Towards unions 2.0: rethinking the audience of social media engagement

Аннотация

This paper aims to examine how trade union members perceive opportunities for online engagement and what the differences are between traditional and online audiences. The empirical work is based on a survey of members of a Greek union in the banking sector. The findings outline the characteristics of an audience that is likely to support information sharing and networking activities on the web. For this audience, traditional levels of loyalty and union participation were not strongly related with perceptions about the union’s online presence. Instead, Internet skills and experiences had a dominant effect. The implications of this study suggest that trade unions have to actively seek knowledge about the characteristics of their new audience and adapt communications strategies accordingly.