Unions on Twitter
Is Twitter a useful tool for unions?
There are already a range of unions that “tweet”. Many union officials and union members are on Twitter. Labourstart uses Twitter extensively. There is even a union Twitter group.
US union communications site, “Communicate or Die”, gives some ideas for how unions can use Twitter:
1) Set up your website to receive incoming RSS feeds from the picket lines or other major events like conferences.
2) Labor leaders can twitter their daily activities to keep members apprised of what leadership is working on and fighting for.
3) If you don’t have time or staff to write quality blog posts, use twitter to keep the community up to date on the issues and concerns of your union.
4) Set up a bogus Twitter account using the name of a hated CEO or manager. Post entertaining items like “Don’t know why our workers are so upset at my salary. Don’t think they realize all the maintenance needed on 100 foot yachts.”
5) Post up the minute bargaining updates to the website right from the bargaining table.
What do you think? Waste of time or useful organising tool? Leave a comment below.
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Category: Multimedia, Social Networking, Web | Tags: ,International, Organize, Social networking, trade unions and twitter, twitter
Twitter is a good tool to connect to the unionists global community. It makes networking and information sharing easier.
How this tool can be used to reach out to the membership (esp. for large unions) still remains to be seen. Even with a much Internet connected constituency like ours, the impact remains questionable, though proper evaluation during the Fall and Winter semesters has to be done prior to concluding on this experiment.
It is important to note that Twitter institutional accounts might be less effective than personal accounts, because of the willingness of the Executive Committee (EC) to control the content of the Twitter feed, issue that doesn’t arise from personal accounts.
This lack of efficiency particularly affects retwittering and direct messages options, and makes online campaigning much harder.
My advice is that it is a good idea to have both kinds of account working in tandem, one institutional for official positions, bargaining and EC-approved content, and several personal accounts from stewards and leaders for freer content, for campaigning, and for more efficient communication purposes for the sake of better responsiveness.
Let me know what you think…
Solidairement,
Olivier Desharnais-Roy
Hi Oliver,
I completely agree that the most effective twitter accounts are personal ones, from officials or organisers, or even delegates and activists.
The point, I think, is to make the communications personal.
Cheers
Alex
I agree with you, Alex, but so many union members and leaders are still not too familiar with Twitter, it comes back to the union to create an institutional account.
It is also a matter of learning how to use Twitter and to have the capabilities to use it on a regular basis.
But, as Twitter is a great tool, it doesn’t replace the traditional means of communication. You need to get your message out there, and not simply feed a conversation among unionists. The latter is great to share experiences, practices and information, but the former is still the main target of communication strategies, as it is important to make sure that the public understands the issues at stake when union are involved.
And, unless being a master in “sound bites” in 140 characters or less, you can’t rely on Twitter, nor Facebook, nor other Web networking tool to make unions relevant for the public.
I like Facebook, Ning, Flickr etc as organisng tools but I really struggle with Twitter. I persist because I feel I should, but I feel like I’m only really making silly in-jokes to people who are already active online supporters or linking to other web material. I find it very hard to see the relevance of Twitter to the vast majority of our members who are not the in-crowd in terms of online trends.
It’s at it’s best when it is irreverent and when it encourages members to some sort of activism in the real world (rather than just tweeting). But I feel like I have to read a LOT of drivel for every worthwhile tweet I come across.
I would feel more effective spending my time doing almost any other type of communication work than Twitter.
Hi Steve,
I see Twitter (and Facebook) as a communications tool, rather than an organising tool. I agree that it is very difficult to use online tools to organise (other than email, which is still limited). However, Twitter is – like blogs, Facebook, etc – just another channel for unions to get their message out. Witness the “Iran Election” movement. Didn’t help Iranians, but educated a lot of Westerners about the abuses going on there.
Iran is an interesting example. When I first read about the controversy over the result I went looking for some independent source that suggested the election results had been rigged or manipulated. And I didn’t find anything. What I did find was more and more online western ‘advocacy’ material (e.g. twitter) supporting the pro-western candidate.
From what I have read in the western media (and also Al Jeezera) it does sound like the election was ’stolen’ and the subsequent repression is brutal and deplorable, but I have not seen anything conclusive proving election corruption in the same way we saw about Bush and Blair’s WMD lies for instance.
I’d argue that the ‘click and send’ immediacy of Twitter et al, has allowed us to skip the ‘pause and consider’ stage that might prove to be necessary to build a sustainable evidence-based democracy movement in Iran. We’ve assumed fraud and skipped straight to outrage, rather than proving it.
A “click and send” mentality can also be useful for unions. Most members trust their unions, and would be willing to send protest emails or messages if asked. This is demonstrated by LabourStart, IUF, etc.
Cheers
Alex
One of the under touted features of twitter is the search function http://search.twitter.com – so you can watch a term/s and build solidarity within the union movement.
Additionally – StatusNet is an open source alternative to the private company that is twitter. You can post to http://identi.ca and have it go to Twitter.
Unions on Twitter | Creative Unions http://bit.ly/5TzBEU