September 10-12, 2025

Barcelona, Spain

Deadline: May 10, 2025

Please consider submitting an abstract (academic, practitioner or artistic) to the newly founded Hype Studies Platform, organising its first edition of the Hype Studies Conference "DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE" in Barcelona, the 10th-12th of September, 2025.

You can find the CfP on the brand new webpage: https://hypestudies.org/conference

Abstract submission is open till the 10th of May.

What is Hype studies about?

Hype Studies is an emergent, transdisciplinary research arena aimed at inquiring hype as a powerful and pervasive phenomenon that influences economic trends, political agendas, media narratives, and technological developments.

We are a group of researchers, scholars and designers exploring how hype is a thing that does things. A force composing and affecting attention, markets, politics, feelings, imagination, matter, knowledge and the social experience of time. The Hype Studies Platform is aimed at sharing resources and events to collectively understand and intervene into hype and its politics.

Join us at the inaugural conference at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya this September. We will organise the conference around these themes and formats:

THEMATIC TRACKS

1. Concepts and characteristics: How to define hype against rivaling concepts in academic and media representations? What is the difference between hype an imaginaries, trends, alarmism, visions, expectations or futures?

2. Dynamics and temporalities: How can hype be read, studied, assessed - or even anticipated? When and where does hype happen? How can linguistic, narratological, artistic, historic, ethnographic, statistical and bibliometric, or discourse analytical approaches inform the study of hype?

3. Engaging: How do practitioners and artists depict, experience, produce and deal with hypes? We welcome contributions on topics ranging from debunking, myth-busting, fact-checking, training in journalism, science and technology communication, artistic interventions...

FORMATS

1. Panel presentation: Traditional academic panel where you will present your research or insight into a topic, theory, initiative or project and its background. The conference organisers will put your proposal along other 3 similar.

2. Open floor: Curate a discussion space, where two or more people gather to discuss about a topic, concept, project or event. We expect this format to be interactive and participatory, including the audience. You can submit individually, or as a group.

3. Making and Doing: Present on the conference space action-research projects, workshops, activist interventions, games, video art and other experiments. We will incorporate your work on the conference location as an art installation, workshop/game or a video. Alternatively, you can also pitch a format you find inspirational (open format).

With best regards,
The hype study group