Framing Diversity in Corporate Digital Contexts: A Multimodal Approach to Discursive Recontextualizations of Social Practices

Understanding Diversity Approaches in Organizations

Over the past few years, diversity has acquired a new prominence and significance, both in the wider society and in the experience of organizations. On a general level, diversity is a complex construct that has been understood and demarcated in various different ways in the academic literature and in actual practice. The concept of diversity captures the vast array of human difference (Loden & Rosener, 1991). It encompasses a range of dimensions from demographic features such as age and gender, to informational abilities such as cognitive skills and educational background, to value diversity linked, for example, to religion and national culture, to psychological characteristics including personality traits and attitudes, to the varied mixture of all these qualities. Both research and practice show that diversity is a flexible and dynamic notion and that its definition and focus shift in accordance with specific interests and contexts.

Since the 1990s, managing diversity has become a challenging issue for organizations and quickly turned into a strategic objective aimed to harness the potential of all employees to build an inclusive workplace while at the same time promoting the achievement of organizational goals (Ravazzani, in press). The modern emergence of diversity management discourse and practice within organizations can be explained by the competitive, legal, cultural, and societal pressures present in the globalized and ever-changing business environment. Such a context seems to require greater diversity in organizational personnel, perspectives, and processes to deal with increased internal and external complexity. Whereas traditional equal employment opportunity and affirmative action policies served as law-based instruments to increase minority representation in organizations, “managing diversity focuses on increasing representation from the perspective of competitive advantage” (Kirby & Richard, 2000, p. 367).

In practice, different organizations approach diversity in different ways, depending on their organizational culture and their sensitivity to this aspect of organizational life—not to mention additional contingent factors such as the specific business context, industry, and strategy (Podsiadlowski, Gröschke, Kogler, Springer, & van der Zee, 2013; Ravazzani, 2016; Robinson & Dechant, 1997; Thomas & Ely, 1996). Implicitly or explicitly, all organizations have diversity-related values and strategies (Ravazzani, in press). The approach to diversity they choose to take can eventually integrate and give prominence to a number of different policy aspects. Such policy aspects could include, first, the array of diversity dimensions addressed in the workplace and at various organizational levels (Milliken & Martins, 1996); second, the overall goals related to the diversity policy, ranging from regulatory goals, to ethical and competitive goals (Lorbiecki & Jack, 2000) in order to reduce the occurrence of lawsuits on discrimination, meet collective demands for responsible and accountable conduct, enhance innovation and problem-solving capacities, and increase marketplace understanding and service to minorities and global customers (Mease, 2012; Mundy, 2015; Pasztor, 2016; Point & Singh, 2003; Robinson & Dechant, 1997); third, the practical initiatives including recruitment, selection, retention, mentoring, promotion, work design, communication, training, evaluation, staffing, and infrastructure (Curtis & Dreachslin, 2008; Jayne & Dipboye, 2004).

Organizations develop their commitment to diversity in visible terms primarily through external corporate communication practices in which “symbols, metaphors, analogies, case studies, and employee narratives form the language of diversity rhetoric” (Pasztor, 2016). And in fact, it is common today to find organizations that exhibit diversity as a primary concern through diversity-related public statements, reports, and stories (Jayne & Dipboye, 2004; Mundy, 2015) that use the diversity dimensions included in the workplace (e.g., age, race, educational background), the reasons to diversify, and the related practices adopted as discursive resources.

It is clear that contemporary organizations must address the social issue of diversity, and equally clear that they must as a matter of practical necessity deploy communication practices to publicly promote their approach to diversity. But very few studies have investigated the construction and use of discursive strategies in diversity-related external corporate communication. Such research as there is has mostly focused on internally focused human resource management practices; and even studies on diversity-focused communication within the workplace are sporadic (Allen, 1995; Simons, 2002). There is, thus, a research gap in the investigation of the external corporate communication practices used to discursively frame and promote diversity, a gap that this study intends to fill.

Framing Diversity Through Digital Communication

The role of framing and discursive strategies aimed at constructing, promoting, and legitimating certain organizational values and policies (Benford & Snow, 2000; Pasztor, 2016; Point & Singh, 2003; Ravazzani & Maier, 2017a, 2017b) is therefore of increasing interest to both communication scholars and practitioners. Especially, the foundational works of Entman (1993, 2007) and Hallahan (1999, 2005) have had a prominent influence on researchers belonging to the communication field during the past two decades. Framing comprises the processes of selection and salience in constructing messages and making them known and prominent among others (Entman, 1993; Lim & Jones, 2010). A discursive lens on framing facilitates the understanding of how meanings, values, and experiences are communicatively fabricated, assembled, emphasized, or downplayed in particular ways (Favero & Heath, 2012; Ravazzani & Maier, 2017a, 2017b). Framing is, therefore, clearly relevant to corporate communication, public relations, and reputation and relationship management (Hallahan, 1999, 2005; Lim & Jones, 2010) in shaping public perceptions of organization practices, in particular of ethical issues and socially responsible initiatives (Ban, 2016; Wang, 2007).

The literature on diversity highlights how organizations increasingly need to take the influence of diverse identities on their communication strategies into account (Oliveira, 2013), along with the active role played by organizations in constructing social understandings of human difference (Mease, 2012), when making choices about which discourses to value or challenge in their communication. Discursive strategies that are intended to frame and promote diversity can be used to emphasize different policy aspects, and employ language and stylistic elements that may suit the sensitivity and awareness of diverse groups inside and outside the company (Loden & Rosener, 1991). This discursive framing of diversity acquires new affordances in contemporary digital contexts (Ban, 2016). Organizations increasingly “showcase” (Guerrier & Wilson, 2011) their commitment to diversity on corporate websites and other digital communication platforms including social networking sites, video sharing sites, blogs, and wikis. These platforms empower corporate communicators (Argenti & Barnes, 2009; Cornelissen, 2014) and give room to other semiotic modes than language only (Jewitt, Bezzemer, & O’Halloran, 2016; Kress, 2009; van Leeuwen, 2005).

While studies of diversity-related external corporate communication practices (e.g., Ravazzani, 2016; Simons, 2002) are few and far between, even fewer have delved into such practices in contemporary digital contexts. The primary focus has been placed on website communication. Pasztor (2016), for example, carried out a summative content analysis of corporate websites of global companies ranked by DiversityInc as “top-rated in diversity.” She examined the linguistic and semiotic consistency in the framing of diversity and related practices. Her results disclose three ways in which organizations frame diversity—regardless of organization type, industry, and intended audience: as an organizational asset sustained by human resources and corporate values, as a competitive driver, and as a structural mechanism maintained through corporate practices. Her findings also confirm that corporate websites increasingly “serve as symbolic and necessary contemporary representations of impression management among stakeholders” (Pasztor, 2016), where diversity concerns and corporate activities with which the public can resonate can be emphasized.

Point and Singh (2003) also performed a content analysis of corporate websites, focusing on how European organizations represent their diversity policy through “diversity statements.” Their findings focus on the degree to which diversity is manifested more or less explicitly, and also on the specific dimensions accentuated in these voluntary disclosures of policy. They found that only half of the analyzed companies actually mentioned the word “diversity” and that the term is mostly associated with such visible dimensions as gender and culture. Similarly, Bellard and Rüling (2001) adopted a comparative thematic analysis in their exploration of how French and German companies promote diversity discourses on their corporate websites and in their annual reports. They found that, on a superficial level, North American perspectives had been adopted, but that understandings and experiences were for the most part culturally bound. Their findings on the whole highlight that while diversity is extensively represented on corporate websites, companies have tended to adopt a generic and disjointed diversity discourse that, for example, rarely describes concrete programs.

Taking a slightly different approach, Guerrier and Wilson (2011) content-analyzed a sample of U.K. companies in order to scrutinize how diversity is constructed on corporate websites. They looked not only at the language but also at the type and number of images used to represent the company in terms of diversity. While textual messages on diversity-related and careers pages generally centered on shared values and the business case for diversity, a few companies also draw on images, favoring both abstract imagery and photographs of men, women, and different ethnic groups.

Taken together, the literature review reveals that current research on the framing of diversity in external digital contexts has focused on corporate websites. It has not addressed the increasing role played by other digital communication platforms, such as corporate blogs. Moreover, such studies adopt a content-analysis approach that takes no account of the interplay of the various semiotic modes available in these digital and multimodal contexts for the construction of an organization’s diversity discourse. Textual data is privileged (e.g., Bellard & Rüling, 2001; Pasztor, 2016; Point & Singh, 2006), and additional modes such as images are rarely addressed (e.g., Guerrier & Wilson, 2011). Thus, so far research has not addressed the question of how an organization can communicatively frame its diversity discourse through strategies employed in multiple contexts and drawing on multimodal affordances.

This study targets these knowledge gaps. In particular, it addresses the research and practical issue of exploring the external corporate communication that is used to frame diversity in the contemporary digital environment, where multiple semiotic modes require careful consideration. This study, therefore, adopts a multimodal perspective on critical discourse analysis in order to examine corporate digital materials in detail.

Case Background

Google is a leading global organization operating in the information technology sector. With more than 72,000 employees, this company is responsible for dealing with 80% of all Internet searches on the planet (McGirt, 2017). Despite having been rated by Fortune magazine eight times in 11 years as the number one place to work (http://fortune.com/best-companies/) based on its generous employee perks, its work-life balance policies, and its inclusive culture, in recent years Google has also been experiencing public controversy about its diversity practices (Bort, 2017; McGirt, 2017). In 2014, for the first time, Google voluntarily published its annual diversity employment numbers. These revealed that only 17% of its employees were female, 1% Black, and 2% Hispanic (Kelly, 2015). This immediately triggered strong criticism, also targeted at many other Silicon Valley businesses, for not being sufficiently diverse. Despite Google’s promise to “search its soul” (Kelly, 2015), concretized in an investment of $150 million in diversity initiatives targeted both to outside communities and to its own employees, the employment numbers for 2016 did not show a considerable change, with White men still predominating in the workplace (59%) and especially in leadership positions (76%; Eadicicco, 2016). Being the most valuable brand in the world (Farber, 2017), the company was pushed to do and communicate more about its diversity commitment to protect its reputation that is still very strong in spite of such criticism. In fact, in 2017 Google was also ranked Number 3 out of 170,000 companies in the world by the Reputation Institute (Strauss, 2017).

In this study, Google serves as an empirical case for analyzing the general diversity-related discourse currently developed by the organization in its digital external communication. Thus, our focus is on examining Google’s discursive construction of diversity rather than on evaluating the tension between rhetoric and practice.

Data and Method

In order to answer our research questions, data were collected during the first 6 months of 2017, following the events aforementioned. The data included three source contexts: Google Diversity corporate website (five web pages, including 32 clusters of text and 48 images); Google official blog, from which entries dedicated to diversity were selected (14 blog entries); and the corporate videos embedded in the corporate website and selected blog entries (seven videos).

During the first stage of analysis, the authors were cocreators of a common coding procedure as a tool to capture the discursive strategies in a systematic way and according to a detailed multimodal transcription (Bezemer & Mavers, 2011). The coding scheme was initially tested on a data sample from the corporate website, and then applied to the whole corpus, including the blogs and videos. The coding process took the form of three tables which captured all the multimodal clusters that represent acts of discursive recontextualization of specific social practices. As can be seen in Table 1, which showcases one example from each table, the tables provided a reliable tool for rigorous analysis because they consistently combined data and interpretation at the level of each row. Thus, the multimodal evidence displayed in the first column of each table was correlated at the level of each row with the last two columns, where the discursive strategies and the frames were then identified and labeled. This arrangement in similar tables also secured the necessary transparency in the analytical process by clearly connecting the multimodal evidence to the results in a systematic way (Greckhamer & Cilesiz, 2014). Finally, evidence from the three tables was triangulated to pinpoint discursive patterns and frames across the selected corporate digital materials. To ensure that the analysis was trustworthy and reliable, the authors carried out the procedure in parallel, at the same time following an iterative process in which emerging findings and provisional conclusions were continuously compared, discussed, and refined.

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Table 1.

Examples of the Coding and Analysis Process With Excerpts From the Three Separate Tables.

Excerpt from the website analysis table
Page name	Subpage name	Screen shot	Visual mode	Verbal mode	Multimodal recontextualization strategies	Frame
Inclusion	Women@Google	The text cluster and image	The medium shot of several young smiling women	“Women@Google is a global network composed of 10,000+ female Googlers committed to empowering all women at Google by connecting, developing, and retaining female talent”	Social actors ● gender association and categorization: Women@Google ● evaluative associations: 10,000 women, all women, global network Social actions ● legitimation: committed to empowering Time ● continuous verb forms: creating, connecting, developing, and retaining
Excerpt from the blog analysis table
Blog entry (author and year)	Blog entry name	Screen shot	Visual mode	Verbal mode	Multimodal recontextualization strategies	Frame
Wood (2017)	Who run the world? How we’re celebrating International Women’s day	The text cluster and image	Cartoon-like drawing of a small girl giving flowers to women in historical costumes holding banners	“Celebrating historical heroines. In today’s interactive slideshow Doodle, a young girl goes on an imaginary journey to meet 13 female trailblazers from throughout history”	Social actors● evaluative associations: historical heroines ● symbolic categorization: 13 female trailblazers Social actions● legitimations: committed to empowering, run the world Time● throughout history ● continuous verb forms: celebratingSpace● imaginary journey
Excerpt from the videos analysis table
Video name	Placement	Screen shot and time	Visual mode	Verbal mode (superimposed text and speech)	Multimodal recontextualization strategies	Frame
Localization essentials	Blog entry: Meeren (2017). Empowering a new generation of localization professionals	Still image from the first shot 0:19	Medium shot of a young woman coming toward the camera while speaking and smiling at viewer	Superimposed text: Christina Hayek. Arabic Language Manager, GoogleSpeech: “The work that goes into making a smart phone available in any language belongs to a field called localization. Here at Google I work on the localization team”	Social actors● individualization: her name, function and office environment● association: localization team ● agentialization: I work Social actions● purpose: The work that goes into making a smart phone available in any language Space● The Google office environment

In what follows, the findings are structured according to the four frames identified in the analysis. At the level of each frame, the presentation and discussion of the interrelated discursive strategies is organized according to the semiotic modes involved in each of the three digital contexts—website, blog, and video. We also provide a selection of representative examples of multimodal discursive strategies for each frame.

Diversity Commitment as a Steady and Strategic Extension of the Google Tribe

In order to highlight how the diversity commitment is manifested through the extension of the Google tribe, the multimodal discursive strategies employed to recontextualize the social actors on the website focus on the identification and ramification of this tribe.

The main verbal discursive strategy employed to recontextualize the social actors on the company website is the relational identification of all those who belong to the Google tribe as the Googlers. The very usage of the word “tribe” (Leoni, 2017a) when referring to Googlers is meant to suggest their close ties, shared values and interests, and strong sense of belonging. The premodifying adjectives that precede the Googlers denomination are intended to suggest a homogenized, flexible, yet expanding Google tribe. For example, on the Hiring web page: “every Googler,” “our Googlers,” “new Googlers,” “diverse Googlers.” They are also impersonalized through evaluative abstractions such as “diverse mix of voices” (Sundar Pichai, CEO Google, Home), “diverse backgrounds” (Hiring), “innovative and inclusive teams” (Disability Alliance) or “a fair and inclusive Google” (Inclusion) that allow the inclusion of all those who already belong or can aspire to belong to the Google tribe.

The flexible clusters of various types of Googlers are categorized in terms of age, race, and gender: “Greylers,” “Black Googlers,” “Women@Google,” and “Gaylers.” The Googlers are also discursively represented through the discursive strategy of association, representing the connections among groups of Googlers in terms of national affiliation or other differences: “Asian Google Network,” “Filipino Google Network,” “Indus Googler Network,” “Google Veterans Network,” “Disability Alliance,” “Googlers-in-Residence.” These labels imply not merely the preserved identity of each group, but also the fact that Google acknowledges and supports these different ways of identifying as a Googler.

In the blog, the verbal discursive strategy of association works at a more symbolic level. One example is “a tribe of women” or “female trailblazers” (Leoni, 2017a). The verbal categorizations are also accompanied by evaluations that are repeated across several blog entries: “thousands of powerful, dynamic and creative women at Google” (Wood, 2017), “the powerful, dynamic and creative women at Google” (Leoni, 2017c), “innovative and self-aware women” (Leoni, 2017a). However, the Googlers are usually individualized in more detail in the blog entries, where their names, their position in the company, and their role(s) in connection to diversity-related activities are disclosed. Direct quotations from their thoughts, feelings, and dreams personalize them even more: “I hope to be a force for good in another young girl’s life” (Leoni, 2017e). In another blog entry, the effects of implementing Google’s corporate values and corporate culture are individualized when a transgender employee reveals her feelings during the interview: “Most of all I feel proud to be a woman at Google because of the respect and understanding I’ve received since I came out as transgender, and during my transition” (Leoni, 2017b). The personal details bring individual Googlers closer to the reader, and they give a more credible image of the diversity-related activities they are involved in. Moreover, in the corporate blog the Googlers’ personal lives come under the spotlight, suggesting that employees in the company enjoy an ideal balance between work life and family life: “She is the Head of Ads Marketing for the UK and Ireland. But at home, she’s best known for helping her twins chase unicorns and search for rainbows” (Leoni, 2017c).

Visible differences related to gender and race are emphasized visually in the web pages photos of the various Googlers. All of the photos, however, represent young people. The only web page with photos of grey-haired Googlers is the one dedicated to Greylers and Googlers affected by disabilities; none of the other web pages dedicated to other categories of Googlers include photos of older people. This lack of visual discursive strategy replicates what Guerrier and Wilson (2011) found on U.K. company websites dedicated to diversity, namely, that older people are less visible. The blog entries similarly include photos of Googlers that are differentiated in terms of race and gender, and again they show the same absence of older Googlers. This absence is counterbalanced in the video embedded in the “Home” page of the website, in which both younger and older management representatives share their personal life experiences and legitimate their opinions about diversity.

The blog’s repeated verbal discursive strategy of individualizing specific Googlers is also employed visually. The images used do not just contain close-up or medium shots of smiling individuals; individual Googlers also appear in long shots that reveal their working environment, their overdecorated office, or their holiday destination. Their identity is thus strengthened visually.

The symbolic expansion of the Google tribe is discursively manifested in the blog through stories about how Google’s values related to diversity contribute to the encounter between the Googlers and people around the world. For example, “I was extremely moved by how women from all walks of life joined together as a united force of positive change and celebrate their differences” (Leoni, 2017a). “The We love you project has now surpassed 500 participants, and the groundswell of support and joyful participation from black men across the country has been one of the most powerful experiences of my artistic career” (Summers, 2017).

Visually, the encounter between the Googlers and people in other parts of the world is especially vividly conveyed in moving images. For example, in the video selected from the campaign “#HerVoiceIsMyVoice,” which is embedded in the blog entry dedicated to celebrating International Women’s Day (Wood, 2017), the focus is on inspirational women’s voices across the globe. Although the video resembles a film trailer in form, the whole video is actually built on close-ups of prominent women figures such as Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, and Ellen DeGeneres. They address key issues of empowering women in short, slogan-like sentences, against the background of “I Can’t Keep Quiet,” the song that was the anthem of the 2017 Women’s March against Donald Trump.

Diversity Commitment as a Strategic Management of a Diverse Cluster of Inclusion and Extension Activities

In order to shape the stakeholders’ understanding of how the company manages diversity, Google’s main communicative focus is on the proliferation of its diversity-related activities. This is done through the recontextualization of such activities across website, blog, and embedded videos.

The diversity-related activities are discursively represented in two ways on the website. First, they are represented as actions done to the Googlers in order to advance the diversity-oriented corporate culture: “supporting,” “empowering Googlers,” “encouraging Googlers” (Inclusion). Second, they are portrayed as actions initiated by Google but carried out by the Googlers and having an effect both in the company and outside it: “We started an internal conversation in 2013 about unconscious bias and we continue to invest in unbiasing trainings” (Inclusion). In one of the blog entries, the head of research and development presents the concrete details of the continuous investment in research projects about unconscious biases, and legitimates the impact of this knowledge sharing: “By focusing on educators, we can help educators become aware of their unconscious biases and learn how they can adjust their actions to support diverse students” (Moghadam, 2017). The idea of provoking a chain of actions meant to promote and extend diversity commitment is also mentioned symbolically in the blog entries, for example, in “I’ll pay it forward” (Leoni, 2017e) and “to be a pebble in the landslide” (Leoni, 2017b).

The representational choices employed on the website to characterize the diversity-related activities are also intended to suggest and implicitly legitimate the company’s endeavors to bring Googlers together: “connecting and advancing the Asian community at Google,” “connecting Googlers affected by disabilities,” “connecting with the Indus community at Google” (Inclusion). The intended bringing together of the employees as Googlers is subtly communicated even through strategic semantic choices. When people want to be together, they associate or join, but as members of the Google tribe they all connect—because “to connect” is always associated with the Internet, the main reason for Google’s existence.

Furthermore, although these activities are highlighted on the Diversity corporate website because of its evident communicative purpose, these diversity-related activities are represented as being integrated in the company’s overall business activities. From hiring to professional development, all business activities are characterized on the corporate website as having a focus on supporting and encouraging the multiple facets of the Googlers’ identities. Through a discursive generalization, these activities are portrayed as part of the overall goal of the company, namely “to change the face of the tech industry” (Education). A series of micro actions are abstracted away through this generalization, which is supposed to point metaphorically to Google’s corporate values and its striving for performative excellence. Such generalizing discursive strategies are also employed to cover and integrate various additional diversity-related activities, for example to “build a more diverse Google” (Home), “bridge this gap” (Education), or “removing barriers” (Inclusion).

Similar discursive generalizations are also encountered in the blog entries. For example, “these women break down barriers and defy expectations at work and in their communities” (Leoni, 2017c), “we’re also supporting efforts to close the gender gap in tech and other fields” (Wood, 2017). However, each of these discursive generalizations is placed in the context of detailed presentations of concrete actions, with the effect that the generalizations are perceived as metaphorical representations of authentic practices. The web page and blog entry hyperlinks also contribute to concretizing the discursive generalizations by foregrounding more detail.

If on the website the main focus is on actions, the blog’s focus is on cognitive and affective reactions. This is because, as already mentioned, revealing the thoughts and feelings of the various Googlers receives more attention. For example: “I am proud to be a woman in a male-dominated industry” (Leoni, 2017d), “I love the fact that diversity and inclusion at Google is not just an individual or HR initiative” (Leoni, 2017g).

Visually, the discursive strategies are intended to represent not only what the Googlers do (talking, working, having fun, or just posing together) but also how they feel, because the vast majority of the web page photos represent Googlers smiling or laughing. This finding can be linked to the general tendency to portray diversity positively on corporate websites (Guerrier & Wilson, 2011; Kersten, 2000; Prasad & Mills, 1997), namely as “fun, colorful, harmonious difference” (Guerrier & Wilson, 2011, p. 190). The same visual discursive strategy is used repeatedly in both the blog entries and the videos. In one of the videos embedded in Wood’s (2017) blog entry—dedicated to one of the Women Techmakers’ summits held by Google—the intercutting of images of keynote speakers on the stage with images of smiling women engaged in a discussion goes beyond the typical strategy in editing such events. It is evident that the fragments selected from the keynote speakers and the Google women leaders can also stand alone as inspirational and empowering statements without the shots of smiling women, because those women are not reacting to what the keynote speakers are saying. The interactions among the smiling women seem to have taken place before or after the speeches. But in spite of the lack of temporal continuity, this editing strategy has been chosen in order to enhance the viewer’s emotional identification not only with the smiling women but also with the content of what is being said.

Diversity Commitment as a Process of Spatial Expansion

The discursive representation of space exhibits Google both as a company situated within a spatial localization and as a company in close interaction with, for example, small business owners, supplier network, and underrepresented communities across the whole world. The generalizing abstraction displayed on the homepage “we’re supporting diversity at Google and beyond” (Home) implicitly covers the discursive representation of the spread of diversity-related activities across space for community engagement.

Although difficult to analytically disentangle, once again, not only Google’s corporate culture is in focus but also the Googlers’ proactive commitment and its concrete manifestations both internally and externally. The commitment is verbally expressed on the homepage: “Googlers are passionate about diversity and asked for more ways to make a difference. So we created the Diversity Core program to connect them to high impact diversity projects across Google and in local communities” (Inclusion). To use an external source to legitimate the impact of the program’s operations in various communities across the globe, the hyperlink provided by the program’s name takes the website visitor to an article published in USA Today titled “Google gives employees 20 percent time to work on diversity.” The concrete details of such operations are verbally provided in the blogs, where the contribution made by Google’s widely distributed workforce to the development of the whole world is repeatedly pointed out. Both as individuals and groups, the Googlers contribute to this: “I want to radically change the way women are represented in our world” (Leoni, 2017c), “Women Techmakers is also sponsoring more than 140 community meetups for women in tech worldwide” (Wood, 2017).

This discursive construction of space is not manifested visually on the website because the photos provided are mainly focused on people rather than on their surroundings, which might suggest wider spatial environments. The diversity commitment—materialized in a process of continuous spatial expansion—is represented symbolically only once on the website through the image of a spaceship-like interior in which a woman is standing in front of a window overlooking our planet from space. The ceiling has the word Google engraved in the middle of it.

The visually represented spatial expansion is more prominent in the videos. For example, in “#HerVoiceIsMyVoice,” although the women celebrities giving their speeches are represented mainly in close-up images, the viewer is also given the chance to see that the context in which they are presenting their ideas may be a conference or a political rally. An increased credibility effect is thus ensured, because the use of shots from news coverage gives the viewer the feeling of being present in those spaces at the time those events are taking place. The video embedded in the “Empowering a new generation of localization” blog entry (Meeren, 2017) showcases an example of spatial expansion that is discursively communicated through the use of several languages in the same Google department. In its “one-shot structure,” this promotional video for the localization courses has an innovative multimodal strategy “to bridge the geographical gap” (Meeren, 2017). The Arabic Language Manager walks and talks on the corridor of the Google open office of the localization team while looking into camera and sharing with the viewer a personal story about how Google helps people meet across languages. As the camera slides backward, holding the same frame around the speaker while she explains what localization is, at a certain moment, in sync with the words “here at Google I work on the localization team” (0:20), the camera moves sideways, revealing other Google employees saying the same thing in various languages. The last person to say this same thing, the Manager of Language Services, rises from his chair and, followed by the camera, joins the speaker, so that both of them are now advancing toward the viewer as he talks about the localization courses. The continuum of space and time achieved by the one-shot technique enhances the directness of the invitation to participate in a localization course. Hearing these figures’ persuasive and enthusiastic voices strengthens the multimodal impact of the visual strategy, bringing the Googlers even closer to the viewers.

Finally, across the website, blogs, and videos, the overall discursive representation of space suggests the Googlers’ particular perception of Google space and their sense of responsibility that defies geographical borders.

Diversity Commitment as an Omnitemporal Process

To communicate that the commitment to diversity is an unwavering characteristic of all Google’s activities, this commitment is discursively represented as an omnitemporal process.

The main focus is on the continuity and recurrence of diversity-related activities, ensuring the maintenance of Googlers’ identity both as individuals and as members of various Google groups. In particular, the discursive construction of continuity is realized grammatically through the continuous aspect of the verb tenses, used to suggest the repeated aspect of the diversity-related activities. This can be seen, for example, in the title of each topic on the website: “Supporting” (five times), “Connecting” (three times), “Creating” (twice), “Empowering,” “Providing,” “Ensuring,” “Encouraging,” “Celebrating.” The same strategy is replicated in the blog entries in which the Googlers describe their projects: For example, “I am building a tribe of women who question gender roles” (Leoni, 2017a), “We’re also supporting efforts to close the gender gap in tech and other fields” (Wood, 2017), “the women at Google are fierce, and we are redefining the face of tech” (Leoni, 2017f).

On the website, evaluative temporal premodifiers such as “month-long activities” (Black Google Network), “our latest Global Impact Challenge” (Communities) or “year-round support” (Education) are also meant to suggest the repeated character of all these activities. This recurrence is also represented on the website through verbs suggesting repetition: for example, “we check and recheck” (Inclusion). The blog entries distinguish the recurrence of diversity-related activities discursively by highlighting the specific periods of time when these take place: for example, “in honor of Women’s History Month” (Leoni, 2017a), “every February Googlers come together to celebrate and reflect on the many contributions the Black community has made to our company, the United States, and the world” (Brown, 2017). These discursive strategies, which ensure the representation of diversity-related activities as continuous or repeated activities, also enhance the previously mentioned idea that these activities are an inseparable part of Google’s overall business activities. The continuity and immediacy of these diversity-related activities are discursively strengthened by the use of imperatives, which are meant to encourage the website visitor to take action and access further information through the hyperlinks provided: “learn more and apply at g.co/supplier diversity” (Communities), “visit our scholarship site to learn more” (Communities), “visit google.com/students to learn more about our internships” (Home). The same discursive strategy of activation is found in the blog: “These are just a few of the women who inspire us. We hope you’ll share some of your own. Whether it’s empowering female voices as part of #HerVoiceIsMyVoice, or telling your personal story with #TodayIAm, we’re excited to hear it” (Wood, 2017).

In addition to this, there are clear references on the website to specific moments in the past or present, and their significance for the diversity-related initiatives is highlighted: “last year we made progress” (Home), “here’s where we are today” (Home). Visually, animated graphs provide dynamic explanatory materials that clarify in concrete detail the advancement of the diversity-related activities and their results.

However, there are no concrete references to the future on the website: all activities are referred to as ongoing present activities, only implicitly future activities. This discursive strategy has two consequences. First, it reinforces the idea that these diversity-related activities are continuous or repeated. Second, it allows Google to avoid the risk of promising future changes and initiatives that are still to be materialized. By referring continuously only to activities that have taken place and/or are taking place now, Google can avoid being charged with just using well-known buzzwords without substance.

In the blog entries, the references to the past are also extended because the present diversity-related activities are legitimated by being inspired by notable individuals from the past. For example, Black History Month honors “the first woman of both African and Native-American descent to achieve praise for her work as a sculptor” (Brown, 2017). At the same time, in the blog entries written by individual Googlers, who provide trustworthy details about how the activities are unfolding and how they are contributing to them, the references to the future are frequent: for example, “The program is a way to create a future that reflects the values of diversity and inclusion since day one” (Stewart, 2017), “We look forward to demonstrating the robustness of Google’s approach to equal pay” (Naughton, 2017). In three embedded videos on the website— “Google Engineering Practicum Internship Program” (2017), “The things you love are made with code” (2017), and “CS First” (2017)—the future consequences of Google’s initiatives are presented in the clusters of testimonials given by students of varying backgrounds and interests who are enrolled in Google’s internship programs or computer science clubs.

Implications and Future Research

Implications can be drawn from the study that are of value to both researchers and practitioners and that pave the way for future research opportunities.

As far as research is concerned, in the contemporary dynamic digital context, this methodological approach enables researchers to capture and analyze in detail the ongoing processes of discursive representations, and to produce longitudinal studies without switching analytical tools at different stages as the technology advances. The same study could, therefore, be prolonged over time because “recontextualization is also recursive—it can happen over and over again, removing us further and further from the starting point of the chain of recontextualizations” (van Leeuwen, 2008, p. 13). In addition, this methodological approach allows researchers to identify the framing of specific diversity-related discourses and to evaluate the consistency of multimodal discursive strategies across a variety of corporate digital materials—from corporate websites to other communication platforms such as social networking sites, video sharing sites, blogs, and wikis. The main strength of this analytical framework resides in its enabling of the systematic discourse analysis of any social practice recontextualized in any type of text including other semiotic modes besides language.

Regardless of organization type and industry, corporate practitioners too can build on the findings of this study. They can do so, first, to ensure that their external corporate communication strategy related to the social issue of diversity is characterized by consistency in framing across different digital platforms. By employing consistent discursive strategies, practitioners can enhance not only the visibility but also the credibility of their communication efforts in the long run. Second, by becoming more aware of the multimodal character of contemporary communication, practitioners can be more strategic in exploiting the affordances offered by the variety of semiotic modes available in digital contexts besides language. Third, practitioners can gain expertise in avoiding stereotyped communication about their diversity commitment and management and they can adopt a more deliberate and more sensitive approach. Fourth, as the lines between internal and external corporate communication increasingly blur, organizations can benefit from communication practices that integrate the concerns of both internal and external audiences simultaneously. In this way, employees can be both receivers of and active participants in externally directed communication. At the same time, this communication “originally designed for an external audience can be transformed into ideal self-enhancing and self-confirming images” (Christensen et al., 2008, p. 26). Finally, corporate practitioners acquire a set of multimodal discursive tools that are useful for conducting benchmarking studies of other organizations, in order to assess and compare the quality of the communication used to construct and promote diversity commitment and management.

In continuation of this work, future studies could for triangulation purposes apply the same methodological approach to address an even wider array of semiotic modes (e.g., sound, gestures, color, layout) and both digital and nondigital contexts (e.g., CSR reports, annual reports, press releases) within the same organization. In addition, they could replicate this research in multiple cases, and compare the best-in-class organizations with those that are receiving criticism for diversity-related misconduct. Finally, future research could explore not only the organizational decision-making processes through which digital discursive strategies are selected and developed but also their decoding by digital audiences.