Adapted from “Using E-Mediation to Resolve Disputes,” first published in the March 2013 issue of the Negotiation newsletter.
Suppose you want to hire a mediator to help you resolve a conflict that you’re having with an individual or a company, but for various reasons, meeting face-to-face would be difficult.
Perhaps you and the other party are located in different geographic areas. Maybe your dispute originated in an online transaction, and you’ve never even met. Or perhaps one of you feels threatened or intimidated by the other and is reluctant to meet in person.
In the late 1990s, various start-ups began offering e-mediation services to organizations and the general public. The companies developed a roster of trained mediators who they would assign to facilitate online dispute resolution, primarily through e-mail. E-mediation is now offered across the globe, both by service providers and increasingly by individual mediators, writes Noam Ebner in a chapter in Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice (Eleven International Publishing, 2012).
Though companies often use e-mediation to resolve high-volume, long-distance conflicts (such as disputes between eBay customers), the range of disputes being mediated online has expanded to include workplace and family conflicts involving people who live in the same area.
The “platform” that mediators and service providers use varies, but e-mediations are generally conducted via e-mail and telephone, while videoconferencing and real-time chats are less commonly used. Parties exchange documents via e-mail, and the mediator guides the process. In one study, mediators reported using a more directive, problem-solving approach in e-mediations than in face-to-face mediations as a result of their attempts to maint the momentum of long-distance talks.
Early studies of e-mediation have found it to be an effective means of resolve disputes, Ebner writes. E-mediations offers convenience, allowing parties to participate when they have the time. The slower pace of e-mail mediations (relative to real-time conversations) allows mediators to carefully craft their responses and strategy rather than needing to react in the moment to disputants’ statements. In addition, e-mail mediation can level the playing field between disputants’ who tend to naturally dominate discussions and those who are more reserved.
Disputants who engage in mediation primarily via e-mail will miss out on the cues they would receive from body language, facial expressions, and other in-person signals. Long-distance mediations are prone to misunderstandings and also lack the rapport and warmth of face-to-face talks. Parties may be tempted to “flame” each other (sending hostile or insulting messages) on e-mail or abandon the mediation entirely when frustrated. Finally, given that disputants often choose local mediators via word of mouth, they may be less trusting of mediators whom they choose somewhat arbitrarily online.
Loic /
I work for an ODR company, and the traction that we are seeing for our mediation products (consumer, commercial, and divorce) would suggest that individuals are, in fact, very happy to use online mediation products in lieu or traditional mediation. The last paragraphs in this post mentions studies that would suggest otherwise: would it be possible for you to share links / references to said studies? Thank you very much.