ABSTRACT
To discuss diversity in a digital world, we must acknowledge that digital technology is cultural in the sense that it embodies the values, beliefs, and narratives that constitute the prevailing accounts of the realities within society as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. While digital spaces are often site in which diversity is problematized, these spaces promulgate cultural codes of everyday realities that digital technology is not neutral. Rather it is racialized, gendered, and classed. As such, the consumption of such digital technologies is encoded and infused with meanings and experiences that shape and reflect positions of power and status that often are taken for granted due to erroneous beliefs in digital technology’s objectivity. This, in turn, sheds light on the construction (consumption), legitimization (delegitimization), and enhancement (diminishment) of the power that digital technology often purports to provide. By foregrounding the perspectives of those impacted by issues of diversity that play out in our ever-increasing digital world, this chapter seeks to understand the role of digital technologies in shaping diversity.
