Tracks

Agentic Media

Hypertext research offers essential methods for structuring, tracing, and interpreting machine-mediated information flows. We invite contributions that deepen hypertext theory and systems design in order to address contemporary forms of algorithmic mediation – not as general AI studies, but as rigorous extensions of hypertext’s historical commitment to scalable knowledge management and human-centred augmentation.

Topics including (but not limited to):

    Hypertext in AI interfaces: machine-assisted linking, summarisation, and trail formation.
    Augmentation: principles of human–machine collaboration.
    Hypertext models for exploring multimodal corpora.
    Hybrid systems (human/AI) and environments for preservation of meaningful reader agency.
    Generative Engine Optimisation strategies to support AI understanding of content.
    Agentic narratives using generative AI to realise unique, interactive traversal experiences across content and/or media.
    Computational cognitive models of narratives digital creativity and computational storytelling

Authorship, Readership, Publishing

Hypertext has transformed authoring, reading, and publishing by disrupting, subverting, or complementing book and media culture and practice. In an era when authorship is increasingly hybrid and machine-assisted, hypertext research provides essential tools for preserving legibility, provenance, and interpretive focus across evolving reading and publishing ecosystems. Submissions may focus on specific case studies or theories of new emerging practices, rhetorical analyses, or methodological reflections that take inspiration from fields such as book history, digital humanities and/or media studies or the study of literature. Hypertext as a paradigm can ensure that digital writing cultures remain participatory, accountable, and meaningfully structured.

Topics including (but not limited to):

    Authorship models: contextualising the production of hypertexts.
    AI, Readers and Authorship: Redrawing relationships and creating new forms of textuality. 
    Book history: historically-informed frameworks, theories, and concepts for understanding hypertextual production, dissemination, and reception.
    Publishing workflows: hypertext as a paradigm in editorial practices, cross-platform infrastructure and critical literacy.
    Scholarly editions and adaptations: hypertextual representations and reconceptualisations of extant texts.
    Rhetorics and poetics: how hypertexts are framed in popular and scholarly discourse, as well as theoretical considerations on forms of expression supported by hypertextual formats.
    Text, paratext, and multimodality: impact of digital forms on intra- and intertextual connectivity. 
    The future of reading: how reading is likely to evolve, change and adapt in response to cultural and material change.

Technical Applications of Hypertext

Technical hypertext research continues to provide robust architectures for organising, traversing, and preserving large and heterogeneous datasets. As textual corpora grow exponentially and machine-generated materials permeate every domain, hypertext systems offer versioning, annotation, provenance tracking, and long-term knowledge stewardship. We welcome contributions that further these capabilities through rigorous engineering, formal modelling, and system innovation—advancing hypertext as a foundational technology for the next generation of data-intensive applications.

Topics including (but not limited to):

    Large-scale knowledge systems: hypermedia models, protocols, and architectures
    Dataset curation: alignment and interpretability
    Semantic ontologies: linking and graph-based knowledge representations
    XR/VR/AR: hypertext as spatial linking, and non-Euclidean navigation frameworks
    Legacy systems: interoperability and long-term digital preservation

Principles, Directions, Reflections

Hypertext has always been both a technology and a philosophy for engaging with network textuality: from Bush’s epistemology of associative reasoning to Engelbart’s augmentation paradigm to Nelson’s rethinking of text. This track invites research that critically extends these foundational ideas to address the conceptual, ethical, and experiential challenges of contemporary text ecologies shaped by automation and scale. We encourage submissions that deepen hypertext theory itself – its models, histories, and future trajectories – and treat hypertext as a methodological anchor in the contemporary media landscape and the production of cultural objects.

Topics including (but not limited to):

    Philosophical foundations: semiotic and epistemological contexts
    New directions: Unexplored correspondences with adjacent academic domains or disciplines
    Future of text: proposals for future hypertext applications and paradigms
    Hypertext pioneers: Bush, Engelbart, Nelson, today
    Culture, memory, and cognition in large-scale text environments
    History of hypertext in cultural, academic, and technical contexts
    Frameworks for preserving human interpretive agency in automated textual systems

Communities (Digital Practice and Social Media)

At its core, hypertext research has examined how linking structures shape communities, collaboration, and the circulation of knowledge. Social media platforms and algorithmic agents increasingly govern how these social connections are formed and interpreted. The insights of hypertext research help design communicative systems that support transparency, diversity, and collective intelligence. We welcome submissions that advance hypertext-centred understandings of community dynamics and sociotechnical infrastructures, ensuring that hypertext remains a framework and a paradigm for studying and improving digital culture and scholarship.

    Research Communities: text remediation in scholarly practice (e.g. impact of AI applications on formulating and tackling research questions)
    Link analysis and networked discourse grounded in hypertext models
    Community knowledge systems: collaboration, digital practice, and collective memory
    Transparency and interpretability in social media ecosystems
    Visual and big-data: approaches to analysing social link patterns
    Decentralised, grass-root and alternative community infrastructures
    Hypertext as resistance: designs for civic discourse and diversity