Over the past few years, peacebuilders and conflict mediators have innovated to address conflict dynamics in online spaces. Like T&S professionals, conflict mediators are deeply concerned about the presence of dangerous speech, coordinated inauthentic behavior, and other forms of harmful online content, which can pose a threat to sensitive peace talks and fuel a reversion to conflict. Alongside partnering with social media platforms to address and remediate these dynamics, mediators have developed an innovative methodology to address harmful online content at its source: engaging conflict parties in direct dialogue about their online behavior, and codifying online restraint in modern day ‘social media peace agreements.’ This Lightning Talk will spotlight the work of developing and implementing social media agreements - which have been negotiated in contexts as diverse as Bosnia, Nigeria, and Thailand - and exploring how they can support ongoing work by the T&S community. Fundamentally, these agreements bring different parties to the table to discuss their online behavior and to encourage restraint in the digital environment. This Lightning Talk will be aimed at fostering greater awareness of the potential of social media agreements to complement T&S efforts, by introducing an upstream approach to content moderation that can decrease the production of harmful online content.

Lightning talks are 5-7 minute talks grouped with other 5-7 minute talks across a 50 minute session. There will be time for Q&A after all of the lightning talks in a session.