From Survivor, to Researcher, to Steward

Nathan Schneider — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:08:01 +0000

From Survivor, to Researcher, to Steward Nathan Schneider Tue, 02/10/2026 - 15:08

March 12, 2026
12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
CASE E330, University of Colorado Boulder

Lunch provided for registered guests.

In this talk, Dr. Kay will discuss how their own life's experience fueled their decades-long research on digital harm and how Blacksky Algorithms is taking what was once considered "me-search" and creating a safer internet rooted in self-determination and self-governance.

Dr. KáLyn “Kay” Coghill is a dynamic and award-winning educator, activist, and practitioner who is an outspoken advocate specializing in online gender-based violence, particularly digital misogynoir. They are currently the Community Safety and Support Steward for Blacksky Algorithms, providing content moderation, research, and trust and safety services. Blacksky Algorithms builds open-source, community-driven infrastructure for decentralized social media. With their extensive background in working with Black women and non-binary people to create innovative harm reduction tactics online to combat issues like misogynoir, they seek to work diligently as a trust and safety steward for Blacksky to help mitigate the harms of anti-black harassment and misogynoir. Dr. Coghill addresses pressing issues not only through their research but also through digital content creation on topics such as misogynoir, race, technology, and the nuances of gender-based violence in the digital realm, particularly on social media platforms. They have a passion for protecting Black womxn and girls and dedicate their work to doing just that. Their mission is to continue to build communities online that are safe for Black people across the globe while also finding ways to protect them from harm in the process.

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Dispute Protocols for Community Organizations: Research and Design Thinking

Nathan Schneider — Mon, 19 May 2025 16:15:13 +0000

Dispute Protocols for Community Organizations: Research and Design Thinking Nathan Schneider Mon, 05/19/2025 - 10:15

Sierra Rodriguez

The initial team working on the dispute protocols project. Left to right: Rajatava Karmaker, Sierra Rodriguez, Nathan Schneider, Júlia Martins Rodrigues, and Dorothy Howard.

This spring, MEDLab kicked off a new project aimed at building dispute protocols for diverse communities to facilitate accountability, repair, and organizational sustainability. Our process was grounded in three critical components:

Rigorous analysis of existing dispute response policies
Persona development to model real-world scenarios through design thinking
development of initial prototypes

Our research team, led by Nathan Schneider and Dorothy Howard with graduate assistants in Media Studies, conducted a wide-ranging scan of dispute resolution frameworks, analyzing case studies from communities like DjangoCon, Mozilla, and PyCon. These examples introduced key design elements such as triage models, consequence ladders, and transparency mechanisms. At the same time, they revealed critical shortcomings, including limited accessibility, narrow definitions of harm, and overly rigid or punitive procedures. Our work responded to these gaps by emphasizing flexibility, cultural responsiveness, and care-centered approaches.

To test our framework, we developed 13 detailed personas and scenarios representing various conflict types that might emerge in community organizations. These included hybrid, virtual, and in-person disputes involving identity-based harm, power dynamics, communication breakdowns, and safety issues. Each persona accounted for variables such as age, access needs, organizational roles, and background. This allowed us to evaluate how well our protocols handle anonymous reporting, mediation, role clarity, and escalation procedures centered on repair rather than punishment.

This process fed directly into the creation of two distinct prototypes. The first is a protocol builder, a modular tool that allows communities to design their own dispute systems tailored to their specific structures, values, and needs. The second is a comprehensive, step-by-step complaint resolution method, offering a detailed walk through of how to respond to conflict, including role assignment and care-focused decision making.

Together, these prototypes are grounded in research, informed by real-world testing, and designed to meet the needs of a wide variety of communities, taking special care to address the specific needs of decentralized and informal communities. In next steps, we plan to explore building mediation and conflict resolution training resources for community organizers.

Through this multi-faceted approach, MEDLab aims to build conflict resolution tools that communities can trust, adapt, and grow with. Stay tuned for more developments on this effort, and be in touch with ideas about potential collaborations or contributions.

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Dispute Systems

From Survivor, to Researcher, to Steward

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Dispute Protocols for Community Organizations: Research and Design Thinking

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