Although some research has examined how trade unions use the internet, the emphasis of this work has been website design and features (for example Ward and Lusoli, 2003; Lowery et al, 2008; and Rego et al, 2014). We still know very little about how trade unions are adapting institutionally and culturally to a rapidly evolving communication environment.
This is a significant gap in our knowledge. Although much has been written about their decline (Terry, 2003), British trade unions remain large civil society and workplace organisations in many sectors of the economy, and continue to play a significant role in public life. New media has the potential to change how they fulfil their core functions. Some have seen the new technologies as an opportunity for making trade unions more democratic, more effective at mobilising their members, more closely linked with the international labour community and more able to provide better services to their members (Lee, Diamond & Freeman, 2002). Others have seen the development of the internet as a threat to trade unions, because new technologies will drive fragmentation, putting at risk the union movement’s core value of solidarity (Chaison, 2005).
Drawing on data gathered for a project commissioned by the campaigning organisation Unions 21 (http://www.unions21.org.uk/), this study will employ a multi-method approach to understand exactly how unions are adapting to the potentials and pitfalls of new communication technology.
The core of the project is a series of in-depth semi-structured elite interviews with a range of individuals from across the trade union movement, including those in senior management, campaigning and communication positions. The aim of these interviews will be to uncover not only the types of online activities that unions are prioritising, but also how the development of new online capacities is being integrated into union activity at the institutional-level. In addition, this study will draw on two secondary methods to illuminate the findings of the in-depth interviews: an online survey of trade union members and a content analysis of union web facilities. When triangulated together these methods will allow not only for an assessment of how trade unions and their members are using the internet, but also how the leadership of the trade union movement perceives and understands those activities.
