Diversity: The Military’s Representation of Diversity on Social Media

Abstract

Diversity has become a buzzword for a lot of organizations today, including military organizations. For militaries that represent the increasingly multicultural populations of their states, diversity is not just a matter of reflecting and representing demographic diversity but also matter of shifting recruitment pools. One of the ways the military is attempting to reach diverse populations is through social media. This chapter emphasizes the value of both diversity and social media for organizations and analyzes how organizations are approaching both these phenomena – using social media to talk about diversity. The case studied is that of the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) use of Twitter to discuss diversity. Tweets from CAF Twitter accounts illustrate the organizational use of social media for diversity, followed by a discussion of how diversity is being communicated about online.