Before the Covid-19 pandemic, online mediation was not particularly common; in fact, mediators often resisted the idea of negotiation via text or video. But when social-distancing rules drove us apart, mediators had little choice but to take their services online—and disputants sought them out. Many discovered the convenience and cost savings of hashing out disputes at a distance and continue to prefer online mediation to traveling to in-person meetings.
“Having practiced mediation online, mediators have discovered that it does work,” write Noam Ebner and Daniel Rainey in a chapter in the book Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice. Moreover, they note that for those who received mediation training during the pandemic, online mediation is the norm for them. “Having studied and simulated mediation solely in an online environment, these trainees and students are unlikely to reject it as a mode of practice in the future,” Ebner and Rainey write.
And online mediation isn’t just being used to settle disputes that originate online or that arise between parties located far apart. In fact, it is now routinely used to settle very emotional, personal, and private conflicts, including family (e.g., divorce, custody) mediation and workplace mediation, according to Ebner and Rainey. Researchers have found that online mediation is up to the task, demonstrating high settlement rates in these realms.
Pros and Cons of Online Mediation
Here are some of the upsides of online mediation that Ebner and Rainey identify in their chapter:
- By allowing parties to communicate both synchronously or asynchronously (typically, via video or text) across different platforms, online mediation offers flexibility and convenience.
- The availability of text-based communication can keep particularly dominant or well-spoken parties from gaining an advantage.
- Text-based mediation reduces the salience of gender, race, accent, national origin, and other individual differences that can trigger unconscious bias.
- Online mediation platforms often offer real-time translation for parties who speak different languages.
- Parties can look beyond mediators in their geographic area to enlist mediators worldwide who specialize in a particular approach or practice. Experts can also be consulted with more easily in online mediation.
- Online mediation is cost-effective, allowing parties to reduce the general (transportation, lodging, food, etc.) and productivity costs of travel.
At the same time, online mediation services can come with the following pitfalls, according to Ebner and Rainey:
- When parties are assigned a mediator by a service provider, they may have more difficulty assessing the mediator’s reputation and skill than they would if they were hiring someone in their geographic area. This challenge is complicated by the fact that mediators may vary in their proficiency with various online technologies and platforms.
- The privacy of a mediation is harder to ensure and secure online. “There are no certain guarantees in Internet security,” the authors note.
- As we’ve all experienced in online meetings, it’s harder to stay engaged in interactions with others online. As compared to in-person meetings, it’s also more difficult to establish rapport, empathy, and a sense of immediacy online, in part due to the lack or relative lack of body language in negotiation and mediation online.
- Text-based communications, in particular, are easy to misinterpret and can lead to unnecessary conflict and broken trust.
“Technology Only Lights the Stage”
The question of whether a particular dispute is suitable for online mediation has grown increasingly irrelevant, write Ebner and Rainey. These days, almost any dispute can be tackled online. However, parties will still need to ensure that they can meet certain preconditions for online mediation, including reliable internet (still not present in many areas of the world), familiarity and comfort with the online technology employed, a shared language or translation services, and a mutually acceptable degree of privacy and security.
Beyond these basic scene-setting requirements, Ebner and Rainey are careful to remind mediation practitioners that “technology only lights the stage”: a mediator’s process choices and worldview matter, whether they are mediating online or in person.
Ebner and Rainey cite research suggesting that “the use of asynchronous, text-based media leads to more task-oriented and depersonalized communication styles than in face-to-face interactions.” That research suggests that text-based online mediation could “create a somewhat uneven playing field, favoring individuals who tend toward analytical-rational expression” by encouraging the “expression of positions, arguments and facts.”
Moreover, text-based online mediation might lead toward a problem-solving mindset that narrowly defines a conflict, in part because less attention is spent on conversational dynamics and more on the issue at hand.
Notably, more research needs to be conducted on the use of videoconferencing to reach conclusions about how synchronous online mediation differs from in-person mediation.
“Beginning with a reflection on their approach,” Ebner and Rainey conclude, “mediators then need to find a platform or communication medium that allows for maximum application of this approach.” As online mediation gets underway, mediators should let “their approach . . . inform the way they advertise their services, train parties in the use of their platform, and conduct mediation processes.”
What have your experiences been like with online mediation tools?
