Communicating a Local Journalism Crisis Online: How Media Workers Frame Industry Changes

Abstract

This article examines how newsworkers’ trade unions framed industry and newswork changes on their websites and Twitter in the United States between 2015 and 2022 as unionization increased. Grounded in critical political economy of journalism and social movement studies of industrial relations, this study conducts a frame analysis of unionization announcements (N = 141) from the Writers Guild of America, East and The NewsGuild. This analysis is supported by interviews (N ¬= 32) with unionized newsworkers and a union organizer. Unionization announcements are aimed at employers, newsworkers, and the general public. This article builds an integrated conceptual framework on how unions use online communicative framing to strategically express a local journalism crisis narrative online in these announcements and the internal organizational process shaping their narrative. The analysis reveals a hybrid union-oriented narrative, reflecting unions’ unique circumstances and heterogeneous perceptions of industry and workforce changes. This narrative blends elements from the competing business-oriented, financialization, and labor-oriented narratives, emphasizing labor concerns. These findings offer insights into unions’ conciliatory communication strategies that have the potential to shape their power struggles with management. They highlight the need to consider the influence of online organizing and social media on framing narratives since the digital era.