Inclusive Digital Communities

Inclusive Digital Communities

How do you define a “digital community”?

A digital community is much more than just fans or followers. To drivers of social change around the world, communities have to contribute to a world where young people in restrictive settings confidently claim their rights, assume their place in society, and shape a better future. These communities aim to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion.

The core communities will lead the discussion on the platforms and beyond, as well as influence other community members in order to amplify messages, ideas or beliefs. Think of the core community as a direct follower on any platform. These people are directly connected and receive regular updates, and engage in discussion with other community members. Each individual community member has the potential to transfer knowledge and attitudes to other communities. They can expand reach and spread values and beliefs to wider communities in their social circles.

Core community members can share content, interact, participate in discussions, advocate for values and beliefs, and influence the mind-set of their peers with regards to the values and the beliefs that the platform aims to contribute to.

Different layers within your online community can be identified. This graphic explains the different layers within a community, with the example of RNW Media’s community:

  1. All community: The total number of people within the society that you target.
  2. Potential community: The people who can potentially become part of your community
  3. Passive community: The people who follow your projects, activities and/or content online
  4. Engaged community: The “super-users” or core community, those who engage constantly on many platforms

Example of Community Guidelines: Love Matters Global Network

The Love Matters Global Network provides SRHR content to young people via its digital platforms, with the aim to reach young people with open, honest and pleasure-positive information on love, sex and relationships in places where such information is often censored or taboo.

With the vision to be the leading source of information in a world where love, sex, and relationships are a right, a choice, and all about pleasure, Love Matters’ websites and social media platforms provide a non-judgmental space for discussion and information that engages young adults about love, sex, and relationships. Therefore, these platforms provide a growing number of opportunities for young people to discuss sexuality information, educational content and engage in debate on the specific SRHR topics and issues that are important to them. The Love Matters platforms offer a safe space online where young people can ask questions and will always find quality, balanced, open and honest discussions on love, sex and relationships.

Below you can find their values and community guidelines:

Values: The Love Matters Global Network celebrates diversity and believes that relationships with stakeholders are based on mutual agreement and complementarity, and on shared values.

At the heart of SRHR community building in the Love Matters spirit are values like: diversity, respect, freedom of choice, open dialogue, acceptance, inclusion and trustworthiness.

Principles that guide inclusive community building in the Love Matters spirit are:

  • Evidence and rights based SRHR
  • Sex friendly and pleasure positive 
  • Innovative
  • Inclusive
  • Non-judgmental
  • Open and honest
  • Youth-centred
  • Aspirational 
  • Collaborative

COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

  1. Love Matters Global Network (LMGN) is creating safe spaces for young people to engage in issues related to their life with a focus on love, sex and relationships. However, we expect all participants in the community areas to abide by our Community Guidelines, all of which directly inform our approach to community moderation.
  2. LMGN welcomes debate and dissent, but personal attacks (against authors or other users), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated. The key to maintaining the LMGN website and social media platform as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent and respectful discussion of topics.
  3. LMGN acknowledges criticism of the content that we publish but will not allow misrepresentation of RNW Media and of our contributors to be published on our platforms. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focused argument and smear tactics.
  4. LMGN understands that people often feel strongly about issues debated on its platforms, but we will consider removing any content that others might find extremely offensive or threatening. Please respect other people’s views and beliefs and consider your impact on others when making your contribution.
  5. LMGN reserves the right to redirect or curtail conversations, which descend into “flame-wars” based on ingrained partisanship or generalisations. We do not want to stop people discussing topics they are enthusiastic about, but we do ask users to find ways of sharing their views that do not feel divisive, threatening or toxic to others.
  6. LMGN will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people based on their race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.
  7. LMGN will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.
  8. LMGN will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. Our aim is that this site should provide a space for people to interact with our content and each other, and we actively discourage commercial entities passing themselves off as individuals, in order to post advertising material or links. This may also apply to people or organisations who frequently post propaganda or external links without adding substantively to the quality of the discussion on RNW Media platforms.
  9. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic (off-topic) then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or comments about moderation, which should not be posted as comments.
  10. Be aware that you may be misunderstood, so try to be clear about what you are saying and expect that people may understand your contribution differently than you intended. Remember that text is not always a great medium for conversation: tone of voice (sarcasm, humour and so on) does not always come across when using words on a screen. You can help to keep RNW Media community areas open to all viewpoints by maintaining a reasonable tone, even in unreasonable circumstances.
  11. The platform is ours, but the conversation belongs to everybody. We want this to be a welcoming space for intelligent discussion, and we expect participants to help us achieve this by notifying us of potential problems and helping each other to keep conversations inviting and appropriate. If you spot something problematic in community interaction areas, please report it.

Key takeaways:

  • To ensure that online platforms are inclusive and safe, non-polarising discourse has to be facilitated, and young people are encouraged to stay positive and, on the topic, to drive the conversation further.
  • By applying engagement and producing relevant content, inclusive online communities of young people are encouraged to engage on, but also to engage in discussion with each other.
  • You can identify different layers of your online community as well as determine your potential for community growth.
  • Community guidelines can be used to manage an online inclusive community.