Brexit's Impact On The Northern Ireland Border Issue And Cross-community Conflicts

This dissertation is devoted to looking into Brexit's influence on the Northern Ireland border issue as well as cross-community conflicts from the perspective of newspaper reports with the method of quantitative content analysis.The author chose to discuss both the Northern Ireland border issue and cross-community conflicts at the same time because the two issues were becoming more and more closely associated with each other in the context of Brexit.Although Northern Ireland border issue and cross-community conflicts have been studied by many scholars respectively by now,people tend to negelect the fact that Northern Ireland border issue is able to further influence cross-community conflicts.In this dissertation,the author proposed that Northern Ireland border issue could affect cross-community conflicts through two mechanisms:Polarization and Confrontation Mechanism and EU's Conflict Settlement Mechanism.In this research,the sampling procedure is made up of two steps.Primarily,articles were automatically retrieved from the Nexis database.On the Nexis database homepage,the author first selected two most popular local newspapers in Northern Ireland,Belfast Telegraph and Irish News,as source.Then,the author input the keyword "United Ireland OR Border" to search for newspaper reports that were only related to the Northern Ireland border issue.Next,the author chose a specific time period to study in the calender.Finally,the author clicked the search button,downloaded all filtered articles and saved all of them in the folder named after the chosen time period.In this research,the author selected altogether seven typical time periods around Brexit referendum and negotiation,forming seven respective folders.More importantly,given that the keyword "United Ireland OR Border" cannot rule out newspaper reports that mention about other countries' borders such as the border between America and Mexico,the author did a manual proofreading of all saved newspaper reports and deleted those that were irrelevant to the Northern Ireland border issue.In the end,the author got 41 articles from January 24th 2016 to January 30th 2016,56 articles from June 16th 2016 to June 22nd 2016,101 articles from June 24th 2016 to June 30th,48 articles from November 16th 2016 to November 22nd 2016,54 articles from June 19th 2017 to June 25th 2017,47 articles from September 25th 2017 to October 1st 2017 and 58 articles from February 6th 2018 to February 12th 2018.The author employed grounded coding method in this research.Eight nodes were formed to study the Northern Ireland border issue:(1)Neutral,which indicates that,in the media report,the Northern Ireland border issue is only mentioned without further argumentation or there may be an objective presentation of both the advantages and disadvantages of a hard border or a soft border or it is said that the impact of Brexit remains uncertain(2)Hard Border Positive,which indicates that Brexit will lead to a hard border and it is good for Northern Ireland(3)Hard Border Negative,which indicates that Brexit will lead to a hard border and it is bad for Northern Ireland(4)Soft Border Positive,which indicates that there will remain a soft and open border and it is beneficial for Northern Ireland(5)Soft Border Negative,which indicates that there will remain a soft and open border but the reality is still worrying(6)United Ireland Positive,which indicates that Brexit will lead to a United Ireland(7)United Ireland Neutral,which indicates that whether or not there will be a United Ireland is uncertain(8)United Ireland Negative,which indicates that Brexit will not result in a United Ireland.Based on the collected data,the author drew two conclusions over the Northern Ireland border issue.To start with,Brexit has reopened Northern Ireland border issue.On top of this,the influence of Brexit over the Northern Ireland border issue is rather perpetual than temporary.In addition,Brexit has reignited the United Ireland discussion.Nevertheless,the influence is not so considerable and perpetual.Two nodes were created to quantify Polarization and Confrontation Mechanism:Political Division as well as the Revival of Paramilitaries.The first node,Political Division,is further classified into four categories:(1)Sinn Fein and DUP,which indicates that political differences between nationalist and unionist parties are reinforced by Brexit discussion and the narrative of newspaper reports is relatively neutral rather than one-sided(2)Attack DUP or Support Sinn Fein,which indicates that the newspaper report is polarized in favor of nationalist parties who advocate for a United Ireland and against Brexit(3)Attack Sinn Fein or Support DUP,which indicates that the newspaper report is polarized in favor of unionist parties who advocate for a United Kingdom and Brexit.(4)None,which indicates that above three situations are absent in the newspaper report.The second node the Revival of Paramilitaries is featured by three categories:(1)Republican,which indicates republican paramilitaries such as IRA in its past and present form(2)Loyalist,which indicates loyalist paramilitaries such as UVF and UDA(3)Both,which indicates the mentioning of both kinds of paramilitaries.Based on the collected data,the author drew the conclusion that the impact of Polarization and Confrontation Mechanism was not evident in Brexit..The author created four nodes to quantify EU's Conflict Settlement Mechanism.They are(1)Political,which indicates the political conflict-resolution function of EU.For instance,EU membership is a prerequisite for many Northern Ireland peace building documents and cross-border counseling institutions.(2)Economic,which indicates the economic conflict-resolution function of EU.For example,Northern Ireland has benefited from EU's Single Market policy,CAP policy and peace funds for decades.(3)Social,which refers to the social conflict-resolution function of EU.A good case in point is that EU membership enables people to form a fresh common identity regardless of ethnol-national divisions.(4)Immigration which indicates the mentioning of EU immigration crisis in the newspaper report.For instance,EU's poor handling of immigration before has reduced people's confidence in EU's Conflict Settlement Mechanism.Finally,the author came to four conclusions.First,the impact of EU's Conflict Settlement Mechanism was enormous.Second,the Conflict Settlement Mechanism of EU became more sufficiently analyzed approaching Brexit referendum.Third,the economic function of EU's Conflict Settlement Mechanism acquired most attention constantly throughout different time periods.Fourth,it is worth noting that although during Brexit referendum,unionists tried to reduce people's worries about Brexit by diverting people's attention from the loss of EU Conflict Settlement Mechanism to EU immigration problem,during latest rounds of Brexit negotiations,immigration was seldom mentioned.The author created two nodes to check cross-community conflict.The first node is called Conflict.It is divided into two categories:(1)Cross-community Conflicts which indicates a clear reference to the respective names of two communities within Northern Ireland.(2)General which indicates a general reference to two communities within Northern Ireland.The second node is called Tone which is made up of three categories:(1)Positive which indicates that the report believes that there there will be less and less conflicts between communities(2)Neutral which indicates that the report holds a neutral attitude towards the condition of conflicts(3)Negative which indicates that the report is negative about the condition of conflicts within Northern Ireland.In the end,the author came to the conclusion that Brexit's impact over Northern Ireland cross-community conflicts was more qualitatively than quantitatively:From positive to negative.In a word,the author came to the conclusion that Brexit has reignited the Northern Ireland border issue and has exacerbated the Northern Ireland cross-community conflicts to some extent.The originality of this research lies in three aspects.First,the author approached Brexit's influence on the Northern Ireland border issue and cross-community conflicts from a fresh angle-newspaper reports.Although numerous works have been dedicated to the study about the impact of Brexit over the Northern Ireland border issue as well as cross-community conflicts,most of them are based on political statements or historical archives.Seldom do people concentrate on analyzing newspapers' coverage of the incident.However,since newspapers remain to be the major first-hand source of information for ordinary people,they play an important role in daily lives.Newspapers' coverage is likely to reflect and shift people's attitudes towards vital questions.Therefore,by analyzing what content reporters chose to add into the news and the way they did it around Brexit referendum and Brexit negotiations,the author was able to understand Brexit's influence on the Northern Ireland border issue and cross-community conflicts better.Second,the author connected Northern Ireland border issue with cross-community conflicts together,proposing that Northern Ireland border issue could affect cross-community conflicts through two mechanisms:Polarization and Confrontation Mechanism and EU's Conflict Settlement Mechanism.Last but not the least,the conclusion of this research is more scientfically robust due to quantative content analysis research method.