Marko Siitonen

I work as a professor in intercultural and digital communication at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. I lead an international MA programme in Language, Globalisation and Intercultural Communication (LAGIC). I have broad experience in research and teaching, and I have also done trainings outside of academia. My background is in communication sciences (PhD in Speech Communication) but my work experience is heavily interdisciplinary, including cooperation with psychology and computer and educational sciences. I have worked for many years in positions that required organizatory skills (post-doc researcher, coordinator, department vice-head, pedagogical chair, etc.). I have been the chair of the Finnish National Association for Game Studies, The Finnish Association of Communication and Social Interaction (Prologos), as well as the Digital Games Research section of the European Communication Research and Education Association.

I have always been interested in the relationship people have with media and communication technology. I want to understand how we utilize technology to build and maintain groups, communities and societies. In my research I have focused on contexts such as online communities and virtual teams in working life. I have also looked at how we discursively construct nationality, ethnicity and similar social categories on the Internet. In all of the above, the central question revolves around the construction of "us" and "those others" as relevant social categories. It is a central challenge of intercultural communication to find ways to facilitate productive interaction between people despite such categorizations, and the phenomena they may lead to.