Beyond Moderation: Emerging Research on Online Governance
To learn more about the Beyond Moderation convening, including an agenda with a list of speakers, please visit the event page.
In March of 2023, with the help of generous grants from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School, we brought together eighty individuals approximately evenly split between research scholars and industry practitioners for two days of presentations and discussions. The scholars who joined us spanned many disciplines, while on the industry side we were joined by a variety of data scientists, product managers, policy managers, and UX researchers. As an organizing theme, we called this convening “Beyond Moderation” to acknowledge a growing recognition in the limitations of current moderation approaches and the possibility of imagining a future of alternative approaches to building a vital and healthy online community.
Here, we present a collection of essays responding to the SMGI’s Spring 2023 convening. First, SMGI Director Matt Katsaros and JC Executive Committee Member Sudhir Venkatesh reflect on the event and, more broadly, take stock of the current state of the online trust and safety landscape. One of the goals of the Beyond Moderation convening was to reimagine approaches to promoting community vitality online. To this end, we thought that it was critical to bring in fresh voices to the conversation as both presenters and attendees. One of our panels aimed at giving space to hear from three emerging scholars about the research they are doing in online governance. These three PhD students were gracious enough to share a written version of their presentations, which the Justice Collaboratory is very pleased to publish here.
Authors: Matt Katsaros, Sudhir Venkatesh
Featured Scholars: Adina Gitomer, Monika Yadav, and Jina Yoon