Hype Literacy Toolkit Published on 10.04.2026

Launching online course free for all


In this free and self-paced online course developed by Human-IST and SAIS member Jascha Bareis with colleagues Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves, as well as Media Lab Bayern's Johannes Klingebiel and DW Akademie's Steffen Leidel, journalists, students, academics (anyone interested in the performativity of hype) can learn about how tech hype transforms society. The aim is to recognize hype, unmask its playbook and to understand how to talk better about emerging technologies like AI.

It is important to show that hype is not a natural process. It is made to persuade people and power.  However, hype is nothing exclusive to AI. It has always accompanied new technologies, it is a recurrent pattern. “It is strategically crafted by tech companies and their CEOs to overstate the positive implications of technology while downplaying the negative ones.” Much of the current AI boom is driven by speculation, incredibe announcements of investments and vague predictions.

Link to the online course: https://akademie.dw.de/hype-literacy/

Here are six rules how to not tap into the hype trap:

How to better cover hype

  1. Diversify sources. Does my source list overrepresent people who stand to gain from the technology’s success? Who is absent?
  2. Go beyond first-person experiences. Does my personal experience reflect the average user’s?
  3. Ask who benefits. Who has an interest in staging a technology in a certain way? Who can gain money, pres tige, (geo-)political advantage, visibility, and the power to set or advance certain techno-political agendas?
  4. Beware the "critics" vs. "experts" narrative. Who is labelled an expert and in what field? Is the expertise of critical voices recognized?
  5. Be aware of uncertainties. Who is making the prediction, and what is their stake in its acceptance? What data supports the claim and is it independent, peer-reviewed, or anecdotal
  6. Develop a historical awareness. Have similar claims been made about earlier technologies? What actually happened?