Negotiating Neutrality in Moroccan Televised Mediation: A Conversation Analytic Study

This study investigates how mediator neutrality is interactionally established in Moroccan televised mediation. While mediation is often identified as a conflict resolution mechanism supported by the facilitative practices of impartial third-parties, televised mediation embodies a hybrid interactional framework whereby institutional, legal, therapeutic, and entertainment expectations coalesce. Drawing on Conversation Analysis (CA) and participation framework approaches to mediation discourse, the study examines how mediators, “The Mediator” TV show, broadcast on 2M, solicit disputants’ position reports, formulate mitigated proposals, and re-establish participation balance under conditions of power-imbalance. The analysis of various mediation hearings reveals that disputants’ proposals are inherently not self-initiated; rather they are sequentially elicited through question and opinion-seeking adjacency pairs that assign entitlement and sustain disputant decisional authority. The research further indicates that neutrality is maintained through practices of agency redistribution, namely pre-sequences, delays, and evident disclaimers of influence, that reflect restricted deontic attitude and strengthen disputants’ rights to accept or reject the advance proposals. Alongside revoicing participants’ report positions to promote sustained engagement, the findings of this study report illustrations of mediator replacement in hearings where the involved parties are identified within relationships of interactional asymmetry and elevated stakes (self-harm). Regardless of the fact that replacement mechanism may emerge as a breach of neutrality, its position within the interactional sequence (e.g., subsequent to unsuccessful attempts of alignment) constructs it as a remedial procedure directed to achieve ethical accountability and balanced participation. At a broader level, the study advocated for reconceptualizing mediator neutrality not as a non-interventionist approach but as a context-sensitive, interactionally established custom that adjusts institutional formalities with social and relational outcomes.