Week 11: Experiment 1 + Results

I recently facilitated an experiment to prove my first hypothesis, that restorative justice can be adapted for online communities. Restorative justice is often achieved through the regular practice of restorative circles, and this experiment was an attempt to simulate a restorative circle in an internet environment.

I created a framework for a moderated discussion in a private Slack channel. I invited four classmates to participate in the discussion, which was about our feelings about the first half of the semester. I tried to build the following four basic components of a restorative circle into the discussion framework: Code of conduct, an established Circle Keeper, a circular meeting formation, and the use of a talking piece.

Here’s how I attempted to achieve these components in my meeting experimental meeting framework:

• Code of conduct → Discussion Instructions: To simulate the code of conduct, I wrote and pinned a message outlining the instructions for participating in the discussion. I asked the group members to respond to the message with an emoji reaction when they had read and understood the instructions.
• The instructions looked like this and entailed the following:

• Circle keeper → Discussion Moderator: I established myself as the discussion moderator. In my experimental discussion environment, this meant that I was responsible for enforcing the discussion instructions, as detailed above.
• Circular meeting formation → Speaking order: This was probably the hardest to simulate with an interface in which all discussions move vertically, top to bottom. One of the effects of having a meeting in circular formation is that everyone can see each other, and the circle provides a feeling of equality for the members, as if everyone is on an even playing field, even if some hold positions of authority outside of the circle. Typically but not always, the direction of discussion in a restorative circle moves clockwise or counterclockwise around the circle. The implementation of a speaking order attempted to achieve this, by making sure every person had a chance to speak, and that they spoke only when it was their turn.
• Talking piece → Speaking order + check mark emoji: In a restorative circle, there is an object, called the talking piece, that gets passed around to indicate when each person is allowed to speak. Participants are not allowed to speak unless they are holding this object. Since the environment in Slack makes it impossible to prevent someone from speaking when they want, the only way to simulate the talking piece was to clearly enforce the established speaking order, and rely on the group to adhere to it. In addition, I used a directive that each participant should add a check mark emoji at the end of the message, to indicate when they are done speaking. After each person was done speaking, as the moderator, I sent a message mentioning the name of the next person in the speaking order and announcing it was their turn to speak.

Here is the full discussion transcript. Names of group members have been removed.

The Results

I asked each participant to complete a survey providing feedback about their experience. Here are the big takeways:

Users felt supported and respected: This was reassuring to hear, because this is essentially one of the main objectives of a restorative circle — to establish support and respect within a group of people, and through regular practice of restorative circles, to ultimately have that support and respect transcend the circle into their relationships beyond. This feeling seemed to occur primarily because of the speaking order and talking piece mechanisms, which ensured that no one spoke out of turn.

Users wanted to respond to each other but the discussion framework didn’t allow it. Instead, they used emoji reactions: It was clear right away based on private messages I received from a participant, and also to me as a participant myself, that we wanted to be able to respond to each other in some way, especially when someone provided an especially emotional or vulnerable question response or one that we could each identify with. I had assumed that one way they would do this would be to provide their response to someone else when it was their turn to speak, as part of their overall response. Instead, without being prompted. Participants started using emoji responses on the messages to indicate their feelings about. In retrospect, this isn’t surprising given that this is common method of responding to messages in Slack and on other conversational platforms, especially when your response doesn’t required words as much as an expression of agreement or understanding.

Often in conversational environments like Slack, everyone speaks over each other and it can be hard to maintain a clear thread of a conversation. Slack has built in

The pace of the discussion felt too slow and rigid, and participants felt distracted: This is a takeaway I was anticipating. Inherently, when you enforce a framework for an activity with a group of people, while the group is getting used to the framework and committing the guidelines to memory, it will take more time to implement the activity. As mentioned above, participants found that the framework limited their desire to respond to each other. No doubt responding in the moment can lead to stronger feelings of mutual support and respect. In an in-person restorative circle, participants can more seamlessly provide this kind of response, by using facial expressions and body language. Emoji’s offered an interesting alternative to this in an internet environment. Also, an in-person circle naturally moves faster, since there isn’t that period of time in between each person speaking when the group is waiting for them to type and send their response.

The question I want to try to answer next is whether rigidity, while uncomfortable for people on the internet, can actually be good. The internet conversational platforms we use like Slack and social media were built on a premise of efficiency and speed, which we’ve come to expect. But are those things really good for us, all the time, especially when we are trying to understand each other better and/or resolve conflicts? Nobody feels good about the fact that they are more easily distracted when using the internet, but we tend to view it as something we can’t really do anything about. The perceived value of the internet is big enough that we seem to accept distraction as part of the deal. But what if, in order to be a part of an online community, you had to participate in a rigid, time-consuming process like a restorative circle-style discussion? Would the value of the community eventually override the amount of time and attention this practice might take?

The moderator does a lot of work: As the moderator, I felt I had a lot to do in order to make sure the discussion moved ahead. I found myself anxiously waiting for participants to provide their answers, aware of the time that was passing as each person responded. This would not necessarily be an issue in an in-person restorative circle, where participants don’t have the chance to take too much time to think about what they want to say. Also, with everyone’s attention pointed towards the circle, it’s hard to get distracted. I also found myself concerned about maintaining the speaking order, and making sure I didn’t mess it up. Overall, as the moderator, it felt like my full attention was on the discussion for the full thirty minutes, and I felt a big responsibility to the participants in making sure it ran smoothly and produced the desired effect.