Diversity and Inclusion in Social Media Communication: An Empirical Study of Engagement in the Football Context

Different stakeholders, especially customers, increasingly expect organizations to communicate about diversity and inclusion (D&I) on social media. However, the relationship between D&I content and social media engagement remains unclear. This empirics-first study in a football context investigates how the presence of D&I dimensions in social media content relates to volume of engagement. In the first study phase, we conduct interviews with 11 experts, based on which we uncover seven D&I dimensions key to social media communication: age, gender, body and mind, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, social class and social status, and religion and cultural diversity. The second phase is based on quantitative analyses of 6006 social media posts from 9 football associations across Facebook and Instagram. The posts were coded by a diverse set of human annotators for the perceived presence of each of the seven D&I dimensions. We find negative relationships between the presence of D&I dimensions and volume of engagement in general, yet we also find that the relationship patterns differ across individual D&I dimensions: negative associations for age and gender diversity, but positive associations for race diversity. Our granular approach can explain why prior research, either taking an aggregate or a piecemeal approach, has been inconclusive. Using Social Identity Theory as a theoretical lens, we explore identification, through value congruence and based on identity cues, as potential explanations for our findings. We elaborate on the theoretical and ethical contributions of our findings across both study phases, underscoring the context and topic’s unique position for producing relevant insights.