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

Rethinking Sociotechnical Harms of Large Foundation Models: A Critical Reflection Through Scale Hacking
Angel Hwang

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

Please note that according to the latest Google Scholar statistics, IJoC ranks 6th among all Humanities journals and 9th among all Communications journals in the world — demonstrating the viability of open access scholarly publication at the highest level.

International Journal of Communication Publishes a Special Section on Beyond Verification: Misinformation, Disinformation, and the Artifices of Authenticity

How can something false be experienced as authentic? This Special Section on Beyond Verification: Misinformation, Disinformation, and the Artifices of Authenticity, guest-edited by Anthony Burton, Alberto Lusoli, Ganaele Langlois, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Esther Weltevrede, explores the stakes of authenticity (and its artifices) in the post-truth era. The papers included in this Special Section show how authenticity is the result of the complex processes of technical infrastructures, intensities of engagement, user experiences, and cultural practices. It addresses the orchestration of mis/disinformation through techno-cultural and techno-affective flows that combine network trackers with emotional bursts, algorithmic recommendations with national fantasies, and collective wounds and trauma with a desire for belonging. It investigates the distinction between veracity and authenticity, revealing where fact-checking fails and how dis/misinformation spreads through data and its networked infrastructures, by deploying methodologies from digital methods to media theory, and from large-scale content analysis to speculative and participatory methods.

The Special Section highlights how a diversity of approaches to affect and authenticity furthers the study of mis- and disinformation by highlighting the various intersections between perceptions, communities, and disclosures. It also stresses how different methods can approach these questions while existing in tension with each other, from quantitative and mixed-methods approaches to theoretical examinations.

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on July 20, 2026. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!

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Beyond Verification: Misinformation, Disinformation, and the Artifices of Authenticity–Introduction
Alberto Lusoli, Anthony Burton, Esther Weltevrede, Ganaele Langlois, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

IYKYK: Authenticity of Diasporic Media and Information From Vietnamese YouTube Influencers
Sarah Nguyễn, Celestine Le, Rachel E. Moran

App Time: The Dual-Layered Logic of Appification
Esther Weltevrede, Anthony Burton

Authentic Expertise: Influencers, Misinformation, and Authenticity in the Online Cancer Community
Victoria O’Meara, Esteban Morales, Jaigris Hodson

Ambient Propaganda: Tuning-in to WarTok During Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Boris Noordenbos, Marc Tuters

Portraits of Mis-/Disinformation Through the Research Persona Method
Shahpour Akhavi, Rory Sharp

Post-Truth Spaces: Studying Authenticity and Influence on the Internet
Richard Rogers, Kamila Koronska

Inauthentic Authenticity: Astroturfing to Generate True Affect Using Fakery
Camille Alloing, Vincent Fournier, Valérie Reid, Sara Germain, Olivier Turbide, Stéphanie Yates

Repetition, Rumination, and Determinism: Exploring the Temporal Logic of QAnon
Sara Bimo

Algorithmic, But Polyphonic: On the Authenticity of News Stories Covering Anti-Asian Racism
Prem Xavier Sylvester, Sage Hughes, Matt Canute, Javier Ruiz-Soler, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Affect, Certainty, and Mis/Disinformation—Afterword
Ganaele Langlois, Rory Sharp

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Silvio Waisbord, Editor 
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Andrew Taylor, Webmaster 
Anthony Burton, Alberto Lusoli, Ganaele Langlois, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Esther Weltevrede, Guest Editors

Please note that according to the latest Google Scholar statistics, IJoC ranks 6th among all Humanities journals and 9th among all Communications journals in the world — demonstrating the viability of open access scholarly publication at the highest level.