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Building Diverse, Inclusive Online Communities
Building diverse online communities helps shape the larger digital landscape into a more welcoming, inclusive, and better place for all people.
Aside from helping make the world of online communities a better, more diverse space, the benefits for your specific community are numerous.
Diverse online communities make it easier for humans with all kinds of different intersectional backgrounds (religion, ethnicity, experiences, ideas, identities, race, class, gender, and more) to gather around a core subject, product, brand, or affinity, and converse, share ideas, innovate, create change.
A diverse online community is one that has a wide variety of people with different backgrounds and interests, it allows people from varied backgrounds to come together and share knowledge and information with each other. Diverse online communities are also more tolerant of different viewpoints as a whole, allowing members to share thoughts without being judged by others on the same opinion spectrum. This creates an environment where people feel comfortable voicing their opinions and discussing topics that may not be popular or mainstream in other parts of society.
How digital communities benefit from diversity
Some other direct benefits of building a diverse online community include:
More tolerance of varying viewpoints, which in turn encourages community members to share ideas and contribute without fear of judgment or alienation.
Diverse online communities help create environments where people feel more inclined to share, be heard, and be seen. All of which simultaneously contribute to deeper, more sustainable community growth.
Exposure to different cultures! This one is particularly important for people who don’t get enough exposure in their daily lives.
Bolsters community growth, which in turn helps support the longevity of your online community.
Being part of a diverse digital community can help people identify their own strengths and weaknesses which is very important for self-development. With so many differing opinions brings strong debates which make it an even better place for discussion than other online forums where one way of thinking dominates. This means that not only do we get new ideas from those who disagree but also hear our own thoughts by others.
How to support cultural diversity in digital communities
Some of the ways that you can support cultural diversity in digital communities:
Encourage members to complete their profiles. Doing so helps build both trust and a feeling of belonging and inclusivity among community members.
As new members join your community, do your best to introduce each one of them publicly. Whether in the comments or in the post itself, you can also ask new members to share a bit about themselves.
Be sure to give community members the information and tools they need to create new topic threads and discussions (ie: include instructions on how to start new discussion forums). If any of your members feel like the subjects or topics they’re interested in aren’t readily available within the community, giving them the tools to create their own discussion forums, threads, and documents will only empower them to further build the community and make it their own.
What do diverse cultures contribute to our digital world?
Diversity also protects online community longevity by ensuring the growth of your community. With a more diverse community, you will have people with different interests and backgrounds. This means that they’ll be able to reach out to other diverse groups which will allow for the growth of your online community. With a diverse community you get more exposure to different cultures. This is especially important for those who are not exposed enough in their normal lives or if they live in a country where people of other cultures aren’t seen regularly. Diverse cultures also include differing perspectives. This means not only diversity in ethnicity but also in ideas, thoughts, values etc. Perspective can vary from person to person which makes for an interesting discussion when combined into one group or forum. Diverse online community members will have different perspectives on the same topic, and this can lead to more enlightening discussions.
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