Community management is the art of making choices with social intelligence. These choices shape the culture of the group you’re convening and the spaces you’re inhabiting.

The mindset and methodology of your community moderation enshrines values, establishes social norms, and leads participants to champion or discourage certain behaviours. Moderation isn’t just about legal risks, it’s about social and cultural risks. It’s the work of fine-tuning participatory balance.

Most communities are organically bound by a sense of ‘sameness’ - alignment to purpose, identity or affiliation. Community builders work to nurture these bonds of belonging. But homophily can become harmful if it distorts difference into a target.

As the world confronts profound, systemic legacies of demonising difference, community builders, managers and leaders — especially those who enjoy privilege and platform — can and must do better to promote diversity and inclusivity in groups we stitch.

Here are a handful of approaches that help us operationalise these ideals.

#blacklivesmatter protester, 2020 @dono.valdivia, Unsplash

Constitutionalise it

Ensure you’ve laid out an expression of what the community stands for, and how and why people are expected to show up and participate. If your current guidance doesn’t touch on inclusivity and diversity, refresh so it does, align it to your binding purpose, and talk to the community about why you’re evolving.

Recruit proactively

Community leaders need to proactively bring diverse voices into the community. Recruit with this in mind. Your members will be drawn to you because of purpose, value set and group identity. But within those parameters, champion nuance. Which voices and perspectives are rarely heard in your subject matter?

Be an equalising force

Dominant voices in our community may intimidate the less loud, or those with different views. Community managers need to modulate the balance. Elevate and amplify voices prone to silencing, and mute those that suck the oxygen out of the room. Let new voices guest host or edit the community space for a time. Spotlight them through content and invite them to take the lead in discussion. Cede and redistribute platform.

Scale via trust

Reach out to those who carry trust and power in your community and share your goals around diversity and inclusion, relevant to your purpose. Empower them as surrogates in elevating marginalised perspectives, and defence against unacceptable behaviours.

Illuminate the individual

Even on common ground, we are never monolithic. Invite your community to share personal stories and lived experience as part of your content and activities. Tease out the personal within the larger group identity, and drill down into the differences.

Normalise learning

Whatever your community is about, make room for learning in your content and shared experiences. Letting people fail and grow, finding ways to introduce new ideas or perspectives, creates momentum and short circuits group-think. It shows forward motion is real, and can feel good. Help your people crave exposure beyond their horizon.

Offer action pathways

Amplifying voices matters, but supporting them via concrete action is better still. If it’s relevant in your community, offer ways for participants to apply direct action to support those who need it, such as donations of time, money or resources, and offering reviews or comments on their content to help it perform algorithmically.

Community is a catalysing force, and can be a tool for change. Now is a great time to reflect on how yours - whether a public brand community or internal workplace community - connects to the challenges of the moment, and asserts its specific contribution.

Here are some of the people working in community you can follow and learn from. They do not often get the platform they deserve.

Bronwyn Carlson - Indigenous researcher and educator of social media and community practices

Shana Sumers - Helping create diverse task forces with your community

Kat Vellos - Afrolatina author of We Should Get Together

Marjorie Anderson - Founder of Community by Association

Mara Zepeda - Founder of Switchboard

Carrie Melissa Jones - Author of Building Brand Communities