The highly biased and partisan nature of the British press provides a unique opportunity to investigate the salience of issues through published letters to the editor. This thesis supports the theory that not only were the Leave-backing Daily Telegraph and Sun more hostile regarding migration than the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror and Times, but this hostility rose as more and more hostile letters were published in the final month of the Brexit campaign. Through a discourse analysis of 274 letters to the editor across two Leave and two Remain British newspapers in 2016, a clear difference was seen between the two sets. I explore the findings uncovered by coding the hostility of these letters, ranging from welcoming immigrants as a moral imperative to equating immigrants as criminals or a drain on British society. Additionally, findings were compared to other recent periods in each period and returned more surprising results. Ultimately, this thesis explores how the readers of various newspapers framed immigration inside and outside the Brexit campaign of 2016.

Did conservative media frame immigration during the run-up to the Brexit Referendum differently than liberal media? Through the coding of articles in both The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, we will determine that these publications framed immigration in terms of national security rather than human rights or economic integration issues during the final few days of the Brexit campaign in 2016. Additionally, this framing was due to two newsworthy events that formed the narrative during these waning days: a great debate and a controversial advertisement which not only dominated the headlines but also caused the campaigns to act and react around a security narrative.