International Journal of Communication Publishes a Forum on SCALE: Tracing the Sociotechnical Convenings, Sizes, Transitions, and Measurements Shaping Communication Systems
Though much of life entails making and navigating “scale,” this fundamental concept is often invisible, assumed, and unexamined. How is a phenomenon bounded as small or big? Which practices are local versus global? Who has the power to aggregate actions and declare similarities among people? What makes a goal short-term versus long-term? Answering these and related questions often requires grappling with sociotechnical systems that convene, fragment, measure, compare, aggregate, anchor and shift perspectives on, speed up and slow down, narrow and expand human-nonhuman relationships.
This Forum on SCALE: Tracing the Sociotechnical Convenings, Sizes, Transitions, and Measurements Shaping Communication Systems, guest edited by Mike Ananny, Kyooeun Jang, and Colin Maclay, traces sociotechnical scale across a richly interdisciplinary set of 10 essays examining everything from machine learning, content moderation, viral memes, and digital labor to self-tracking apps, prenatal development, venture capitalism, planetary exploration, urban planning, and dreams of better futures.
We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on August 6, 2026. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!
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FORUM
Sociotechnical Scales for Navigating the Polycrisis: Method, Transformation, Normativity, and Imagined Futures—Introduction
Mike Ananny, Kyooeun Jang
Scaling Down to Scale Up? When Less Moderation Claims to Protect More
Kyooeun Jang
The Couch Guy Chronicles: Scaling Visibility, Publicity, and Privacy on the Web
Celeste Oon
Scaling Digital Labor in Gaming Guilds: Metaverse Workers as Imaginaries of Futurity
Joy Hannah Panaligan, Jonalou Labor
Scales for a Community: How Strava Mediates the Body and Space to Enact Place-Based Imaginaries
Louise Xie
“Cute” or “Completely Unhinged?” Making Sense of Pregnancy App Size Comparisons
Molly Frizzell
Scaling Identity: Venture Capital and Standpoint in Innovation Industries
Edith Hollander, Sook-Lin Toh
Mediating Urban Futures: Reading Scales at Urban Planning Exhibition Centers
Kexin Lin
“Making Life Multiplanetary”: Promise and Imperative of Scaling
Stephen Yang
How Dreams Scale Up: Martial Law and the Living Dream of Democracy in South Korea
Seongkyung Lee
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Silvio Waisbord, Editor
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Andrew Taylor, Webmaster
Mike Ananny, Kyooeun Jang, and Colin Maclay, Guest Editors
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