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Spanish Media and the EU Referendum 2016: The Assault on an Enlightened Project

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Reporting the Road to Brexit

Abstract

The amount of coverage of the 2016 EU referendum in the Spanish media was remarkable. This is not surprising as Brexit was seen as a threat to a European project celebrated for having delivered political, social and economic benefits to Spain in consonance with the values of the European Enlightenment of universal reality-based rationality. However, one of the most salient factors in the Spanish media coverage is related to the internal political life of the country, and, as a result, there was no homogeneous Spanish view. Instead, a range of ideologically grounded interpretations was produced in which the independence of Catalonia featured as highly as the future of the European Union.

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Acknowledgements

This article is part of the research project “The role of the metaphor in the definition and social perception of conflict issues: institutions, media and citizens”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Competitiveness, CSO-2013-41661-P.

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Correspondence to Fernando León-Solís .

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León-Solís, F., Castelló, E., O’Donnell, H. (2018). Spanish Media and the EU Referendum 2016: The Assault on an Enlightened Project. In: Ridge-Newman, A., León-Solís, F., O'Donnell, H. (eds) Reporting the Road to Brexit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73682-2_12

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