Spatial fix, labor unrest and the vacancy of mass media attention : analyzing news framing within the context of the North Carolina-United Kingdom international trade MOU
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Cameron Farrar (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Sahan Karatasli
Abstract: In 2023, roughly 464,410 workers protested in the United States. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, there have been massive demonstrations of train strikes, teacher strikes and demonstrations from various sectors of labor. Workers have been active in detesting working conditions, unfair compensation and lack of benefits. However, this would not be widely known to the public if it were not for the coverage of news sources. In several ways, media plays a crucial role in the landscape of social movements: (a) lending legitimacy to the actions taken by documenting them publicly, (b) disseminating important information to the public, (c) and it increases the likelihood that people to action that increases the capacity of organizations. In order to understand the rise in labor unrest that took place in 2022 and 2023, respectively, it became important to understand the last 10 years of labor framing. From the thought of Beverly Silver, David Harvey and several other scholars, these two locations have been global participants in moving jobs outside of these territories and into the Global South. Even so, these businesses will, by design, run out of places to locate cheap labor, quite possibly resulting in relocating labor between locations in the Global North. This is precisely the significance of the Trade Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU reflects the commitment to U.K.-led investments in the state of North Carolina. With this in consideration, comparing media documentation of unrest in both locations is significant because of their similar positionality in the Global North. Additionally, they are both experiencing union decline. However, there is also a few differences that make this comparison significant. This relationship between these two places can be traced back to the time of American slavery which made Manchester the first industrial city in the World. Today, North Carolina, remains a conservative-leaning state and Manchester has been a strong supporter of the Labour Party for decades. In this content analysis, the sample is comprised of 301 articles published between 2013 and 2023 that discuss activity amongst workers and businesses. The intention is to identify any trends in the content and frequencies of these articles. The questions that are being addressed here are: how is labor unrest being documented by media outlets and is this material unrest a part of a larger Core-to-Core Spatial Fix?
Spatial fix, labor unrest and the vacancy of mass media attention : analyzing news framing within the context of the North Carolina-United Kingdom international trade MOU
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Created on 5/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Keywords
- Labor Relations, Labor Unrest, North Carolina, Spatial Fix
- Subjects
- Labor movement $x Press coverage
- Labor unions and mass media
- Mass media and business