THE UK media's attention to the “culture war” has skyrocketed amid growing public awareness of the phenomenon, according to a new study.
King’s College London surveyed nearly 3000 people as they looked to provide an in-depth assessment of the culture war debate in the UK.
One of the report’s key findings was that the number of news articles mentioning culture wars in the UK tripled between 2019 and 2020 – rising from 178 to 534.
However, those numbers are dwarfed by the 2021 figures, with 1470 articles mentioning a culture war last year.
The Mail was by far the top UK newspaper mentioning cancel culture in 2021, accounting for 23% of all uses of the term. The Independent was next, responsible for 14% of all such mentions.
The report also found that the British public increasingly feel the UK is divided by “culture wars”, with a majority of 54% now agreeing this is the case – up from 46% in 2020. This is a trend reflected in growing awareness of the terms “being woke” and “cancel culture”, as well as a shift towards people seeing the word “woke” as an insult (36%) rather than a compliment (26%).
The analysis also provides insight into how the language that is used within the debate has evolved in the media.
For example, “cancel culture” is a relatively recent addition to the lexicon used in UK newspapers – its first mention was only in 2018, when it was used just six times in the whole year. Since then, there has been a staggering rise in coverage, to a high of 3670 articles that featured the term in 2021.
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, said: “There has been an extraordinary increase in the media’s focus on culture war issues and terms in recent years, reflected in our analysis of UK newspaper content. ‘Cancel culture’, for example, didn’t exist in our national discussions only a handful of years ago, but now there are thousands of articles that use the term.
“It’s no surprise, then, that this media and political debate seems to have affected public opinion. Awareness of the key terms is growing, and the meaning of key words is changing – not least 'woke', with a clear shift to seeing it as an insult, rather than a compliment. The overall trend is towards people being more likely to see the UK as divided by ‘culture wars’.
“We need to remember that these issues are far from the top of people’s lists of concerns, and the vast majority of people are not as fired-up as the media and social media discussion often suggests. But that doesn’t mean the issues are irrelevant to the public – there are important debates to be had about culture change in the UK. However, the tone of the discussion, as much as the content, matters – and the nature of the conversation we’re currently having is risking increased division.”
Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos UK, said: “Culture wars are not top-of-mind in the public’s daily concerns, but nevertheless there are signs that awareness of some of its key terms is growing, alongside a far greater focus on them in the media.
"With that greater awareness is a slowly growing belief that culture wars are dividing the UK, and particularly changes in how people react to the phrase ‘being woke’. The research suggests that certain groups – notably older people, and Conservative and Leave supporters – are moving from a position of not really knowing what ‘being woke’ means to now clearly seeing it pejoratively.
“Nevertheless, at an overall level people are fairly split in their views towards woke – there has been no change in the proportion who see it as a compliment (especially among younger people, Labour voters and Remainers), and many people or course don’t have a strong view one way or the other, just as not everyone believes the country is divided by culture wars.
"So while there are reasons to be concerned about the potential for a focus on culture war divisions to feed polarisation, not everyone yet sits on the extremes.”
