Connected in the Struggle: Workers, Social Media, and Recent Mobilisations in Brazil

Mobilisations of truck drivers and delivery workers in Brazil in 2018 and 2020/2021, key moments of recent labour mobilisations, relied heavily on the use of social media. We evaluate the usefulness of social media in terms of three aspects: a) to what extent has social media been useful to create a collective identity of workers, b) has the use of social media facilitated democracy within workers organisations, and c) how secure has the use of social media been in terms of persecution by the state and other antagonistic actors? Both groups of workers have seen enormous difficulties in defining their status (as employees, or entrepreneurs for example) due to notorious disagreements among main organizations, therefore the identity of those workers remains fragile and contested. Inspite of the use of social networks having facilitated the participation and engagement of workers in the mobilisations, democracy within workers organisations has not yet profited fully from this use. In parallel, despite of having allowed increased visibility for workers movements and its leaders, recent revelations of repression against and surveillance of leaders of both groups of workers created doubts about how secure the use of social media is for those workers. A crucial question to be tackled is to what extent these problematics are connected to the use of social media or if they would prevail in any case.