‘We're out, so wtf do we do now?’: Brexit and rural identity in the era of online agricultural communities

Jones-Garcia, Eliot; Touboulic, Anne

Abstract

This article explores online interactions between members of the UK farming community in the context of Brexit, a moment of great friction within British agriculture. A ‘netnography’ was conducted of thefarmingforum.co.uk, a British-based discussion group with a large membership, covering a range of aspects from farming practices to trade and relationships. Findings reveal how the online space challenges and connects notions of rural space and place. A displaced identity, unmoored from traditional farming attributes such as land and locality, becomes both a driving force for participation and a tool for political control. The article sheds light on the under-appreciated political power of such online groups enabled through under-researched digital technologies. The farmer-owned forum represents the ‘other voice’ within corporate-led agricultural innovation; however, the onset of Brexit became a catalyst for extreme politics, facilitating a populist swing towards the Leave campaign and revealing a visceral distrust for institutions.

Citation

Jones-Garcia, E., & Touboulic, A. (2022). ‘We're out, so wtf do we do now?’: Brexit and rural identity in the era of online agricultural communities. Sociologia Ruralis, 62(2), 190-211. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12365

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 2, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Nov 23, 2021
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Nov 26, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 24, 2023
• Journal: Sociologia Ruralis
• Print ISSN: 0038-0199
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9523
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 62
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 190-211
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12365
• Keywords: Sociology and Political Science
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/6789412
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/soru.12365