On Stages of Conflict Escalation - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 53

such action. The experienced grounds for conflict can, but need not, correspond
to any actual grounds for conflict.
A covert conflict can either be an actual two-party conflict which is concealed
from another interested third party or a case where conflictual action is taken
by one agent against another agent, who is unaware of the action, but who
would, if the action were discovered, experience it as conflict generating and
take countermeasures.
4. The distribution of power between the conflicting parties: Is it a symmetric (equal
power) or asymmetric (unequal power) conflict?
5. The type of activity, organization, and topic which is involved in the conflict:
Is it a salary/wage conflict, a courtroom trial, bargaining in a marketplace, a
political conflict, a peace negotiation, a dowry negotiation, a divorce negotiation,
or a family conflict (e.g., parent-child about pocket money, staying out at night,
homework, husband-wife about house cleaning, etc.)?
6. What modalities are applicable—alethic, deontic, and epistemic? Is the conflict
manifest vs. latent; actual vs. potential, possible, actual, and necessary; permitted
vs. obligatory; or conceivable vs. certain?
A related distinction is that between normative and descriptive aspects of
conflict. A normative perspective deals with the question of how conflicts should
be pursued in different activities. A descriptive perspective studies how conflicts
are actually pursued in different activities and organization. A possible potential
perspective, finally, asks how a conflict can/could be pursued.
7. The type of medium of communication involved in the conflict: Is it face-to-face,
telephone, written (letter, e-mail, etc.), chat, videoconference, or other Internet-
based synchronous communication?

These taxonomic features can be used to classify both long-term conflicts over
a period of time and short-term conflicts as in a short conflict episode or particular
instance of a conflict.

3.3 Responding to Conflictual Communication

There are several options for reacting and responding to conflictual communicative
action.
The main options are: (1) acceptance of other's claim, (2) rejection, (3) avoid-
ance, and (4) prevention of conflict.
The manner in which conflict is initiated and pursued through communication
and the responses to and management of this communication can be the basis for
identifying possible stages or steps in conflict escalation and de-escalation. In the
following, we will present five suggested models of stages in conflict and then turn
to a specific type of conflict (televised political debate), where we will try to identify
potential stages, in order to see to what extent the five models are applicable. Finally,
we will, on the basis of our analysis, compare political debates with other types of
conflictual communication.