Understanding Risk: A Critical Examination of the Journalism across the Brexit Referendum

Journalism scholarship has studied how risk is portrayed in newspapers through studies such as moral panic and Social Amplification of risk. What has been explored to a lesser extent however, is the ideological focus of risk. In modern society, risk is endogenous, and as such, controlling the narrative of risk is an important ideological consideration. This paper explores the role that journalists hold in the communication of risk as theorised by Ulrich Beck's Risk society, whilst also interrogating the role of risk management in professionalised discourses. In analysing newspaper output across major UK newspapers during and after the Brexit referendum - an event filled with uncertainty and risk - a critical understanding of the role of journalists and other professionals is identified. The difference between how tabloid and broadsheet journalists interact with risk discourse is explored to show how risk discourse be subverted through the language of opportunity, only for the professionalized techniques of risk management to quickly reassert control of the communication of risk.