The Rhetoric and Realities of Internet Technologies on Trade Union Marketing: Marketing, Communications, Resistance

The internet and the many technologies it has generated (for example, social media) create varying impacts in specific sectors. Trades unions (TUs) are a case in point and are significant longstanding institutions which have developed over a number of centuries in many different national contexts. While the internet has been adopted by TUs, they have also generally been cast in an idealised light as if the web should automatically be expected to radically transform and improve processes, communities, and relations. The paper challenges this zeitgeist and suggests that the predominant ‘utopian'-style idealistic presentation of TU and the web is the product of technological determinism. This has important implications for TUs ‘lived experiences' and realpolitik. There is a risk that technologies will continue to operate at a macro, rather than a micro individual level, and be more dominated by managerial and commercial motives which encroach on legitimate TU representation and resistance rather than TU interests.