Mark Aakhus

Mark Aakhus’s research is distinguished by his unique approach to investigating the relationship among communication, argumentation, and design in digital society. His studies, which are grounded in multiple methods of discourse analysis, incorporate computational social science and digital ethnography. Aakhus’s work focuses on the conduct, conceptualization, and consequences of technological and organizational interventions that seek to augment interaction and reasoning in decision-making and conflict management.

He recently co-authored the award-winning – Argumentation in Complex Communication: Managing Disagreement in a Polylogue – and previously co-edited the pioneering – Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance – both published by Cambridge University Press. In addition, he has published extensively and edited multiple special issues and proceedings about how emerging technologies are entangled in the pragmatics of human communication. His current research addresses artificial intelligence as a puzzle of communication and the prospects for contestability by design for accountable algorithmic systems, platforms, and organizations.