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

Paper Submission Deadline: 31 January 2027

Introduction

We are living through an era of "hyper-hype." Generative AI, blockchain, the metaverse, and quantum computing arrive in successive waves — each reshaping how markets are formed, navigated, and contested. Hype is not incidental noise; it is a constitutive force of contemporary digital capitalism.

Yet despite its pervasive influence, hype has rarely been examined as a phenomenon in its own right by information systems (IS) and organisation and management theory (OMT) scholars. This Special Issue advances scholarly understanding of hype as a central yet under-examined phenomenon shaping the digital future — treating hype not as rhetorical excess to be dismissed, but as a patterned and consequential feature of contemporary digital innovation.

Rather than asking whether hype is good or bad, this Special Issue asks how hype works — how it directs attention, mobilises resources, coordinates belief, structures decision-making under uncertainty, and shapes how digital futures are imagined and acted upon.

Scope & Significance

Hype is not merely a cultural or discursive overlay — it is a constitutive condition shaping organisational decisions about technology adoption, investment, governance, and digital transformation. IS and OMT scholars are well positioned to examine how organisations work with hype — probing, qualifying, hedging, and selectively stabilising hyped claims so uncertain digital futures become provisional commitments.

This Special Issue invites contributions from IS, OMT, and related fields — including Science & Technology Studies (STS), Economic Sociology, and Market Studies — that contribute to Hype Studies as a shared analytical space linking these traditions.

Five Thematic Areas

Theme 1 — Hype, Decision-Making, and Organisational Practice How do organisations make technology adoption, investment, and procurement decisions amid competing and exaggerated claims? How do decision-makers navigate uncertainty without settled evidence — learning to work through hype rather than despite it?

Theme 2 — Attention, Legitimacy, and the Mediation of Technological Futures How is collective attention mobilised around particular technologies? How do algorithms, platforms, and data infrastructures participate in generating, evaluating, and sustaining hype?

Theme 3 — Intermediaries, Promissory Products, and the Infrastructure of Hype How do industry analysts, consultants, investors, platform owners, and media actors produce, evaluate, and recalibrate hype? How are hype cycles, benchmarks, and categories not merely amplifying expectations but disciplining, sequencing, and translating them into actionable commitments?

Theme 4 — Hype across Time and the Innovation Lifecycle How does hype's role shift from early-stage field formation through market-making to organisational adoption? How are expectations stabilised, revised, or abandoned as technologies mature?

Theme 5 — Contestation, Competition, and the Politics of Hype How do actors challenge, deflate, or reframe hyped claims? How has hype become a site of mediated competition waged through evaluative frameworks? What would responsible hype look like in policy and practice?

Theme 6 — Hype, Wicked Problems, and Digital Futures How do hype dynamics interact with intractable social problems — elderly care, climate adaptation, public health — where repeated failure produces low expectations and innovation inertia?

List of Topic Areas

Manuscripts are invited on themes including, but not limited to:

1. Hype as a constitutive force in digital capitalism and technology markets

2. Organisational decision-making under hype — adoption, investment, and procurement

3. Hype management as an organisational practice — routines, infrastructures, and governance

4. Industry analysts, consultants, and intermediaries as hype producers and evaluators

5. Hype cycle reports, rankings, and promissory products as evaluative artefacts

6. Algorithms, platforms, and digital infrastructures in generating and sustaining hype

7. The professionalisation of hype — the business of expectations as an industry

8. Sociology of expectations — promise-requirement cycles in digital innovation

9. Hype across the innovation lifecycle — from field formation to organisational adoption

10. Generative AI, blockchain, metaverse, and quantum computing as empirical sites of hype

11. Contestation, scepticism, and the politics of deflating hyped claims

12. Hype and wicked social problems — elderly care, climate, public health

13. Hype and entrepreneurship — legitimacy, storytelling, and expectation management

14. Digital futures, imagined expectations, and speculative capitalism

15. Methodological innovations for studying hype — ethnography, process studies, digital trace analysis

Guest Editors

Prof. Neil Pollock University of Edinburgh Business School, UK

Prof. Danielle Logue UNSW Business School, UNSW Sydney, Australia

Prof. Harro van Lente Maastricht University, Netherlands

Dr. Marian Gatzweiler University of Edinburgh Business School, UK

Key Timeline

Paper Development Workshop: Late 2026 (date TBA)

Paper Submission Deadline: 31 January 2027

First Round Reviews Due: 15 May 2027

First Round Decision Letters: 30 June 2027

First Round Resubmissions: 31 October 2027

Second Round Reviews Due: 31 January 2028

Second Round Decision Letters: 15 March 2028

Second Round Resubmissions: 15 June 2028

Final Papers Selected and Editorial: October 2028

Paper Development Workshop

An online Paper Development Workshop will be organised to provide constructive feedback from guest editors and discussants on draft papers prior to formal submission. Participation is encouraged but not required for submission to the Special Issue. Details regarding format and timing will be announced following publication of this call.

Submission Guidelines

Submit your manuscript via the Information and Organization online submission system. In your cover letter, indicate that the submission is for the Hype Studies Special Issue and select Article Type:

"VSI: Hype Studies"

All submissions will undergo the journal's standard double-blind peer review process.

All submissions must be original and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.

For author guidelines, visit the official Information and Organization journal page on the Elsevier ScienceDirect website.

About the Journal

Information and Organization, published by Elsevier, is a leading international peer-reviewed journal with a CiteScore of 11.6 and Impact Factor of 4.7. It supports open access publishing and is dedicated to advancing research at the intersection of information systems, organisation studies, and technology — providing a global platform for interdisciplinary scholarship exploring how digital technologies, information systems, and organisational processes co-constitute each other in contemporary social and economic life.

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