Hi Sherida - You really want to look at Richard Freeman's recent work on unions and the Internet, funded under the UK eSociety programme (http://www.london.edu/e-society/Projects/projects.html). Also, consider Anne-Marie Green's work (http://www.geocities.com/e_collectivism/). Some refs: Darlington, R. (2001) 'The Creation of the E-Union: The Use of ICT by British Trade Unions'. Paper presented to New Economy Conference, Deutsche Postwerkschaft, Berlin, 1 February. Available at http://members.lycos.co.uk/rogerdarlington/E-union.html Diamond, W. and R. Freeman (2001) 'Will Unionism Prosper in Cyberspace? The promise of the Internet for employee organisation', National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W8483. Greene, A-M., J. Hogan and M. Grieco (2000) 'E-Collectivism: Emergent Opportunities for Renewal', in B. Stanford-Smith and P. K. Kidd (eds.) E-Business: Key Applications, Processes and Technologies. Omsha: IOS Press. Greene, A-M., J. Hogan and M. Grieco (2001) 'E-collectivism and Distributed Discourse: New Opportunities for Trade Union Democracy', Paper presented to the TUC/LSE Conference on Unions and the Internet, London 12th May. Hodkinson, S. (2003) 'Problems @ Labour: Towards Net Internationalism?', in Gibson, Rachel K., Roemelle, A. and Stephen J. Ward (eds.) Electronic Democracy: Political Organisations, Mobilisation and Participation Online. Routledge: London (forthcoming). Hogan, J. and M. Grieco (1999) 'Trade unions on line: technology, transparency and bargaining power'. Paper presented at a Workshop on Cyber Ontology at the University of North London, October 1999. Available at http://www.geocities.com/unionsonline Lee, E. (1997) The Labour Movement and the Internet: the New Internationalism. Pluto Press: London. Lee, E. (2000) 'How the Internet is Changing Unions'. Online paper, available at http://www.labourstart.org Steve Ward and I had a paper two years ago on the subect, Dinosaurs in Cyberspace? British Trade Unions and the Internet. European Journal of Communication, 2003 18(2), pp. 147-179. A preliminary version is on our site www.ipop.org.uk then go to 'results'. Anyone else? Cheers Wainer ----------------------- Wainer Lusoli Research Fellow @ ESRI University of Salford http://www.lusoli.info w.lusoli@salford.ac.uk +44 (0)161 295 5126 -----------------------

-----Original Message----- From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Sherida Ryan Sent: 14 March 2005 14:55 To: air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] Union use of the Web

Dear AoIRers,

I am a Ph.D. student working on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada project. The project is a union and university research alliance that is examining the impact and the obstacles of socially responsible investment of union pension funds and the role and educational needs of union pension fund trustees.

Central to our project is the ongoing development of a website to provide accessible informal education for unionists interested in pension fund investment. As part of the website, we are also investigating the possibility of developing an online forum for labour pension fund activists.

I am looking for literature and research examples that address union activist use of websites and online forums. Specifically I am interested in how the labour movement has used the Internet for both formal and informal learning and any research that explores the development of online communities of practice both within specific unions as well as across the labour sector.

Any resources would be most helpful. Thank you,

Sherida Ryan Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto