Hype Studies: A Research Agenda for Organizing in Digital Futures

CALL FOR PAPERS
Hype Studies: A Research Agenda for Organizing in Digital Futures

Journal: Information and Organization
Publisher: Elsevier
CiteScore: 11.6
Impact Factor: 4.7
Submission Deadline: 31 January 2027

Introduction
This Special Issue develops “Hype Studies” as a research agenda investigating how hype shapes organizing in digital futures. It invites work from Information Systems (IS), Organisation and Management Theory (OMT), Science & Technology Studies (STS), Economic Sociology, and Market Studies that treat hype not as mere noise or deception, but as a consequential, patterned phenomenon in digital innovation and capitalism. The SI aims to examine how hype mobilises attention, resources, expectations, and organisational decisions around technologies such as Generative AI, blockchain, the metaverse, and quantum computing.

Guest Editors
Neil Pollock, Professor of Innovation and Social Informatics, University of Edinburgh Business School, University of Edinburgh, UK; Danielle Logue, Professor of Innovation and Impact, UNSW Business School, UNSW Sydney, Australia; Harro van Lente, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Maastricht University, Netherlands; Marian Gatzweiler, Senior Lecturer in Organisation and Management Control, University of Edinburgh Business School, University of Edinburgh, UK

Key Themes / Research Questions

Submissions may focus on (but are not limited to):

• Hype, decision‑making and organisational practice: How do organisations adopt, invest in, and govern technologies amid competing and exaggerated claims?

• Attention, legitimacy and the mediation of digital futures: How do algorithms, platforms, and data infrastructures generate, sustain, or reshape hype?

• Intermediaries and the infrastructure of hype: How do analysts, consultants, investors, and media actors produce, evaluate, and professionalise hype?

• Hype across the innovation lifecycle: How does hype evolve from early‑stage field formation to market making and organisational adoption?

• Contestation, politics and responsibility: How do actors challenge, reframe, or manage “hype” and its risks for equity, governance, and policy?

• Hype and wicked problems: How is hype mobilised in contexts like climate adaptation, public health, and elderly care, where expectations are often low or fragile?

Submission Process & Key Dates

• Submission deadline: 31 January 2027

• Submission portal:

  • Elsevier Editorial Manager for Information and Organization

  • Article type: “VSI: Hype Studies”

• All submissions undergo standard double‑blind peer review.

• An online Paper Development Workshop will be held (late 2026, timing TBA) for feedback prior to formal submission (attendance encouraged but not mandatory).

Guidelines & Contact

• Author guidelines:
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/information-and-organization/publish/guide-for-authors

• Guest Editors:
  Neil Pollock, Danielle Logue, Harro van Lente, Marian Gatzweiler

About the Journal
Information and Organization, Elsevier, publishes interdisciplinary research on the intersection of information, technology, and organising, with a strong focus on IS, OMT, and STS perspectives.

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