Mark Aakhus

Communication as Design

Design is an activity of transforming something given into something preferred through intervention and invention. An interest in design reflects a concern for creating useful things and the process of creating useful things. Design is a way to understand communication and an approach for investigating the social world from the standpoint of communication. This claim has implications for theorizing communication ‘‘problems.’’ A central puzzle that people face, from a design perspective, is how to make communication possible that was once difficult, impossible or unimagined. Communication design happens when there is an intervention into some ongoing activity through the invention of techniques, devices, and procedures that aim to redesign interactivity and thus shape the possibilities for communication. The relationship between interaction and communication, which is a central problem for communication theory, is a central problem for design. What becomes immediately apparent upon seeing communication in terms of design is the broad and deep interest in structuring, shaping, and conditioning discourse. This is evident in the varieties of designs for communication apparent in the institutions, practices, procedures, and technologies present in the built-up human world and the varieties of communication-design work performed in society apparent in the interventions people perform. Indeed, the built-up world is an ongoing engagement with the puzzle of making forms of communication possible. A crucial response to this interest is a design enterprise*that is, to open up the intentional design of communication as an object of inquiry for the purposes of advancing knowledge about communication (Aakhus & Jackson, 2005). A design enterprise treats communication as both an object and a process of design while reflectively engaging the dynamic tension between the fundamentally constitutive nature of communication and communication’s instrumental possibilities (e.g., Mokros & Aakhus, 2002).

Argumentation support: from technologies to tools

A plethora of technologies exist that are not necessarily tools. For technologies to become a tool, we contend, argumentation routines and design must coevolve.

Arguing in Internet Chat Rooms: Argumentative Adaptations to Chat Room Design and Some Consequences for Public Deliberation at a Distance

This essay examines argumentation practices as they occur in politically oriented chat rooms to explore deliberation at a distance in the public sphere. There is a discrepancy between argumentation as practiced in chat rooms and the ideal of critical discussion that is evident in the apparently incoherent, ad hominem quality of chat room discourse. Three features of chat rooms identified here suggest that the apparently low quality of argumentation may he reconstructed as an adaptation to the affordances for argumentation inherent in the design of the chat room format. These design features include continuous scrolling transcripts, contribution limits, and unidentified participants. We identify the “wit-testing” dialogue type as a rational, though not ideal, response to the affordances for argumentation in the chat room design. Finally, we suggest that the “wit-testing” dialogue in Internet chat rooms adds a new dimension to deliberation in the public sphere.

Analyzing Argumentative Discourse Units in Online Interactions

Argument mining of online interactions is in its infancy. One reason is the lack of annotated corpora in this genre. To make progress, we need to develop a principled and scalable way of determining which portions of texts are argumentative and what is the nature of argumentation. We propose a two-tiered approach to achieve this goal and report on several initial studies to assess its potential.

Neither Naïve nor Critical Reconstruction: Dispute Mediators, Impasse, and the Design of Argumentation

This study investigates how dispute-mediators handle impasse in the re-negotiation of divorce decrees by divorced couples. Three sources of impasse and three strategies for handling impasse are identified based on analysis of mediation transcripts. The concern here lies not so much in the disputants arguments but in the discussion procedures dispute-mediators use to craft the disputants argumentation into a tool to solve conflict. Their moves are understood here as a practice of reconstructing argumentative discourse that is neither naïve nor critical but reconstruction as design. Mediators reconstruction reveals a type of communication work in contemporary societies involved in the crafting of forums and formats that mediate argumentative communication. This work is often invisible and strategic which makes its interpretation, judgment, and development a challenge for pragma-dialectical theory. How reconstruction as design can be understood is discussed by building on prior pragma-dialectical theory and research.

Crafting Supportive Communication Online: A Communication Design Analysis of Conflict in an Online Support Group

This manuscript is one of many in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Communication Research on “Communication and Distance,” Volume 38, No. 1. This study examines the constitution and maintenance of supportive communication at a distance by analyzing an episode of conflict in an online cancer support community. Reconstruction of the flaming and hostile communication at the conflicts surface revealed a deeper struggle among community members about how interaction generates supportive communication. Findings indicate that, unlike conventionally understood sources of online conflict, the conflict in this context develops over (a) the right to criticize, (b) the role of venting, and (c) the value of disagreement in communicating support.

Symbolic action research in information systems: introduction to the special issue

This special issue introduction explores the need to study information systems as symbolic action systems, defines broadly the research domain and related assumptions, notes the origins of this perspective, articulates its key lines of study, and discusses the state of the field in light of published research. The essay also positions the three papers of the special issue in the broader Information Systems (IS) discourse and notes their specific contribution in bridging so far unconnected streams of research and expanding research methods amenable to symbolic action research. This introductory essay furthermore observes some unique challenges in pulling together the special issue that invited the editors to combat against the tendency to approach communicative processes associated with information systems as primarily psychological processes. In closing we note several lines of inquiry that can strengthen future studies of symbolic action including better design theories, more flexible and open use of methods, and attentive use of rich traditions that inform symbolic action research in IS.

Using an online forum to encourage reflection about difficult conversations in medicine

OBJECTIVE Medical students encounter many challenging communication situations during the clinical clerkships. We created the Difficult Conversations Online Forum (DC Forum) to give students an opportunity to reflect, debrief, and respond to one another about their experiences. METHODS The DC Forum is a web-based application with structured templates for student posts and responses, along with a mechanism for faculty feedback. It became a required part of the curriculum for third-year medical students in 2003. We content analyzed data collected during the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 academic years (N=315). All open-ended responses were coded by two members of the research team; the few disagreements were resolved via discussion. RESULTS While posts addressed a wide range of topics, more than one-third (35.6%) of students addressed delivering bad news. Nearly half (49.4%) of the students reported they had talked with someone about their difficult conversation, most frequently a resident physician; the suggestions they received varied in terms of helpfulness. Only a small percentage of students (4.7%) reported accessing other resources. CONCLUSION The DC Forum provides a template that encourages reflection and dialogue about challenging communication situations. The online design is feasible, and enables a virtual discussion that can be joined by students regardless of their clerkship schedule or clinical site. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS A structured approach for reflection and a simple, safe mechanism for feedback are essential components of the learning process regarding difficult conversations. While the DC Forum was created for medical students, the online approach may prove useful across the continuum of medical education.

Becoming More Reflective about the Role of Design in Communication

Robert Craigs constitutive meta-model of communication reminds us that while communication scholarship may feel like discovery of communications natural properties, it is also often (if not always) on a path to invention of new possibilities and reconstitution. The constitutive meta-model suggests that every theory of communication is also a design language for communication, and that design itself may be a path to theory development. Design inquiry can be conducted in all subdisciplines of communication, incorporating and contributing to widely disparate communication theories. Design work itself takes many forms, producing artifacts as diverse as individual messages, persuasive campaigns, interaction protocols, large-scale participation frameworks for public decision-making, and more. This special issue explores design scholarship in the field of communication, with five original essays representing different subfields and different theoretical approaches. In this introduction, we argue that design work is more than application of theory; design itself is a theory-building enterprise. It is a distinct form of inquiry that builds new knowledge, complementary to, but different in kind from, empirical and critical scholarship.

Communication and Materiality: A Conversation from the CM Café

The Communication Monographs Cafe´ first opened six months ago when it hosted agroup of scholars to talk about issues social justice and public scholarship. Theconversation was wide-ranging and stimulating, so we knew it was important to openthe Cafe´ on a regular basis for more interaction about the issues that are engagingtoday’s communication researchers. This time, we opened the Cafe´ during thesummer months*iced drinks were the norm, and there was a bit of coming andgoing with busy schedules of travel and school responsibilities closing down. ThisCafe´opening was initially suggested by Tim Kuhn (University of Colorado) and PaulLeonardi (Northwestern University) who were interested in talking about theintersection of communication, materiality, and knowledge. Four other scholarswere also excited to be part of the conversation: Mark Aakhus (Rutgers University),Dawna Ballard (University of Texas), Andrew Flanagin (University of CaliforniaSanta Barbara), and Jennifer Mease (Texas A&M University).As before, the CM Cafe´was facilitated through a private group on Facebook. And,as before, this setting for the Cafe´ was both enabling in allowing for asynchronousengagement in the conversation and constraining (i.e., an entire post from Paul waslost in the ether and Mark at one point posted ‘‘I really hate this FB interface’’).As you’ll see, however, the Facebook context was also important fodder for thediscussion! The talk in the Cafe´ was wide-ranging and engaging, covering issues ofdefinition, theory, and application. Interestingly, though the conversation turned onoccasion to the issue of knowledge originally planned for the Cafe´, the majority ofposts concerned topics of materiality and communication. Thus, given the spaceconstraints of the journal and the volume of posts to choose from, I decided toconcentrate on issues of communication and materiality in my excerpting of theconversation. I organized the text here by first considering the initial question I raisedin the Cafe´ regarding materiality and communication. Three threads of explicationemerged from this question, and then the conversation converged on an example.From there, Cafe´ participants attended to related questions of technology and whatcommunication scholars can contribute to the ongoing research. So I invite you,reader, to pour yourself a beverage and enjoy the conversation.**********