The combustible mix of coalitional and discursive power
British trade unions, social media and the People's Assembly Against Austerity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11489472 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Torsten Geelan (0000-0003-2241-3407, Marie Skłodowska‐Curie Fellow at the Department of Sociology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 161-184 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Technology Work and Employment (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0268-1072 • E-ISSN: 1468-005X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ntwe.12236 |
| OpenAlex | W4221051425 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 44 |
This article investigates how the British trade union movement sought to challenge the politics of austerity after the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2008 by founding a union‐led coalition: the People's Assembly Against Austerity. To lay the ground for the study, it redefines the concept of discursive power as the capacity of trade unions to influence the public debate by producing and self‐mediating frames and circulating them through the mainstream media, the Internet and social media to a mass audience. Data were collected over 3 years (2013–2015) using interviews and scraping tweets from Twitter. The findings reveal how the People's Assembly created and sustained a heterogenous coalition through a policy of nonpartisanship and a consensus‐driven decentralised network of grassroots local assemblies orchestrated by a national organisation. The article contributes to the literature on trade union revitalisation by demonstrating how combining coalitional and discursive power is a combustible mix that can help revitalise the political influence of trade unions
Austerity · Business · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social media · Employment and Welfare Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Union democracy from below
Communicating a Local Journalism Crisis Online
From Online Gatherings to Industrial Relations Actors
Social media, democracy, and the labor movement
Tragic performances? How unions stage their online identity
Covid‐19 and the work of trade unions
Networked Unionism
The Hial storm
Beyond workplace-related issues
Power in Coalition
New Labor in New York
Varieties of Unionism
Trade Unions in Western Europe
Understanding union power
The Power Resources Approach
Power resource theory revisited
Trade union revitalisation
The UK news media and austerity
The UK Press and the Deficit Debate
Ideas and power in employment relations studies
Using Twitter to mobilize protest action
The networked union? The internet as a challenge to trade union identity and roles
Reinventing the block vote? Trade unions and the 2010 Labour party leadership election
Neoliberal Narrative in Times of Economic Crisis
Introduction to the Special Issue ‐ The internet, social media and trade union revitalization
Union use of social media
Communication and Capitalism
No alternative to austerity
Through Jaundiced Eyes
Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation
What is neo-liberalism
Labour and the global financial crisis
Pulling together in a crisis? Anarchism, feminism and the limits of left-wing convergence in austerity Britain
Building reciprocal community unionism in the UK
Movement social learning on Twitter
Civil society organizations and trade unions
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |