National Identity and the Media Image of Britain in Contemporary Newspaper Discourse

This study examines the representation of British identity in the newspaper discourse of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom—England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—in the post-Brexit period. Drawing on a purposively structured corpus of 120 newspaper articles published between 2016 and March 2025 in leading national and regional newspapers, including The Daily Mail, The Scotsman, The Irish News, and The National Wales, the research combines corpus-assisted keyword analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, comparative regional interpretation, and statistical testing. British identity is approached as a discursively mediated form of political and cultural belonging to the UK, whereas regional identity is understood as a historically and culturally grounded form of belonging associated with each constituent nation. The findings reveal significant regional variation in the interpretation of British identity. English newspapers predominantly frame Brexit as a restoration of sovereignty and historical continuity; Scottish newspapers foreground autonomy and self-determination; Welsh publications negotiate between cultural distinctiveness and continued affiliation with Britain; and Northern Irish newspapers focus on border politics, unionism, Irish identity, and the uncertainty created by the post-Brexit settlement. Quantitative analysis of key lexical items demonstrates divergent emphases, while qualitative interpretation shows that newspaper discourse does not merely describe political divisions but actively frames competing models of belonging. Overall, the study contributes a comparative empirical account of the fragmented and dynamic character of British identity in contemporary media discourse.