organising


l) picket line “When there were management meetings about what was


happening in the preamble to the strike, I would have a meme or video ready that I could post while they were in the middle of the meeting,” continues Capon. “It wasn’t designed to put [management] on edge but instead to be reactive in a way that email or newsletters can’t be. It was designed to be used online in a way that changed that communications mix.” One of the memes Capon is most proud of is ‘Spider-Man


Pointing at Spider-Man’, which pokes fun at the Daily Record using Mirror copy in its 1 September 2022 issue to make up for a shortfall in original content because NUJ Scotland members were out on the (physical) picket line. Ten of the first 17 pages of that day’s Daily Record had been copied from the Mirror. The meme, well known among millennials and Gen Z, is from a 1960s episode of the Spider-Man cartoon series, featuring two Spider-Men accusing each other of being impostors. The meme has been widely used since the early 2010s, often to mock people or groups that claim to be different but act similarly. Capon also ran polls asking users how they felt about the


introduction of a four-day working week in the newsroom (93.5% of the 123 votes received supported the idea) or if they would consider leaving journalism for a better paid job (68.4% of the 76 users who voted said ‘yes, it’s a no-brainer’).


Backfiring risks However, Capon says that the content he was creating through the X account and his style were rubbing some officials at the NUJ London headquarters up the wrong way. “I know that but I didn’t really care because the account wasn’t


to satisfy Headland House,” Capon admits. “It was to engage with people and make a talking point. A picket line online needs to have that sense of energy about it that isn’t rooted in older, more traditional language.” In response to these remarks, NUJ senior organiser Andy Smith says: “The use of social media by the Mirror chapel really helped engage members during a dispute that involved a large number of remote workers. We do need to make sure the language we use is appropriate for the people we’re addressing and the medium we’re using but there will be differences in style and content between official union comms and anonymous Twitter posts.”


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Mirror memes: grumpy cat and the Spider-Men memes were reactive and immediate in a way email or newsletters cannot be


Smith’s colleague Chris Morley, Northern and Midlands senior organiser, adds that Capon did “valuable work” as an NUJ Mirror rep to engage existing and new members. Nonetheless, he makes a distinction between “communicating internally to members and on social media to the outside world”. “Matt had particularly good skills in getting a union message


out on social media that could resonate with those who might be on those platforms,” Morley says. “Our members are journalists who now must use social media extensively for their jobs and are usually best placed to assist in local campaigns. “But there are certainly risks with social media and great


care has to be taken in making sure reps do not overstep the mark and open themselves up to disciplinary action or expose the union to damage legally. It can be a very useful weapon in a campaign but could also easily backfire.”


Cooking up a boycott Last year, The Times Tech Guild, the union representing tech workers at The New York Times (NYT), asked readers “to honour the digital picket line” and not play popular NYT games such as Wordle and Connections or use the NYT Cooking app during their strike action. Morley warns about the unintended consequences that a digital picket calling for a product or advertiser boycott could have on workers as this could be perceived as an “attack [on] core revenue for the media business in dispute”. “Members in dispute are normally quite cautious about that because of the potential for it to harm the business to which they will need to return to earn their living. It is also true that when the financial basis of a company is directly targeted, the reaction of management is likely to be more severe,” he says. “In my experience, this is deemed a nuclear option to be used in only the most exceptional of circumstances.”


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