. On 3 June 2016, he
posted that the “Bank of England has confirmed that wages are partly held down by
uncontrolled immigration,” including a link to a research document of the bank. He
repeated that claim on 15 June 2016 and wrote that “BoE report shows 10% increase in
immigration = 2% wage decrease 4 lowest earners.” He also connected immigration to the
housing market, tweeting on 3 June 2016 that “[housing pressures] have unquestionably
been increased by immigration.” Both claims were fact-checked by authors of Full Fact.
Concerning the reduction of wages, Richard Braham found that “[t]he 10% to 2% ratio,
described by the Bank of England, does not show the relationship between changes in the
immigration rate and UK average wages,” but only the effects on the lowest earners in
certain parts of the UK. As Braham points out, the document also shows effects of
immigration on average wages, but “[t]his effect was much smaller than the effect
found when the report focused on particular groups of occupation” (Braham 2016a).
Concerning the second argument, a fact-check by Abbas Panjwani of Full Fact shows
that – following an analysis by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local
Government – immigration has increased housing prices by up to 20%. However, as the
author points out, the “complexity of the housing market means the analysis has limita­
tions” and that “[o]ther research on the effect of immigration on house prices is incon­
clusive” (Panjwani 2018). Evidently, Johnson’s claims on immigration are grounded in
facts, but overly simplified, as he does not mention the details of the Bank of England
report, nor the various factors influencing the housing market.
86 M. HÖLLER

Finally, Johnson frequently used the EU’s democratic structures as an argument for
Brexit. On 3 June 2016, he posted: “[r]emember only 3.6% of EU officials come from this
country – how can they do trade deals for us?” and “how many people can name their Euro
MP? The EU is totally undemocratic.” A fact-check using the official HR key figures 2016 of the
European Commission (2016) shows that 3.5% of the commission’s staff is of British nation­
ality. As to the democratic legitimacy of the EU, Full Fact points out that “[t]he EU has more
democratic controls than a typical international organisation,” like direct elections of the EU
Parliament, but also “democratic shortcomings,” when it comes, for example, to the
Parliament’s powers or the legislative processes. Therefore, “[d]epending on what you
look at, and compare against, you will get different answers” to the question of the EU’s
democratic legitimacy (Full Fact and UK in a Changing Europe Fellows 2016b). With the
European Parliament (as one of the major EU institutions) being directly elected, however,
the EU is far from “totally undemocratic”. Furthermore, the EU employs far more officials
than just the commission’s staff, making Johnson’s tweets on the EU misleading.

Jeremy Corbyn
The leader of the Labour Party was not exactly known for his enthusiasm for the EU when
he became one of the leading faces of the Remain campaign in 2016. This trend is
reflected on his Twitter feed. Although Corbyn gained more than 80,000 new followers
from the end of February (418,000) until mid-June (504,000), he did not quite use this
position to make a case for Remain. In between 20 February 2016 and 23 June 2016 he
posted 500 tweets in total, or a little over four tweets per day. Of those 500 tweets, just
122 were Brexit-related, most of them posted in June (69).
Overall, Corbyn started out strong in February, making 17 out of 40 posts about
Brexit, but then did not tweet anything Brexit-related for almost a month, between
19 March 2016 and 13 April 2016. After two posts reminding followers about a Remain
speech, he again did not post anything Brexit-related for another month, until
12 May 2016. From then on, #InCrowd started to gain momentum and Corbyn began
to focus on Brexit in his tweets. In June, more than 50% of his posts were Brexit-related.
He frequently added short clips and pictures beneath his posts and wrote a series of go-
to-vote tweets. Overall, Corbyn used Twitter less in order to make arguments for
Remain, and more in order to lay out plans for a reformed EU (he argued multiple
times that he “want[ed] to remain in the EU to build a real social Europe,” like in this
tweet on 4 June 2016). His arguments for Remain were mostly limited to the protection
of (workers’) rights through the EU, the functioning of the NHS and the risk of a loss of
jobs.
The argument most frequently used during his campaign was to remain in the EU for
the protection of workers’ and women’s rights. For instance, on 27 February 2016, Corbyn
wrote that the “EU gave us rights to paid annual holiday, paid maternity/paternity leave,
equal pay & anti-discrimination laws,” while on 22 June 2016, he tweeted that “[t]he EU
has secured worker’s rights such as equal pay, paid holiday, maternity and paternity leave”
and that “[w]orkers’ rights will be at risk if we vote Leave”. As Full Fact points out, the
rights mentioned by Corbyn “stem largely from the EU” and could indeed “potentially be
changed by the government, though whether they would wish to is another matter” (Full
Fact Team 2016e). While some worker’s rights – such as the minimum wage – stem from
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 87

the UK’s legislation, as Grace Rahman from Full Fact points out, the EU set minimum
standards in multiple other areas, such as general paid holiday leave, which did not exist
in the UK beforehand. After Brexit, “the UK wouldn’t necessarily have to keep up with
future standards set by the EU,” according to the author (Rahman 2019). Consequently,
Corbyn’s claims regarding the rights established by the EU are true, although they are also
speculative in regard to future political developments.
Concerning the NHS, Corbyn concentrated on two main issues: budget cuts following
Brexit (for example, on 14 June 2016, he wrote: “[t]he risk to our NHS from a Tory Brexit is
further austerity cuts to our public services”) and less workers from other EU countries
(“[o]ur NHS depends on the skills and commitment of thousands of EU citizens who work
in it,” as he posted on 22 June 2016). As to the first argument, Richard Braham and Conor
James McKinney from Full Fact point out that “[m]ost economists agree that the govern­
ment’s budget would suffer, if the UK left the EU.” However, this does not automatically
mean cuts to the budget of the NHS. Those “would be the result of political decisions
about public sector spending, not a direct economic consequence of leaving the EU,” as
the fact-checkers note (Braham and McKinney 2016). The second claim was analysed by
Mark Dayan for Full Fact. According to the author, “EU immigrants make up about 5% of
English NHS staff.” Although the effects of Brexit could be similar to an earlier immigration
reform for non-EU immigrants that “had a subtle but clear impact on NHS recruitment,”
any such claims “depend on hypothetical decisions and perceptions after a British exit,” as
he points out (Dayan 2016). I have therefore classified Corbyn’s tweets on the NHS as
speculative, as both the budget and staffing of the service depend on future political
decisions rather than Brexit itself.
As a third argument for staying in the EU, Corbyn frequently used the risk of losing jobs.
On 22 June 2016, he tweeted, “[t]omorrow I’ll be voting Remain: [. . .] for jobs” and
“[a]cross Britain, jobs are linked to our membership of the EU.” As Full Fact points out in
an article posted on 21 June 2016, it is notoriously hard to forecast complex economic
developments, as a number of variables come into play. However, there are two main
elements to this argument: first, the overall economic development of the UK after Brexit.
According to Full Fact, “[m]ost economists agree that leaving the EU would slow down
economic growth [. . .] [and therefore] fewer jobs would be created and some might be
lost.” Second, jobs linked to trade with the EU (3 to 4 million, according to an analysis by
Joseph O’Leary [2016b]) “may become more precarious,” but “just because a job is
connected to trade with the EU does not necessarily mean that it would be lost” with
Brexit (Full Fact Team 2016a). Following these facts, it is clear that Corbyn’s tweets on jobs
are accurate. As laid out above, millions of jobs in the UK are linked to the EU and could be
at risk, especially following a slowing economy (which is expected by most experts).

David Cameron
David Cameron did not just set the date for the EU referendum, but he was also the one
fighting the strongest for Remain – at least on Twitter. As Prime Minister, he had more
followers than all the other three leaders together: 1.36 million in mid-February and
1.49 million in mid-June. Cameron frequently used Twitter, on average 2.3 times
per day, or 291 times in total between 20 February 2016 and 23 June 2016. Of those
291 tweets, 207 were Brexit-related, most of them posted in June (118).
88 M. HÖLLER

Overall, Cameron used Twitter extensively to advocate for Remain. Except for March, he
maintained a high ratio of Brexit-related tweets throughout the campaign: 100% of his
tweets in February and 92% of his tweets in June were about the referendum. Early on, he
started to use #StrongerIn for his posts, followed by #VoteRemain in June. Like Johnson,
he frequently used links to Facebook for longer statements and videos (which are not part
of this analysis). To a greater extent than any other leader, he shared messages of support
from prominent figures, like David Beckham or Daniel Craig. He also posted a high
number of campaign-related tweets and go-to-vote messages. Furthermore, Cameron
used his Twitter account to spread actual arguments for Remain. His top three arguments
for staying in the EU were all related to the economy, warning that Brexit would cause
a recession, a loss of jobs and higher prices and endanger pensions.
The argument most frequently used by Cameron was the risk of a recession and a loss
of jobs through Brexit. To quote just a few posts, on 12 May 2016, he tweeted that “[t]he
Bank of England is right to warn leaving the EU could cause lower growth and unemploy­
ment to rise”; on 13 May 2016, he wrote that “[t]he IMF’s Christine Lagarde is the latest top
economist to warn leaving the EU could result in a recession – that would hit jobs and
wages”; and on 23 May 2016, he posted that a “Treasury analysis shows leaving EU would
trigger recession and cost 500,000 jobs”. First, it is noteworthy that all sources mentioned
by Cameron indeed warned of a recession or lower growth, as articles in The Guardian
(Allen 2016), the BBC (2016a), and the Financial Times (Martin 2016) indicate. As to the
economic effects of Brexit, Braham points out that “[m]ost (but not all) forecasts predict
that leaving the EU would cost the UK economy,” even though the size of the effects is
controversial. This is due to different models used to predict the economic effects and
a number of variables that inform such forecasts (Braham and Full Fact Team 2016b).
When it comes to jobs, the same facts apply as already mentioned above (Full Fact Team
2016a). Cameron’s tweets on economic growth and jobs, therefore, are accurate: he used
trusted sources to back his claims, which indeed pointed towards a slowing economy and
a loss of jobs following Brexit.
As a second key argument for staying in the EU, Cameron cited the risk of soaring
prices on several occasions. On 22 May 2016, he tweeted that “[w]e are clear – prices will
rise if we leave the EU”; on 12 June 2016, he posted that “[i]f the pound falls because of
Brexit, prices would go up & UK families would be hit;” and on 21 June 2016, he claimed
that “[m]illions of families face higher prices for the weekly shop if we leave the EU.” For
the fact-checkers of Full Fact, it is notoriously hard to predict such developments. They
have claimed that it is “difficult to say what impact being in the EU has had on prices
overall,” but that there are several components to it, including free trade agreements
lowering tariffs for non-EU products. These agreements potentially save UK customers up
to £350 a year, as the fact-check shows. However, as Full Fact points out in the same
article, “[t]his isn’t the impact of being in the EU as such, but the free trade deals it has
negotiated” (Full Fact Team 2016d). A further aspect is slowing growth after Brexit (as
expected by most experts). This could lead to a weaker pound sterling and therefore rising
prices, at least for some products. What makes predictions even harder is the fact “trade
competition in the EU might be expected to lower prices but EU regulation and agricul­
tural policy might be expected to raise prices” (Full Fact Team 2016b). However, as several
aspects point towards higher prices following Brexit (such as the end of free trade
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 89

agreements and slowing growth), Cameron’s tweets are accurate, at least as far as short-
term developments are concerned.
Finally, Cameron made pensions a topic on his Twitter feed. On 27 May 2016, he
tweeted, “[t]op experts like @rosaltmann are clear: leaving the EU will damage pensions.”
On 12 June 2016, he wrote again that “leaving Europe would hit our economy & put
pensions at risks.” A BBC Reality Check shows that these “predictions are based on the
Treasury’s economic model”: it predicts severe problems for UK economy after Brexit (HM
Treasury 2016). However, as the BBC points out as well, economic developments are
notoriously hard to predict and depend on a number of variables. Although “almost all
serious forecasts predict that uncertainty in the first two years [after Brexit] would lead to
problems for the economy,” there might also be “things about leaving the EU that could
be good for pensioners,” like higher interest rates following a rising inflation, for example
(BBC 2016c). In conclusion, Cameron’s tweets on pensions are speculative: although
economic models point towards slowing growth after Brexit, the effects on pensions
depend on future political decisions rather than Brexit itself.

Nigel Farage
The leader of the UK Independence Party spent most of his political career campaigning
for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Not surprisingly, he turned out to be one of the
strongest voices for Brexit on Twitter. Not only did he tweet more than any other of the
four leaders, but he also had the highest ratio of Brexit-related tweets, roughly 86%.
Between 20 February 2016 and 23 June 2016, he posted 579 times in total (4.7 tweets
per day on average), making 500 of those tweets about Brexit, most of them in May (116).
During that time, he almost gained 100,000 new followers: he had started with 257,000 at
the end of January and reached 350,000 at the time of the vote cast in June.
Overall, Farage used Twitter extensively to promote Brexit. He maintained a high
posting frequency and focused almost exclusively on the referendum, dedicating more
than 95% of his tweets in February, March, and June 2016 to Brexit (slightly less in April
and May). He did not use hashtags consistently, but at some point in February started to
tag several posts with #ProjectFact. He also used #BrexitBusTour to mark his campaign
events on the road. Farage frequently added links to articles in the press to back his posts
and also shared lots of short videos and clips. Throughout the campaign, Farage brought
up more topics related to the EU than any other leader, ranging from an EU army to taxes
for e-cigarettes. However, most of his posts were on immigration. Farage connected
several issues to people coming to the UK: from overcrowded schools, to lower living
standards, to a lack of housing. His top three arguments were related to Turkey joining the
EU, safety issues arising through immigration and the total number of people coming to
the UK.
Most frequently, Farage used an imminent accession of Turkey to the EU as an
argument for Leave. He posted several tweets on the topic, for example on
13 March 2016, that “[t]his referendum is very quickly becoming a vote on whether we
want to be in a political union with Turkey,” on 23 May 2016 that “Turkish set to become
an official EU language,” or on 19 June 2016 that “Turkey and others are to receive funding
from the UK to help those countries prepare for full EU membership,” including a link to
an article in the Express, entitled “British taxpayers face £1.8BILLION bill to help Turkey join
90 M. HÖLLER

the EU.” These are just a few examples of Farage’s tweets on Turkey. Concerning a political
union (and therefore an accession of Turkey to the EU), Full Fact points out in an article
posted by Charlotte O’Brien, that although negotiations between the EU and Turkey are
ongoing, the country is “unlikely to join any time soon.” As of 2016, “negotiations have
closed on just one out of 35 chapters,” with “some of the most controversial chapters” yet
to come, according to O’Brien. Furthermore, every member state has to approve such an
accession – but, as the author mentions as well, it was UK government policy as of 2016 to
“support Turkey in becoming a member” (O’Brien 2016). Also, the Turkish language is “still
far away from official EU status,” as the website Euractiv laid out in an article posted by
Sam Morgan: the proposal was made by Cyprus “in an attempt to boost its reunification
process.” However, it requires an “unanimous decision by all [. . .] member states”. Any
chances of such an agreement “look non-existent” at the moment, as the author points
out (Morgan 2017). As to the last argument – that Turkey’s membership preparations will
be funded by the UK – a BBC Reality Check clarifies that “[o]ver a seven year [sic] period,
£1.2bn of the UK’s contributions to the EU Budget will go to seven candidate states,”
including Turkey. Another £250 million are part of the EU deal with Turkey on (Syrian)
refugees (BBC 2016b). Clearly, Farage’s claims on Turkey are mostly misleading, especially
his warnings of an imminent integration of Turkey into the EU and his claims regarding
the Turkish language, which are wildly exaggerated. His post on funding for Turkey is
grounded in facts, but misleading as far as the reference to the Express article is
concerned.
Another frequently used argument by Farage was security threats to the UK due to
shortcomings in the EU’s border security system. For example, on 23 March 2016, he
tweeted that “Europol chief himself has said up to 5,000 Isis terrorists have come into
Europe from Middle East;” on 2 March 2016, he wrote that “[f]or the sake of our national
security, we must Leave EU so that we have control over who can and cannot come to
Britain,” and on 22 April 2016 he claimed that “[o]nce again @David_Cameron has
repeated the false claim that we maintain border controls inside EU. This man has no
shame”. A fact-check by Conor James McKinney and Sinéad Boultwood of Full Fact on
jihadists returning to Europe shows that the “boss of Europol, Rob Wainwright, denies that
he said any such thing.” According to the two fact-checkers and Europol, “[t]he figure of
5,000 refers to its estimate of how many EU citizens have been radicalised by IS and
travelled to Syria and Iraq,” and not the number of people (less than one third) that have
returned (McKinney and Boultwood 2016). As to border controls, another fact-check by
Full Fact points out that “[t]he British government retains full control over its own border
controls,” and therefore “can, and does, perform passport and identity checks at its
borders.” As the UK is not part of the Schengen Area, this applies to all travellers. On
the topic of terrorism, Full Fact points out in the same article that this issue does not stop
at national borders. Furthermore, “[a]s the UK retains its own border controls and national
control over asylum-seeking processes it has the capacity to address any such develop­
ment itself” (Full Fact Team and UK in a Changing Europe Fellows 2016a). Farage’s claims
on security and border controls, therefore, were misleading: not only did he misquote
Europol’s boss, he also repeated false claims regarding the UK’s border controls.
Finally, Farage challenged official immigration numbers in several tweets. On
25 February 2016, he wrote, “EU migration 260,000, but 650,000 NI numbers registered.
Real immigration numbers likely far higher!” and one day later added that “[t]he great
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 91

migrant con: 630,000 EU nationals registered to work but government say only 257,000
arrived.” On 27 February 2016, he posted: “[n]et migration at over 300,000 per year.
Disaster inside EU.” O’Leary from Full Fact explored the National Insurance (NI) numbers
controversy and discovered that immigration statistics indeed estimated that “around
257,000 nationals from other EU countries migrated to the UK in the year to
September 2015,” while, during the same period, 655,000 National Insurance numbers
were issued. According to the author, this was partly due to different definitions of
immigration: people were only counted as migrants “if they intend[ed] to stay here for
at least a year,” but received a NI number for shorter stays as well. However, O’Leary calls
attention to the fact that this is not the whole story: “[i]mmigration estimates could still be
too low” (O’Leary 2016a). As to net migration, Full Fact mentioned that the “net migration
target [of tens of thousands a year] overall has been consistently unmet” and that the
number was indeed at around “327,000 in the year to March 2016.” Although “[i]mmigra­
tion from the EU has driven most of the recent rise in net migration,” as Full Fact points out
in the same article, the government’s “target would be missed even if EU net migration
were zero” (Full Fact Team 2016c). Farage’s claims on immigration numbers, therefore, are
mostly true: far more NI numbers were issued than migrants counted. His tweets on net
migration were accurate as well.

Conclusion
The objective of this paper has been to add a human component to the ongoing
discussion about Fake News around Brexit, which has largely revolved around the auto­
matic spread of false information through bots. What has not been investigated, however,
was the role of political leaders at the forefront of the Brexit campaign in spreading or
adding to Fake News. My analysis, which was based on 1,454 tweets posted by David
Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage between 20 February 2016 and
23 June 2016, has yielded the following results:

(1) Johnson and Farage used Twitter to spread misleading information on Brexit.
(2) Most of Corbyn’s and Cameron’s top arguments were accurate, although some
were speculative as to future political developments.
(3) The prevalent arguments revolved around just a few topics, including the econ­
omy, immigration, the protection of rights, the NHS, payments to the EU, and the
EU’s democratic structures.

The results in detail offer further insights into the Brexit campaign. First, the Twitter-
performance of the four leaders in general has been rather mixed. Nigel Farage and David
Cameron used Twitter extensively to campaign for Leave and Remain, making 86% and
71% of their posts about Brexit, respectively. At the same time, Boris Johnson and Jeremy
Corbyn made just 56% and 24% of their posts about Brexit, respectively. Of all 876 Brexit-
related tweets, Farage posted more than the three other leaders together – 500 tweets in
total. As to their impact on Twitter, all four leaders managed to gain thousands of new
followers during the period of study, starting from very different points, however.
Cameron ranked number one with 1,36 million followers in mid-February, reaching
1.49 million by mid-June (+ 130,000). Corbyn came second, starting out with 418,000
92 M. HÖLLER

Table 2. The leaders’ Twitter performance in comparison.

Cameron Corbyn Farage Johnson
Followers (Jan/Feb 16) 1.360.000 418.000 257.000 78.300
Followers (Jun 16) 1.490.000 504.000 349.000 134.000
Total Tweets 291 500 579 84
Brexit-related 207 122 500 47
Percentage of Brexit-related Tweets 71,1% 24,4% 86,4% 56%

followers and reaching 504,000 (+ 86,000) by mid-June. Farage ranked number three,
going from 257,000 followers to 349,000 (+ 92,000). Johnson, finally, ranked last, starting
with just 78,300 followers and reaching 134,000 (+ 55,700) (Table 2).
Second, the range of topics mostly used by the leaders to argue for Remain or Leave
was rather limited and close to their respective political ideology. On the Remain side,
Cameron focused on the economy (including prices, jobs, and wages) and Corbyn on the
protection of jobs, (workers’) rights, and the NHS. On the Leave side, Johnson mainly wrote
about the UK’s payments to the EU, immigration, and the democratic structures of the EU,
while Farage focused almost exclusively on immigration, including topics such as Turkey’s
accession to the EU, border controls, and official migration statistics. Unlike the other
leaders, Farage brought up numerous different reasons to leave the EU, ranging from
a taxation of e-cigarettes to plans for an EU army. Some topics, however, were not
mentioned by any of the four leaders at all, ranging from political issues, such as the
border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, to education-related
matters, such as student mobility or research cooperation, for example.
Third, the accuracy of the posted information varied heavily between the Remain and
Leave sides. While Corbyn and Cameron mostly stuck to the facts, Johnson and Farage used
multiple arguments in a misleading way. These included the amount of the UK’s payments
to the EU, which were almost £100 million lower per week than what Johnson claimed, as
well as his post about the EU being “totally undemocratic” (3 June 2016), despite the
European Parliament’s direct elections. Johnson also got the numbers wrong in his post
about the low number of UK officials in Brussels, which corresponds to the commission’s
staff only. Farage’s arguments on Turkey and immigration were similarly misleading: the
accession of Turkey to the EU or the introduction of Turkish as an official EU language are
far from imminent and currently years away. Furthermore, the UK is in control of its own
borders, contrary to Farage’s claims. In all those cases, Johnson and Farage used informa­
tion in a misleading way to frame an argument for Leave. However, they also shared
information that was (partly) correct, as did Farage with his post about the higher number
of NI numbers issued compared to migrants counted. Johnson’s tweet on the effects of
immigration on wages and housing was grounded in facts, but left out important details.
On the Remain side, none of the analysed tweets were misleading. Corbyn’s argument on
(workers’) rights introduced by the EU was accurate, as were his and Cameron’s posts on
jobs connected to the EU and their warning of a loss of those jobs. The warnings of
a recession and higher prices following Brexit, posted by Cameron, were accurate as well.
These claims – regarding future developments – were either backed by trusted experts or
supported by various studies and models, offering sufficient aspects pointing towards such
outcomes. Arguments depending on future political decisions solely, however, were
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 93

categorised as speculative. This was true for Corbyn’s posts regarding the NHS (budgetary
and staff issues), as well as for Cameron’s warning of endangered pensions.
Summing up, my analysis has found evidence that political leaders used Twitter to
spread misleading information during the Brexit campaign. However, this was only true
for the leaders of the Leave side, as a fact-check of frequently used arguments has
shown. While Corbyn and Cameron mostly stuck to the facts (although some of their
posts were speculative), Johnson and Farage used information, such as UK’s payments
to the EU, immigration or the EU’s democratic structures, in a misleading way to frame
arguments for Brexit, actively contributing to the Fake News epidemic surrounding the
referendum. With their massive amount of followers, the two Brexiteers potentially
reached hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter, disseminating such information.
While the spread of Brexit-Fake News has largely been attributed to bots and trolls to
date, my analysis added political leaders as a human component to the discussion. At
the forefront of public discourse and followed by thousands of users on social media,
a stronger focus will be needed on those leaders in the ongoing effort to understand
and stop Fake News.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Maximilian Höller holds a diploma in law and an MA in political science from the University of
Innsbruck. His research focuses on political communication and new media, more specifically on the
impact of internet-based social networks on political environments. His latest work examines the
role of social media during the Arab revolutions and the rise of Daesh. He is now working on his
dissertation, exploring fake news in today’s political communication. Maximilian is an experienced
journalist and has worked and studied in Vienna, Berlin, Istanbul, and Washington DC.

ORCID
Maximilian Höller http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0825-1317

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