{"id":1457,"date":"2011-01-30T19:33:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T17:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2011-01-30T20:07:35","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T18:07:35","slug":"results-of-the-first-annual-survey-of-trade-union-use-of-the-net","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/?p=1457","title":{"rendered":"Results of the first annual survey of trade union use of the net"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The total number of participants in the survey was <strong>1,336<\/strong> making it one of the largest we&#8217;ve ever done.<\/p>\n<p>The countries providing the largest number of responses were predictably mostly Anglophone as the survey was only conducted in English this time.  Here are the ten largest groups:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>United Kingdom &#8211; 260<\/li>\n<li>USA &#8211; 243<\/li>\n<li>Canada &#8211; 236<\/li>\n<li>Australia &#8211; 167<\/li>\n<li>Ireland &#8211; 45<\/li>\n<li>Norway &#8211; 40<\/li>\n<li>New Zealand &#8211; 39<\/li>\n<li>India &#8211; 32<\/li>\n<li>Sweden &#8211; 23<\/li>\n<li>Turkey &#8211; 20<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">How they access the net<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nearly all the respondents (92.5%) access the net at home, 71.3% at work, and 22.1% somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p>And again, nearly all (91.9%) report having broadband access with only 4.1% still using dial-up modems.<\/p>\n<p>Desktop computers remain the most widely used device to access the net (79.2%) but laptops, notebooks and notebooks are close behind with 70.8% using them.  Smartphones are used by 31.4% of the respondents.  Only 4.5% report using tablets like the iPad to access the net.  And a small number &#8212; 2.6% &#8212; report using other devices.<\/p>\n<p>The most popular browser remains Microsoft Internet Explorer which is used by 67.1%, but not far behind is Mozilla Firefox, used by 51.5%.  (Clearly people use multiple browsers as the survey shows.)  In third place is Google&#8217;s new Chrome browser, used by 26.5% of the respondents.  Apple&#8217;s Safari browser has 18.6%, Opera has 4.8% and Other has 5.2%.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Use of social networks<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Facebook is the most popular social network by far, with near unanimous use &#8212; 88.1% are Facebook members.  UnionBook is the second most popular with 56% reporting membership.  Of the other social popular social networks, LinkedIn has 29.1%, MySpace still has 11.4%, but Bebo and Orkut barely register with 1.2% and 2.0% respectively.<\/p>\n<p>More than a third (36.2%) report being members of YouTube and only 13.5% are Flickr users.<\/p>\n<p>Less than a third use Twitter (32.5%).<\/p>\n<p>Second Life, the virtual world that one time was the subject of considerable interest in some unions has only 2.1% use.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if the respondents participate in specifically trade union groups in those social networks, nearly two-thirds (63.7%) said yes.<\/p>\n<p>And when asked if their unions had a presence in the social networks they belonged to, 58.8% also said yes.<\/p>\n<p>When asked in which social networks their unions had a presence, Facebook once again dominates with 86.6%.  Trailing behind are reported union presences on Twitter (33.5%), YouTube (24.7%) and UnionBook (21.7%).<\/p>\n<p>Only 0.7% reported a union presence they were aware of on Second Life.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Union websites<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nearly all the respondents &#8212; 92.9% &#8212; reported that their national union has a website, and 27.1% say they visit that site daily.  Another 64.1% say they visit their national union websites sometimes and only 8.8% say they never visit the sites.<\/p>\n<p>When asked to rate their national union websites, 13.7% called it excellent and 50.9% rated it as good.  Another 26.0% called the site average, 6.1% rated it as only fair, and only 3.3% called the site poor.<\/p>\n<p>The results regarding local union websites were somewhat different.<\/p>\n<p>Only 54.5% reported that the local union had a website and fully 10.5% didn&#8217;t know the answer to the question.  Only 18.5% said they visited their local union website every day while 53.4% claimed to visit it sometimes.  Fully 28.1% admitted to never visiting the local union website.<\/p>\n<p>When asked to rate their local union websites, the numbers were once again much lower than for the national union websites.<\/p>\n<p>Only 8.8% rated the site as excellent, 36.6% as good, 29.9% as average, 11.6% as fair, and 13.1% (four times the number as for national union sites) as poor.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Union apps for smartphones and tablets<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When asked if the union has an app for smartphones or tables, the largest number of respondents (53%) said they did not know, while 42.5% said no.  Only 4.5% said that their union had an app.<\/p>\n<p>And 83.9% of those answering then said they did not use the app.<\/p>\n<p>Wen asked to rate the union&#8217;s app &#8212; and only 127 survey participants answered this question &#8212; only 11% rated it as excellent, another 31.5% as good, 22.8% as average, 7.1% as fair and 27.6% as poor.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Union email lists<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nearly four-fifths of the respondents (78.8%) reported receiving regular email messages from their union, but 21.2% do not.<\/p>\n<p>When asked to rate the content of those messages, 21.7% thought they were excellent and a majority (54.2%) rated them as good.  18.2% thought the union&#8217;s email messages were average, with only 5.9% rating them as fair or poor.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Multimedia<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The majority of respondents (57%) reported that their union produces multimedia content for the net.  20.6% said their union does not, while 22.4% did not know.<\/p>\n<p>When asked to rate the quality of the union&#8217;s multimedia content, 17.9% said excellent and a majority (50.1%) rated it as good.  24.3% called the union&#8217;s multimedia content only average with 7.7% rating it as fair or poor.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Prioritizing where to put resources and energy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When  asked where they would like their union to devote more energy or resources in its online work, the most popular answers &#8211; the ones given highest priority &#8211; were email lists followed by online recruitment of new members.  The ones given the lowest priority (not important at all) were internet radio broadcasts and apps for smartphones.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Use of existing pro-union websites and services<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When asked which pro-union websites and services the respondents found useful (from a list), nearly all (93.3%) chose LabourStart while half (48%) chose UnionBook.  Far behind these were UnionJobs (15.2%), Union Communication Services (12.9%) and Radio Labour (12.5%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The total number of participants in the survey was 1,336 making it one of the largest we&#8217;ve ever done. The countries providing the largest number of responses were predictably mostly Anglophone as the survey was only conducted in English this time. Here are the ten largest groups: United Kingdom &#8211; 260 USA &#8211; 243 Canada [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labourstart.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}