CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN CYBERSPACE

Where is it written that problems can only be resolved in face-to-face sessions? Conflict resolution, along with just about everything else in our lives, has moved to cyberspace.

America Online, a major Internet service provider, and its subsidiary Digital City, Inc. have recently teamed up with the Western Justice Center, a nonprofit organization that includes conflict resolution in its mission, to create the Dialogues Online web pages. These pages contain news, links to conflict resolution groups around the country, and most importantly, interactive resources such as message boards and e-mail, to foster racial healing through inter-group and cross-cultural participation.

The agenda for Dialogues Online seems to be to first get people talking to each other, and then move them on to identifying problems, finding common ground, and ultimately, creating solutions. In other words, the site hopes to replicate the typical progression in the mediation process, and to that end, the master plan also includes dialogue facilitation training provided by several national, nonprofit organizations.

During its initial phase, Dialogues Online is being offered on the Digital City web sites for Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Presumably, if Dialogues Online does well in these cities, the program will be expanded to other metropolitan areas.

Since I live in the Detroit area, I checked out that city's Dialogues Online site. The day I viewed the page, it opened with some excerpts from journals kept by students at Michigan State University who are participating in a Multi-Racial Unity Project. The next section of the site was devoted to messages posted by site participants about their interracial experiences. As one might expect, the messages manifested a wide range of sophistication and sensitivity. There was a request at the end of the postings for participants to report any inappropriate message, a wise precaution for such a delicate issue as race relations.

There are at least two ways to access Dialogues Online. The easiest way, especially if you're interested in viewing the sites of several cities, is to start with the Western Justice Center site at http://www.westernjustice.org, where you will find a link to Dialogues Online, and from there you can then access the city site(s) of your choice.

The Western Justice site also has other useful links, including its conflict resolution database. I printed off 39 pages of organizations. All the listings contained addresses and telephone numbers, and many also offered e-mail addresses and web sites.

You can also get to Dialogues Online for the different cities from their individual Digital City sites. For example, Dialogues Online for Detroit can be accessed from http://home.digitalcity.com/detroit/. Dialogues Online will be found under the category of "News and Issues." The procedure would be the same for Atlanta at http://home.digitalcity.com/atlanta/.

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