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.

International Journal of Communication Publishes a Special Section on Big Data Discourses

How do we imagine Big Data—and why does our imagination matter?

This Special Section on Big Data Discourses, guest edited by Christian Pentzold and Charlotte Knorr, is driven by a simple but urgent idea: Big Data is not only a technological phenomenon. It is also a discursive one. The ways we talk about data—its promises, dangers, and futures—actively shape how datafication unfolds in practice. Narratives, metaphors, and imaginaries do not merely accompany technological advancement. They guide investment decisions, inform policy, structure institutions, and legitimize particular forms of power.

The Special Section turns attention to the discursive layer of Big Data. It examines how ideas, affects, and visions circulate across corporate communication, policy documents, journalism, public debate, and everyday sensemaking. Drawing on perspectives from communication studies, STS, sociology, linguistics, and critical data studies, the contributions in this Special Section explore how Big Data is imagined as objective, inevitable, efficient—and how these imaginaries compete and collide. The Special Section encourages thinking about data not as raw facts, but as outcomes of interpretation, classification, and social negotiation.

These articles are timely. As Big Data and AI increasingly shape governance, security, health, and everyday media use, public debate often lags behind technological implementation. Discourses about data tend to travel faster than critical understanding. By analyzing sociotechnical imaginaries and everyday folk theories, the Forum provides tools to better understand how data power operates beyond code and infrastructure.

At a moment when access to data and analytical capacity remains deeply uneven, the Special Section foregrounds the power of concepts, labels, and stories about Big Data that may circulate more widely than data itself. By unpacking these discourses, the contributions open space for critique—and for imagining alternative, more accountable data futures.

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on January 27, 2026. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!

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Big Data Discourses: Introduction to the Special Section
Charlotte Knorr, Christian Pentzold

A Model of Frame Categories for Analyzing Media Discourse of Emerging Technologies
Emma Kaylee Graves-Sandriman

Reframing Datafication: News Media Discourses on Big Data and AI
Maria Cristina Paganoni, Gastón Becerra

Ask Me Anything! ◕‿◕ – How ChatGPT Got Hyped Into Being
Jascha Bareis

Curating AI Into Being: Hacks/Hackers as Amplifiers of Journalism’s Digital Futures
Andreas Hepp

Data Feelings: Everyday Affects and Sensory Dimensions of Personal Digital Data
Ash Watson, Deborah Lupton

Aesthetics of Boundless Insight: On the Scalar Ideology of the Data Imaginary
Magdalena Krysztoforska, Oliver Kenny

A New Source of the Self? A Critical View on the Domestication of Data
Jun Yu

Deceptive Stories About Scale: Digital Technology, Public Services, and the Promise of Efficiency
Alison B. Powell

Data in India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach
Preeti Raghunath

Toward Disability Data Justice: A Critical Discussion of Disability and Big Data Discourses
Kuansong Victor Zhuang, Gerard Goggin

Cultural Motifs of Big Data in User-Generated Content: A Semiautomated Analysis of 10 Years of Discourse
Charlotte Knorr, Andreas Niekler, Christian Pentzold

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Silvio Waisbord, Editor 
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Andrew Taylor, Webmaster 
Christian Pentzold and Charlotte Knorr, 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 Generative AI and Disinformation

How does generative AI affect disinformation?

This Special Section on (Generative) AI and Disinformation, guest-edited by Aqsa Farooq and Claes de Vreese, zooms in on one of the biggest questions of today’s communication landscape.

Generative AI represents a pivotal development in the contemporary information ecosystem. Large Language and Image Models now enable rapid and scalable creation of (hyper)realistic yet synthetic content. As these models become more accessible and sophisticated, so too do their capacities to distort public discourse and manipulate perceptions. This can undermine trust in democratic institutions. At the same time, these technologies offer promising tools for detection, resilience-building, and possibly countering falsehoods. As such, there is rapid global and cross-disciplinary interest in understanding how AI-driven tools have added another dimension to the existing challenge of disinformation. Scholarship in this space is booming: In 2024 there were more than double the number of publications compared to the preceding years combined.

This Special Section brings together timely and original scholarship on this challenge. It explores the multifaceted role of AI, including how it can both contribute to, as well as potentially provide solutions to, the problem of disinformation. Overall, the collection of articles underscores both the negative potential of AI-driven technologies, such as by opportunistically targeting citizens for political campaigns, while also highlighting their promise in assisting the work of those tackling disinformation at scale. That said, informing citizens about the misuse of GenAI may in turn lead to the reduced efficacy of literacy interventions and journalism. Finally, analyses of the overarching role of AI in political contexts, journalism, and governance reveals both the dual nature of AI in the fight against disinformation, and the need for more collaborative efforts. 

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on November 18, 2025. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!

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(Generative) AI and Disinformation—Introduction
Asqa Farooq, Claes de Vreese

Defining the Role(s) of AI in Disinformation Research—A Systematic Review
Maria F. Grub, Edda Humprecht

Breaking the News? Generative AI’s Impact on Journalism and Its Implications for Disinformation
Nicolas Mattis, Claes de Vreese

Socio-Technical Imaginaries of AI’s Role in the Strengthened EU Code of Practice on Disinformation
Alejandro Flores Moleón

Unveiling Disinformation Narratives With AI: Collaborative Insights from Fact-Checkers and Computer Scientists’ Work in Analyzing Climate Misinformation Narratives
Irene Larraz, Ramón Salaverría, Javier Serrano-Puche

Parental Perceptions of Dynamic Exchanges of Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Misinformation and Corrections From AI Checkers on Reddit
Rita Tang, Benedetta Burston, Jikai Sun, Emily K. Vraga, Leticia Bode

A Beacon of Trustworthiness in a Sea of Disinformation: Does News Coverage About the Dangers of Generative AI Cause People to Flock to Journalism?
Tom Dobber, Michael Hameleers, Christopher Starke, Toni van der Meer

Echoes of Doubt: Exposure to Information About Generative AI Decreases Believability of News
Marina Tulin, Myrto Pantazi, Christopher Starke, Michael Sivolap, Tom Dobber

Synthetic Diversity: Examining the Effects of Ethnic Targeting Using AI-Generated Political Ads
Morgan Wack, Douglas A. Parry

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Silvio Waisbord, Editor 
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Andrew Taylor, Webmaster 
Asqa Farooq and Claes de Vreese, 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 Media and Ambivalence: The Value of a Quandary

Is ambivalence the best we can wish for in times of political extremism?

This Special Section on Media and Ambivalence, guest-edited by Barbie Zelizer and Nelson Ribeiro, argues that in its most promising form, ambivalence presents a quandary. It suggests that being torn can be better than being sure, that conflict can be resolved by straddling both of its sides or that trying on different faces offsets the discomfort of contradiction.

Often associated with indecision or ineptitude, capable of paralyzing our ability to make decisions and take sides, ambivalence is frequently portrayed as negative. For the media and academia that privilege messages projecting certainty, it can be a terrifying concept. Even so, it has been central to how media scholars have thought about messages, reception, effects, and technologies. While some see ambivalence undercutting and undermining the media environments it inhabits, others consider it a necessary complication of the overused binaries of late modernity.

The articles in this Special Section discuss how different media and technologies help create ambivalent meanings and complicate the debates taking place in the public realm across different social and political contexts. Each manuscript presents a case study that illustrates how ambivalence can be used as a frame for knowledge generation. Each also illustrates how getting rid of ambivalence can reduce what is most desirable and strived for into rigid and overly constrained modes of thought.

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on August 28, 2025. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!

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Media and Ambivalence: The Value of a Quandary—Introduction
Barbie Zelizer, Nelson Ribeiro

Repetition and Ambivalence in COVID-19-Related Chinese Political Jokes
Ran Wang

“Destroyer of Worlds”: Individual Narratives, Mass Atrocity, and (Moral) Ambivalence
Liz Hallgren

Is It a Fit or Is She Just Skinny? A TikTok Hashtag as a Site of Ambiguity Around Fashion, Gender, and Women’s Bodies
Ira Solomatina

¡No Fue Suicidio, Fue Feminicidio!: Ambivalent Facts in the (Un)making of Feminicide in Mexico
Fernanda Soria-Cruz

The Ambivalences of Virtual Love: Conversational, Embodied, and Hyperreal Intimacy in the Social VR Platform VRChat
Jindong Leo-Liu

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Silvio Waisbord, Editor 
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Andrew Taylor, Webmaster 
Barbie Zelizer and Nelson Ribeiro, 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.