Moderators

During our deliberation, the moderators play a key role in where the discussion leads. Their prompts are what keeps the conversation flowing, so they are therefore a vital aspect of the deliberation process. Therefore, the ideal moderator has to embody a couple of important characteristics. Firstly, they must be completely neutral. It is not the moderators job to discuss their point of view; instead they want to figure out the consensus of the rest of the group. Thus, they must ask questions that are unbiased, and do not hold any of their personal opinions. Secondly, they must be adaptive. When there is a lull in conversation or the conversation starts to veer off topic, they must quickly be able to react. They may have to come up with prompts on the spot, or rephrase a question that generates confusion. Thirdly, they must be authoritative. During a deliberation, the moderators are the ones who are running the show. So if people start to get out of line, the moderators have to be able to use their power and get everyone to settle down. They cannot let participants talk over them. Finally, the moderators must be fair since they have a lot of power over the discussion. They must be able to choose different people to speak and not constantly pick on the same people. This means they may have to disregard their own personal relations with people in order to make sure everyone has equal opportunity to speak their opinions.

However, the moderator is not responsible for putting opinions into people’s mouths. If there aren’t many people participating in the deliberation, this is not always the fault of the moderators. They cannot force people to speak if they do not have the motivation to do so. In theory, the moderators should have complete control as to where the conversation heads. However, this is not always this case. This is because many times people will go on tangents, and then people after that may build on those tangents. Although moderators cannot always prevent this from happening, they can stop it while it is happening.

Overall, I think that the moderators for both deliberations worked out pretty well. In a few instances however, I did notice that a moderator would sometimes show his or her opinion. This may have happened with or without the moderator realizing they were doing it. It also seemed that sometimes the moderators were not prepared with enough prompts, or that the prompts were long and hard to understand. The final problem was that a lot of times the moderators would call on two different people at the same time. This is only natural because there was more than one moderator, and was not a huge issue. Everyone was respectful and would not mind letting the other person talk first.

Overall, the moderator role is an important role to the deliberation process. I am pleased with how it worked out. Personally, I was the moderator for the introduction of the topic. Thus all I did was explain the topic, so I did not have to come up with prompts. However, I think that me and my co-moderator did a good job and the personal stakes portion went much quicker. It was a great experience to have and I think it will help me in future discussions.

2 Comments on Moderators

  1. Samantha Goldstein
    March 19, 2015 at 3:10 pm (9 years ago)

    I agree with a lot of your points, especially regarding the integration of moderator’s opinions in the discussion when they are supposed to b impartial. I also liked how you pointed out the fact that a moderator is supposed to have control, however it is not ideal because we can’t put words in other people’s mouths. Well done!

  2. Jennifer Norris
    March 19, 2015 at 2:42 pm (9 years ago)

    I completely agree with some of the issues that you present. I think sometimes people do not even notice when they are showing their opinion because people are so used to being able to express their opinions. I also think your analysis of what a moderator should be is spot on.

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