Extract

introduction: labour, media and globalisation This book situates the relationship between global crises and the media in the context of what we see as two central and interrelated developments in the twenty-first century: the rise of global corporate power and the decline of the labour movement. The media occupies a long-standing and compli- cated place in the history of labour movements—as a space for visibility and resistance—but to a larger extent as an instrument for repression and social control (Waterman, 2004, p. xxiii). However, the media environment is said to be changing, becoming more complex and differentiated, and creating new opportunities and challenges (Flew, 2007; Keane, 2013). How, then, has the labour movement been able to take advantage of these changes in media plat- forms as part of the struggle to mobilise, organise and respond to increasingly global corporate activity? In order to understand and make sense of the current crisis in the labour movement globally it is necessary to take a long-term, structural and historical view of the development of the modern world-system. It is within this context that the labour movement has emerged and evolved, adapting to the chang- ing nature of capitalism and the nation-state. What remains a constant is the continuing assault upon the labour movement by capital and the state, a re- ality depicted sharply in the recently established Global Rights Index created 2 worker resistance and media by the International Trade Union Confederation to rank countries in terms of how well they...