Biography

Martin Engebretsen is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Agder (UiA). He carries out research into the intersection between linguistics and media studies, with special interest in multimodality, genre and discourse studies, journalism studies and digital communication. Engebretsen has also a background as a journalist.

Since defending his PhD thesis on hypertext in the news media in 2001, he has investigated several areas of digital textuality and communication. The impact of digitization on the various genres found on online news sites has been the subject of focus in many of his articles and books. Over the last decade he has led several research projects on multimodality, focusing on the social impact of texts combining verbal and visual modes of expression. His latest monography was an investigation of innovative applications of photography and graphics in online communication.

Engebretsen is (until December 2019) leading the 3-year research project INDVIL (Innovative Data Visualization and Visual-Numeric Literacy) funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project investigates data visualization from semiotic, aesthetic and social perspectives, and datavisualization in the news is a core subject in the project. Together with Helen Kennedy, he is the editor of the book Data Visualization in Society, to be published fall 2019 with Amsterdam University Press.