Strengthening union democracy through connective and collective action logics

Key points :• Social media such as Facebook forces unions to increase communication with members and makes rank-and-file dissent highly visible.• Challenges can arise as a result of different emphases on collective and connective logics between online networks and established unions.• Union success on social media requires a careful balancing act, maintaining the autonomy and agency of online networks without jeopardising traditional organisation.• When harnessed by the labour movement, online networks can increase worker mobilisation and union democracy through increased membership engagement.• Collective action logic refers to traditional organisational hierarchy and implies strong leadership and shared identity and ideology. Connective action logic is characteristic of non hierarchical, de-centred networks with multiple identifications and looser ideological commitments, which are common online.• Both logics must be combined to reap the benefits of both, but such a ‘social media unionism' strategy requires great trust and implies some risk for unions if they are to support networks without maintaining control