We are living through an era of ‘hyper-hype’ (Jordan, 2020). Generative AI, blockchain, the metaverse, and quantum computing arrive in successive waves, each reshaping how markets are formed, navigated, and contested (Kotliar, 2025). 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. We invite contributions from IS, OMT and related fields, including Science & Technology Studies (STS), Economic Sociology, Market Studies, etc., that treat hype not as rhetorical excess to be dismissed, but as a patterned and consequential feature of contemporary digital innovation.
Hype is commonly defined as a surge in attention, excitement, and expectations, often surrounding emerging technologies, mobilised through promissory narratives (van Lente, 2012). It is often treated as background noise to be filtered out (Jordan, 2020) or as a moral problem (Hampel & Dalpiaz, 2025) associated with boom-and-bust cycles (Garud et al., 2021). Its role and meaning vary across contexts (Wadhwani & Lubinski, 2025): some view hype as dangerous (Nightingale & Martin, 2004), while others regard it as necessary (van Lente, 2012) or even desirable (Potts, 2017) for innovation. Economic sociologists position hype as a driving force for capitalism itself, fuelling the ‘animal spirits’ of the economy through fictional expectations (Beckert, 2016, 2021). We treat this ambivalence as a constitutive feature of hype, one that makes it analytically interesting and empirically tractable (Wedlin & Weinryb, 2025). Rather than asking whether hype is good or bad, we ask 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. We aim for a symmetrical approach (Pollock & Williams, 2026), one that neither prejudges hype as deceptive noise nor uncritically celebrates it, but traces how it produces effects in practice.
Hype is not merely a cultural or discursive overlay (Bourne, 2024) but a constitutive condition shaping organisational decisions about technology adoption, investment, governance, and digital transformation (Barrett et al., 2015). In this journal, scholars have long examined closely related phenomena, including organising visions, management fashions, and future-oriented imaginaries (Swanson et al., 2025). The concept of organising visions (Swanson & Ramiller, 1997; Davidson et al., 2015) shows how interorganisational communities construct shared understandings that enable interpretation, legitimation, and resource mobilisation, while management fashion research highlights transitory waves of belief in novel and efficient technologies (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999; Baskerville & Myers, 2009; Hirschheim et al., 2012).
This positions IS & OMT scholars well to examine how organisations work with hype, how they probe, qualify, hedge, and selectively stabilise hyped claims so uncertain digital futures become provisional commitments (Pollock & Williams, 2026). This foregrounds decision-making under uncertainty and the growing operationalisation of hype: the tangible practices and evaluative infrastructures through which promissory claims are made actionable (Handunge et al., 2025).
These concerns align with a broader shift across multiple disciplines that treats the future not as a distant abstraction but as a site of practical engagement (Halford & Southerton, 2023). Scholars in Future Studies have moved toward practice-oriented perspectives (Thompson & Byrne, 2022), while others have traced how entrepreneurs mobilise 'projective stories' to navigate disappointment (Garud et al., 2014). The critical question, as Pollock and Williams (2026) argue, is not whether the future can be known, but how it is rendered actionable in the present. This reframing speaks directly to IS and OMT concerns about digital futures (Flyverbom & Garsten, 2021; Wenzel et al., 2020), in which expectations are increasingly packaged, priced, and systematically appraised through what Mützel (2022) calls a growing 'market of expectations'.
At the same time, hype is not reducible to other future-oriented concepts. Whereas organising visions rely on shared meaning and relative interpretive stability to enable coordination and implementation (Wang & Swanson, 2007), hype can thrive on ambiguity. It often gains traction precisely because it allows diverse audiences to project divergent expectations, interests, and imaginaries onto emerging technologies before stable interpretive communities have formed. We therefore anticipate that contributions to the special issue will clarify how hype intersects with, extends, and departs from more established concepts, specifying its distinctive dynamics and analytical value.
OMT research shows how entrepreneurs mobilise hype to attract attention and legitimacy (Pontikes & Barnett, 2017), even as accumulating expectations can later constrain them (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019; Logue & Grimes, 2022). Economic sociology situates hype within future-oriented capitalism, where imagined futures coordinate action under uncertainty and shape processes of valuation and speculation (Beckert, 2016; Geiger & Gross, 2017; Zaloom, 2009). Our goal is to contribute to an already emerging cross-disciplinary conversation. We invite work that helps articulate Hype Studies as a shared analytical space linking IS and OMT, STS, Economic Sociology, Market Studies, and related traditions. Our contribution is to draw these strands together more explicitly around hype, not as mere exaggeration, but as an evolving and institutionalised phenomenon that can be empirically traced over time.
The sociology of expectations offers a foundational lens for studying hype, showing how expectations are performative: they generate commitments, obligations, and coordinated action among diverse actors (Borup et al., 2006; van Lente, 2012). Key concepts include promise–requirement cycles (van Lente, 1993), arenas of expectations (Bakker et al., 2011), distinctions between hype enactors and hype selectors (Bakker & Budde, 2012), promissory organisations (Pollock & Williams, 2010), and the shift from ‘hype in the wild’ to more structured forms of ‘tamed hype’ (Pollock & Williams, 2026).
This literature has primarily developed in early-stage innovation contexts (science policy, research funding, and emerging technoscientific fields; see Konrad et al., 2017). While yielding important insights, this focus leaves open questions particularly salient for IS and OMT research. We see these as opportunities for extension:
First, existing work has devoted less attention to how hype operates in later innovation phases (market-making, market operation, and organisational adoption) where technologies are packaged, evaluated, sold, and integrated into practice (Konrad et al., 2016). These phases are central to IS and OMT concerns, where hyped expectations materialise in procurement decisions, implementation strategies, and governance arrangements (Wedlin & Weinryb, 2025).
Second, the sociology of expectations has focused on the production of hype by scientists and entrepreneurs. Less is known about how expectations are consumed, interpreted, and acted upon by organisational decision-makers (digital leaders, technology executives, product and platform owners, enterprise buyers, etc.) who must navigate exaggerated claims amid uncertainty (Hultin & Mähring, 2025). This shift from hype production to hype use and navigation opens important space for scholarship, particularly as evidence grows that these actors learn to make decisions through hype rather than despite it (Pollock & Williams, 2026).
Third, prior work has paid limited attention to the material and digital infrastructures through which hyped expectations circulate: hype cycle reports, rankings, visualisations, platforms, and algorithmic systems that actively shape what becomes visible, comparable, and actionable. These ‘promissory products’ (Pollock & Williams, 2010, 2026) do not merely amplify hyped expectations; they purify, sequence, and recalibrate them. Examining these resonates with traditional IS and OMT concerns around information artefacts and sociomateriality.
Fourth, recent developments point to growing professionalisation of hyped expectations, including specialist intermediaries (industry analysts, consultants, and related experts) who produce and sell future-oriented assessments as a business (Mützel, 2022). These market actors play an increasingly central role in shaping hype yet remain mostly underexplored.
Fifth, and relatedly, this professionalisation constitutes a pivotal transformation: hype is no longer an 'unbounded resource' (Logue & Grimes, 2022) accessible to anyone, but an increasingly industrialised domain requiring specialised knowledge, evaluative frameworks, and coordination expertise. Understanding the business of hype (the commercial infrastructure that now mediates promissory claims) represents a significant opportunity for scholarship. The concept of hype management (Logue & Grimes, 2022) offers a generative bridge between the sociology of expectations and IS/OMT research, examining how actors navigate hype as both a resource and a liability through organisational routines, evaluative infrastructures, and digital systems.
We envision contributions engaging one or more of the following themes:
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? How do organisations manage hype as both a resource and a liability (Logue & Grimes, 2022), retaining strategic flexibility under escalating expectations while developing increasingly reflexive routines for evaluation and commitment (Birch, 2023)?
Attention, legitimacy, and the mediation of technological futures: How is collective attention mobilised around particular technologies, and what strategies amplify some digital futures while marginalising others (Byrne & Giuliani, 2025)? How do algorithms, platforms, and data infrastructures participate in generating, evaluating, and sustaining hype, and what changes when automated systems become active participants in shaping promissory claims?
Intermediaries, promissory products, and the infrastructure of hype: How do industry analysts, consultants, investors, platform owners, and media actors produce, evaluate, and recalibrate hype (van Lente, 2012; Pollock & Williams, 2026)? How do artefacts, hype cycles, benchmarks, and categories not merely amplify expectations but discipline, sequence, and translate them into provisional, testable commitments? What forms of expertise underpin these activities, and how is the business of hype being professionalised as a domain in its own right (Mützel, 2022)?
Hype across time and the innovation lifecycle: How does hype’s role shift from early-stage field formation through market-making to organisational adoption (Mankevich et al., 2025)? How are expectations stabilised, revised, or abandoned as technologies mature? What does hype’s multi-scalar circuitry, from micro-level interactions to macro-level market shifts, reveal about its enduring structural influence on innovation trajectories (van Lente & Rip, 1998)?
Contestation, competition, and the politics of hype: How do actors challenge, deflate, or reframe hyped claims, and what practices of organised scepticism emerge in response to inflated expectations? How has hype become a site of mediated competition, waged not only through compelling narratives but through the evaluative frameworks that adjudicate them? How does the professionalisation of hype reinforce or mitigate inequalities in market visibility, and what would responsible hype look like in policy and practice?
Hype, wicked problems, and digital futures: How do hype dynamics interact with intractable or ‘wicked’ social problems - elderly care, climate adaptation, public health etc., - where repeated failure produces low expectations and innovation inertia? We invite research examining how hype is mobilised, negotiated, and moderated in such low-expectation domains (Gardner et al., 2015), without reproducing cycles of overpromise and disappointment.
These themes are illustrative. We welcome empirically grounded studies that trace hype dynamics across actors, sites, and artefacts. While submissions on contemporary technologies, generative AI, blockchain, the metaverse, quantum computing, etc., are welcome, these should be treated as empirical sites for examining broader hype dynamics rather than as defining objects.
We encourage approaches that capture hype as dynamic, relational, and performative. We particularly welcome qualitative and ethnographic research tracing how hype is produced, circulated, evaluated, and transformed over time. This may include ethnographic studies of hype production and consumption, process studies following hyped expectations across innovation phases, discourse analyses of promissory narratives, and case studies of how organisations navigate hype-driven uncertainty. We are also open to multi-method designs that combine qualitative depth with analysis of digital traces to capture the circuitry of hype at scale. Of particular interest are designs that follow hype across organisational boundaries and the liminal spaces (analyst briefings, pitch sessions, strategy discussions) where hype is actively shaped.
This Special Issue complements the Journal of Business Venturing Special Issue on Hype and Entrepreneurship (Garud et al., 2026) by foregrounding the broader infrastructure, vendors, consultants, analysts, platform actors, and other intermediaries, through which hype is produced, evaluated, and professionalised. While that SI centres on entrepreneurial settings, this SI will additionally emphasise the digital dimensions of hype: how information infrastructures, platforms, and algorithmic systems participate in producing and stabilising hype, and how evaluative artefacts and promissory products render expectations visible and actionable.
Manuscript submission information:
Timeline
Milestone
Date
Paper Development Workshop
November 3, 2026
Paper submissions
January 31, 2027
First round reviews due
May 15, 2027
First round decision letters
June 30, 2027
First round resubmissions
October 31, 2027
Second round reviews due
January 31, 2028
Second round decision letters
March 15, 2028
Second round resubmissions
June 15, 2028
Final papers selected & editorial
October 2028
We will organise an online Paper Development Workshop (PDW) to provide constructive feedback from guest editors and discussants on draft papers prior to formal submission. Participation in the workshop is encouraged but not required for submission to the Special Issue. To enable detailed feedback we will restrict participant numbers to around 20.
Date of the PDW: Tuesday 3rd November 2026: 9-11am (CET)
Please send papers to Professor Neil Pollock (email:
neil.pollock@ed.ac.uk) by 10th October 2026. Papers should be complete (a full draft) and already in the Information & Organization format.
Notification of acceptance for the PDW will be by 26th October 2026. A joining link will be sent to accepted participants.
Manuscripts should be submitted through the Information and Organization online submission system. Authors should indicate in their cover letter that the submission is for the Hype Studies Special Issue, and select 'VSI: Hype Studies' as Article Type. All submissions will undergo the journal's standard double-blind peer review process.
Manuscripts should follow the journal's standard formatting guidelines. For author guidelines and submission details, please visit the journal website.
For inquiries about the Special Issue, please contact the guest editors.