TY - JOUR

T1 - The combustible mix of coalitional and discursive power

T2 - British trade unions, social media and the People's Assembly Against Austerity

AU - Geelan, Torsten

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - austerity

KW - coalititional power

KW - discursive power

KW - information and communication technologies

KW - Peoples's Assembly Against Austerity

KW - social media

KW - trade union power

KW - trade union

KW - revitalisation

KW - United Kingdom

U2 - 10.1111/ntwe.12236

DO - 10.1111/ntwe.12236

M3 - Journal article

VL - 37

SP - 161

EP - 184

JO - New Technology, Work and Employment

JF - New Technology, Work and Employment

SN - 0268-1072

IS - 2

ER -