ABSTRACT
Much debate on the relationship between digital media and protest has focused on how digital technologies allow for activists to organize and mobilize in new and easier ways and at lower costs. This chapter focuses on digital activism in the labour movement in the context of the failures of the corporatist model and a decline in union membership, particularly in Western democracies. It considers some of the opportunities and challenges of turning to digital activism for protecting and advancing workers' interests. The chapter focuses on issues of hierarchical union structures, the decline of labour power, and the precarity of work and organized political forms. Digital activism has been said to offer new ways of organizing and practising dissent that can overcome some of the obstacles that have traditionally marked social movements and political organizations. The chapter concludes by pointing to some future trajectories that may be increasingly relevant for worker resistance in a digital age.
