Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts Honours
School
School of Arts and Humanities
First Supervisor
Dr Kay Hearn
Abstract
Trade union density and power in Australia has been in decline since the 1970s. This has occurred while use of the internet and social media platforms such as Facebook has grown significantly. For some time, the potential that these technologies offer with regard to union revival has been debated and discussed, yet there has been limited research that assesses the content Australian unions are sharing on social media platforms. This thesis contributes to the research by analysing the Facebook content of Hospo Voice, Australia’s first digital union and a project of the Victorian branch of the larger trade union United Voice.
Hospo Voice launched in May 2018 and offers hospitality workers in the state of Victoria an online union subscription at a low cost, mirroring the prices of online streaming services such as Netflix. This thesis argues that Hospo Voice successfully utilises the internet and social media, in combination with other offline organising strategies, in order to communicate with and mobilise workers in the hospitality industry. The framework of industrial relations mobilisation theory and a content analysis methodology has been utilised to analyse the Facebook content of Hospo Voice over a six-month period in order to reach this conclusion.
Recommended Citation
Archer, L. M. (2019). Mobilising memes for unionist teens: An analysis of the social media use of an Australian hospitality union. Edith Cowan University. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses_hons/1537
Included in
Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Hospitality Administration and Management Commons, Labor Relations Commons, Political Science Commons