Short Abstract

An invited roundtable putting Hype Studies and STS in conversation to ask what studying hype achieves – conceptually, empirically, and methodologically – across domains, times, and places, beyond prior future-related frameworks, toward richer histories, futures, and practices.

Description

What is achieved by studying hype seriously? How are promissory claims distributed, validated, and consumed across sites, sectors, and publics? What does a reflexive STS approach – symmetrical/positioned, empirical/conceptual, and situated/nomadic – offer beyond existing frameworks of critical future studies and sociologies of expectations and promise? This roundtable invites a sustained dialogue between Hype Studies and Science and Technology Studies.

Several converging STS scholars have been interested in the study of hype as a distinct social phenomenon. Revisiting and extending the sociology of expectations, we foreground the performativity and boundary work of hype across innovation, futures and organisation studies, and media/arts. We follow the life course of innovation – upstream, midstream, downstream – tracing biographies and geographies of hype and its rhythms across times and places. Rather than reifying “hype cycles” as cycles, we suggest the study of interwoven waves, fractals, and Möbius-strip historical and topographical dynamics rooted in product cycles yet spilling across technoscientific fields, sectors, and economies –suggesting that hype studies enable holistic assessments of political economies.

Methodologically, we explore how ethnography, archival/media analysis, and biographical/geo-graphical tracing make situated knowledges of hype visible and comparable. Substantively, we consider negotiations between insiders and outsiders to various sectors, and how STS sensibilities (symmetry, reflexivity, attention to practice) can productively reframe contemporary debates (e.g., around AI, quantum technologies, crypto) while acknowledging STS’s often-uncredited influence in adjacent domains.

We this invite a 90-minute invited roundtable with 5-6 discussants (a mix of established and early-career scholars). Each will offer a 5–7-minute provocation (conceptual, historical, or methodological) followed by moderated discussion and audience engagement. Some contributions include lessons from a recently published STS book on hype and the formation of the Hype Studies network. The aim is to synthesise intellectual inheritances and chart futures for Hype Studies as a cross-disciplinary project.