Mobilizing and Educating via Social Media: How Swedish Trade Unions use YouTube

• In Event: 036 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Worker and Union Strategies and Structures: Beyond the United States

Abstract

Trade unions have faced the significant problem of member decline for several decades, even in countries with traditionally high union membership. Scholars have proposed the use of social media as an important revitalization strategy that allows new audiences to be reached. The purpose of this study is to examine how different Swedish trade unions have accomplished this task; we do this by investigating and assessing their use of one social media channel, the YouTube. We expect that the represented social class—whether working class, white-collar workers, or upper middle class—affects how unions use social media. This does not only apply for targeted audiences, but also the content of the message and form of uploaded videos. The study combines a quantitative analysis of more than two thousand videos with the qualitative study of about hundred videos. The results demonstrate that working-class unions use YouTube mainly for mobilization, while white-collar unions focus more on existing members and their benefits and upper-middle-class unions aim to educate their own profession. All unions also use YouTube to improve the transparency of their organizations by uploading a significant number of videos about annual congresses, as well as to promote traditional labor movement issues such as salaries, equality, and welfare.

Authors

• Katrin Uba, Uppsala University

• Jenny Jansson, Uppsala University