Qualitative Content Analysis Research

The impact of Brexit on UK’s economy

Notes:

Research:

Despite
the

advantages that Brexit may bring to the UK in the future, for the moment it seems that there are mostly
negative effects on Britain’s economy according to a couple of resources. Researching the theme about
the Brexit impact on the economy I found three articles, from two news websites, published during a
two days period of time – 27 th and 28th of October. In all their news articles it is very clearly seen a
pattern of structuring the information in the web site. Even though there are many similarities and
patterns seen in the articles, there are also many differences in the way that the information is
presented to its readers.

There is no doubt that all three articles are different and unique in their own way, all of them follow the
same pattern. The first pattern found in the examined articles – “Impact of Brexit on economy 'worse
than Covid'” (BBC, 2021), “Brexit worse for the UK economy than Covid pandemic, OBR says” (Guardian,
2021) and “Now it’s official: Brexit will damage the economy long into the future” (Portes, 2021) are the
titles. All of them give you the feeling of seriousness and fear. This has been achieved by putting words
like “worse”, “damage” etc. The way each article begins is very similar as well. By comparing the
financial losses from Brexit to those from Covid. That is shown by a report from the Office for Budget
Responsibility about the reduction of the Gross Domestic Product by 4% - twice as much as from Covid.
Two out of three articles discuss the “short-term economic problem” (Portes, 2021) about mismatches
in the labour market and supply bottlenecks (BBC, 2021), when the third article (Guardian, 2021) is
concentrated on another arising issue – the conflict with France over fishing licenses. The headline
photographs with which every article starts are very different but have the same function and focus. As I
pointed out earlier, the beginning is the same, but the rest of the article is focussed of a different issue,
and that starting image hints at that issue. The picture, same as the titles, was very straight to the point
and serious. Another difference in the given information is that in the BBC article is ensuring people that
there will be enough goods for the festive season despite the shortage of seasonal workers (BBC, 2021),
the Jonathan Portes states in his article for The Guardian that the shortage of goods will continue
(Portes, 2021), but ensures that it is avoided the risk of long-term fall in GDP “thanks to the furlough
scheme and other business support measures''

Although they are all different in a way the three news article agree with the statement from Richard
Hughes that “In the long term it is the case that Brexit has a bigger impact than the pandemic” (BBC,
2021) and are not surprised nor worried by these outcomes as it would take long time “Just as it took
decades for the UK to see the full benefits of EU membership” (Portes, 2021) but are positive that UK
will go thru with it.

Method:

Content analysis research could be done in two different ways. For my research theme, I found doing
qualitative content analysis the most suitable one. The goal of the qualitative media content analysis is
to investigate and analyse some media content in order to generate evidence for answering a research
question and supporting an argument about a research issue (Luo, 2019). The way this method is done is
by analysing language, how certain kinds of people are presented and how the text might be read. When
I have found the suitable media resources I started looking for patterns in the text and the way the
information is positioned on the website and what effect they might have on its audience. The biggest
advantage for this research method is that the information you may need is easily available at all times.
The difficulty I had with this research was that the analysed content should be recent and up to date and
the other one is that content analysis and there is no strict way in which it should be constructed and
written, so as a new ‘researcher’ it was very challenging to construct my analysis.

References
BBC, 2021. BBC News. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59070020
[Accessed 30 11 2021].

Guardian, T., 2021. The Guardian. [Online]

Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/28/brexit-worse-for-the-uk-economy-
than-covid-pandemic-obr-says
[Accessed 30 11 2021].

Luo, A., 2019. Scribbr. [Online]

Available at: https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/content-analysis/
[Accessed 30 11 2021].

Portes, J., 2021. The Guardian. [Online]

Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/28/economy-recovering-covid-
brexit-eu
[Accessed 30 11 2021].