Gender on the line: social media and the influence of gender on campaign engagement

Diverse social movement and activist organisations that draw on social media such as GetUp or The Arab Spring have sparked discussion about how social media use provides a means for activists to give voice to their concerns and generate a broad base of support. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by examining how trade unions might use social media to engage with their members and reach out to the community more broadly in order to bring about improvements to labour rights and working conditions. We consider how social media facilitates worker debate and engagement with the organisations that represent them.
The focus of this paper is on gender-based patterns of engagement with online
trade union dialogue and campaigns. We examine whether and in what ways union members’ patterns of engagement might be gendered in relation to preferences for particular social media avenues, intensity of use, and forms of participation in union social media forums. We also consider whether there is a correlation between members’ interaction with union social media and their participation in off-line, real-time union activities.