Online Communications & Trust
Online Communications & Trust
Moderated by Jon Linden, John DeBruyn, and Gini Nelson
Despite widespread examples of disingenuous behavior by people on the Internet, there are certain forums that seem to be able to count on people being trustworthy. One such forum which is utilized frequently and has the character of being mostly trustworthy is when the Internet is used to resolve disputes, i.e. ODR – Online Dispute Resolution. One would ask the question, “Why should people act differently in this forum than they do in any other Internet based forum?” The answer to that question is relatively simple. When the internet is being used for ODR, the Internet is acting purely as a convenience to the parties involved. ODR makes it possible for these people to create an environment which is flexible in many ways, particularly in the areas of Time and Space/Distance. In ODR, the internet is being used to facilitate the ability of two or more parties who are separated by one of both of Time (therefore, they are in a different Time Zone) and Space (therefore, they are significant distances away from each other.) There is an ongoing dispute and all the parties to the dispute would like to resolve it in some manner. Therefore, they are being given the option to utilize the Internet to resolve the dispute in a manner that will allow all parties to participate, but they can do so without leaving their home or office. They are motivated to resolve the dispute because the parties have a vested interest in the resolution, or they need something that will be provided as a condition of the resolution. Clearly then, the parties can be trusted in direct proportion to their need for there to be a resolution. Assuming their need is high, even if it is just a matter of their Reputation, often this reason is a large enough reason for them to be trustworthy in keeping their agreement.
Moderator Bios:
Jon Linden is an independent Mediator and Facilitator. He is also a Certified Paralegal. Mr. Linden works as a contract Mediator for the NJ Superior Court System/Civil Division and has been working for the NJ Court System for 27 years. In addition, Mr. Linden worked as a contract Mediator for the US EEOC for 10 years. He has been an instructor for numerous Mediation classes, including his own, the US EEOC’s, and the NJ Court System for the County of Union, NJ. Mr. Linden also was a Mediator for SquareTrade and worked to resolve purchase disputes which occurred on E-Bay. Mr. Linden has written extensively on Mediation and many of his articles are posted on his website at www.mediate.com/proactive.
Gini Nelson, J.D., M.A., (http://gininelson.com) has been practicing law for 30 years. Her practice includes mediation, including online mediation and consultation. As an early adopter of social media tools, she started her first blog, Engaging Conflicts in 2006. She has participated in several, earlier Cyberweeks.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Noam Ebner on
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@Colin - that was a wonderful moment!
Is it too early to say... "I wonder what we might sign in San Jose?"
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Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on
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Jon, I really like your point about the shared goals of the group, such as "when all parties have something to gain." It reminds me of the foundational research of folks like Morton Deutsch who noted that framing an interaction as a cooperative event as opposed to a competitive one had profound impacts on party behavior. It also reminded me of work in the international conflict resolution on "spoilers" - more "radical" group members/stakeholders who seek to prevent a more centrist agreement that may negatively impact their influence or goals. This suggests that trust WITHIN subgroups is also an issue we need to attend to. Good stuff...
Jon Linden said:I think that you are very much on track. I believe there are a large number of factors. I mostly have used ODR when all parties have something to gain. When that is the case, the parties have a good reason to be straightforward and good to their word or they will not receive the benefit of what they are negotiating/mediating to get.
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I don't think Noam has noted it in this thread, but over in the "Open Forum for Sharing" section of Cyberweek, he posted some great resources on the issue of dealing with lying and deception in F2F and online environments. This seems quite relevant to the current thread. Check out Noam's post How do we know if they're dogs... for the quick and smart summary.
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Permalink Reply by John DeBruyn on
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Post script:
Jon Linden mentions that the maintenance of civility required the ejection of some of the participants at Listening to the City, held in the Javits Center, were there were 500 tables of ten each with a facilitator or mediator facilitating the discussion of the plans to reconstruct the World Trade Center and redevelop its environs ... one can appreciate the sense of anonymity that one attains from being part of a large crowd or in a crowed physical place ... a bit like the internet ... of course our experience in the online edition of Listening to the City with 800 folks divided into discussion groups of twenty was different in many respects and I thought, having worked with Jon in that environment as a facilitator/moderator more civil?
Photo of the Listening to the City program where Jon served as a mediator/facilitator at one of the myriad tables of ten.
John DeBruyn said:
Hi Colin: You provided a good overview and summary of the elements that help a sense of trust to develop in the context of online dispute resolution and I venture what's up here which is online dialogue. My experience with dialogue taking place here, at Cyberweek, and over the years since we did Cyberweek the first time around with Ethan Katsh back in 1998, is that civility has been maintained at a very high level amongst the participants in Cyberweek. Obvious, perhaps, is that each one of us has a reputation to protect. What else is going on here that we can bring to build trust in the context of online dispute resolution? John
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Okay, I admit to being a bit of a keener, posting multiple times in a row here, but my morning Twitter feed alerted me to a new resource of interest, related to another aspect of ODR, namely using technology (most often mapping) in humanitarian responses to crisis. Some of you may follow Patrick Meier's work over at iRevolution.net on crisis mapping, a key element of this work. How does this relate to communication and trust? Well, the new resource is a guide to verifying the accuracy of online information, which I think is well within the wheelhouse of this forum thread. The new free guide, to be released in January, is called "Verification Handbook: A definitive guide to verifying digital content for emergency coverage"
Authored by leading journalists from the BBC, Storyful, ABC, Digital First Media and other verification experts, the Verification Handbook is a groundbreaking new resource for journalists and aid providers. It provides the tools, techniques and step-by-step guidelines for how to deal with user-generated content (UGC) during emergencies.
If we are being encouraged to "Trust and Verify", seems like we might need some help sorting out the best ways to do this online and this guide is likely to be a very good start.
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Permalink Reply by Jon Linden on
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Hi All,
I thank John DeBruyn for that picture of the Javits Center. It was packed full. That picture is from July 20, 2002 when there were 4300 people in the room. It is true that I noted that some people had to be ejected in this dialogue, but NOT in the live part. The ones that were ejected were in the On-Line portion. We had some people that would post irrelevant and inappropriate commentary on some of the thread discussions. The face-to-face discussion did not have anyone we could not handle at the tables. Face-to-Face, the facilitators were always able to stop people from disruptive behavior. Also, those at the Javits Center actually came there to say something constructive. We really didn't have anyone that was there to disrupt the proceedings.
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Permalink Reply by Gini Nelson on
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Hello all,
What a pleasure to be able to follow your discussion! Thank you!
Here are my take aways at this point:
- Joseph's question about whether the process will degrade to the lowest denominator or be raised to a higher one, is, I think, significantly within the influence of the mediator/moderator of the process.
- Colin's Respect Pledge is an example of a tool suggested by Leah -- and I agree it's important to set the defaults of the process to be as constructive as possible. The Pledge is affirmed by the individual parties, but is/can be enforced by the mediator/moderator, by reminders, for example. (In my divorce mediations, I use a pledge (I call it something different) as to the process, and I so remind the parties when they stray from it.) In this, especially, I think the role of the mediator as a 3rd party witness to each party's individual integrity is important.
- Sam's speculation about use of a video camera suggests we may want to prefer (if we cannot require) video conferencing for the processes, when possible. I wonder, too, if we will want to expressly recognize that asynchronous interchanges will have less of a F2F power than synchronous. (They will, however, give more time for careful consideration of responses.)
- Bill's link to the Verification Handbook --- yeah! Thank you!
- We will want to remember that the "best practices/tools" will likely be different, sometimes strikingly so, depending on the kind of process, e.g., voluntary mediation, court-ordered mediation, negotiation, facilitated discussion.
Gini
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There was some commentary about Facebook and the lack of penalties for rudeness. Facebook is an odd kind of medium. The is little commonality amongst the billion+ people on the site. Often Facebook is a purely "social interaction" type of network. However, there is also a huge amount of sales related activity that is going on in the Facebook site. In order for people to truly get into a situation where there is commonality, it is necessary to join a "group" and then hope that those people who are in the group are really there for the purpose of discourse on the topic the group purports itself to be discussing. But in its open areas, there is often nothing in common between the people that are engaging in tete a tete about whatever they want to talk about. It almost invites people to be rude or sarcastic or intentionally irritating to others in order just to get a rise out of people. I am very close to deleting my Facebook account altogether. I do not feel that I am getting value out of the time I was spending there. In fact, nowadays, I spend less than one hour a month, if that, in the Facebook environment. This phenomenon is in stark contrast to an event such as CyberWeek, where all the people involved in the discussions have some direct tie to the concepts of ADR and particularly most of us are interested in ODR. This commonality does lead to appropriate conversation. The people in this group will most likely brush up against each other again. And if they have behaved poorly, that reputation will propagate within the industry. Thus, there is a very significant reason to avoid being labeled as an individual that is not one who is serious about the concepts surrounding ADR.
If those people who gain a bad reputation amongst their peers here in CyberWeek make their living trying to resolve disputes, they are likely to get a direct negative effect on their ability to keep up their revenue streams because they become known as a 'bad actor' within the ADR community. In fact, those who are inappropriate get much more attention over time with respect to their bad behavior than those who are acting positively. Thus, one's REPUTATION becomes very important and to the extent that they get a bad reputation because they have behaved badly in the CyberWeek environment, then when the time comes for a big need for ADR professionals, such as resolving problems created by Hurricane Sandy, then those who have created a negative opinion in the ADR field are likely to be rejected by those individuals who are choosing their Mediators for such an effort. This happened in NJ not long ago. There was a need for an ADR group to help people who were trying to make insurance claims and were getting resistance from their carriers because of the magnitude of claims being paid out which were related to Hurricane Sandy damage. There was a need for a group of ADR professionals to be formed that would assist both the claimants and the Insurers resolve the huge pile of claims that were being submitted.
The State of NJ requested groups to submit applications to organize panels of ADR professionals to work with people and insurers in helping this resolution along. The AAA (American Arbitration Association) won the selection process. Then after they won that plum job, they found that their own panels were insufficient to handle the needs of the people of NJ. Thus, they posted e-mail to all the major groups in the NJ/NY area inviting ADR professionals to submit application to be considered to be on the panel. Those ADR professionals who had created a poor image for themselves were NOT selected for the panels. Thus, just the kind of reputation that an individual can create in an event like CyberWeek will follow that person around for the next 10 to 20 years. Thus, reputation becomes a highly valuable commodity if it can affect the ability to get paid work in the future. If a person has a poor reputation on FaceBook, it may never affect them this way. But if they have a poor reputation created by their behavior at CyberWeek, it probably will stand in their way of taking advantage of some very attractive opportunities in the future that are ADR/ODR related. Thus, good behavior here in CyberWeek may very well be rewarded in the not so distant future. All of us here at CyberWeek have an interest in making professional connections and looking for potential opportunities in the fields related to ADR/ODR and what they do and say here this week will affect their ability to get those opportunities. Thus, CyberWeek becomes very relevant and makes good behavior and politeness and intelligence shown in this forum the key to profitable work in the near, midterm and longterm ADR/ODR world. That is why I try to come and participate at CyberWeek whenever I can. I suspect that many of us do that. And even if we are not doing that, we are learning who seems good and who seems NOT. Then that knowledge will be in the minds of decision makers in the future about who they would like to have on their panels and ADR groups.
That is very much what I mean by creating TRUST in our on line communications. All of us here at CyberWeek are not anonymous. Some of us know others a little bit, and some of us know others well. CyberWeek increases that propagation of our reputation and thus, is an opportunity for us to expand our positive reputation. I do hope that we continue to have such a high level of wonderful behavior in the interactions here this week. Thank you all who have contributed to this discussion. Please DO keep contributing.
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Permalink Reply by Kerri Schmitt on
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Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. Here are a few things I've come to believe about trust and it's application to ODR:
Typically at the heart of most conflict is broken trust and violated expectations. In order to have trust restored, there need to be opportunities to rebuild trust.Building trust is a process, not a single act. As a mediator I'm sensitive to opportunities to rebuild trust and avoid any further violation of expectations throughout the mediation experience.One of the ways to reduce the chance of violating expectations in ODR is to clearly define the norms so everyone is clear about expectations and meaning of norms.For example, one of the challenges I've found in web mediation is confidentiality. Parties aren't sure who else may be in the room when a camera is only pointed in one direction.When trust is low, people don't trust what they can't see. Allowing parties to address this concern helps build trust. Sometimes just rotating the camera indicates there is nothing to hide. If what broke trust was caused by behavior, then only a change in behavior will rebuild trust. As Steven Covey said "You can't talk yourself out of a problem you've behaved your way into."I try to look for behavioral opportunities to rebuild trust. It may begin with following the norms laid out by the parties. This is the first step to accountability which is necessary to rebuild trust.
I appreciate Colin sharing the Respect Pledge. What I have seen is that respect is earned not necessarily granted. A party is much more likely to be respectful if the other party is also respectful. Instead of respect I try to focus on dignity. I consider dignity the inherent worth and value of all person. They may not agree on facts of the situation, but I do request at the beginning of the process that they honor the dignity of the other party. This often leads to more respectful behavior.
Transparency can establish trust faster than anything else I've seen. The beauty of ODR unlike other forms of mediation is that it is recordable. Sometimes just the fact there is a verifiable record of the conversation is enough for people to be accountable for their comments.
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Hi all -
I'd like to share a piece I wrote on interpersonal trust in ODR a couple of years ago: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2167856 After following in this conversation, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have the chance for a second edition - there is so much to add! I'm taking notes. Feel free to add some more.
Noam
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Good morning.
As a Werner student trying to find my way in this field, and as a bit of a luddite, I came to this discussion skeptical and somewhat convinced that "online communications" and "trust" were incompatible concepts. It seemed to me that Jon's comment about the Javits Center event confirmed my feelings. It was the people who were participating online that they had problems with. They did not have problems with the people who were physically there. However, after reviewing the discussion over the last few days, I believe that my reliance on the Javits Center events is an example of confirmation bias.
There have been many useful suggestions of steps to take to establish and maintain trust. In considering them I have come to recognize that trust in the ODR/online setting is just another permutation of the challenge of building trust that is present in any mediation. The techniques are similar, and the goal is the same, only the medium of communication changes. Likewise, as Gini pointed out, the need to enforce standards of conduct rests with the mediator whether in person or online. While I do not necessarily agree with Kerrl that respect (which I think is an element of trust) is solely a function of being earned vs. being granted, I do think her point about transparency is absolutely correct. In that regard, as she observed, the ability to record the ODR process may, in fact, facilitate trust and respect in a way that face-to-face interaction cannot.
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One of my favorites!
Noam Ebner said:Hi all -
I'd like to share a piece I wrote on interpersonal trust in ODR a couple of years ago: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2167856 After following in this conversation, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have the chance for a second edition - there is so much to add! I'm taking notes. Feel free to add some more.
Noam
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