Digital Underworlds: Hidden, Obscured, Transgressive Spaces on the Internet

Following the success of last year’s inaugural Cybernetic Culture Workshop event, we are delighted to announce the Cybernetic Culture Workshop 2026: Digital Underworlds — a one-day interdisciplinary gathering exploring the hidden, obscured, and transgressive spaces on the internet.

🔴 Workshop Format​

The workshop will provide an open, collaborative space for sharing ideas and fostering dialogue between those working across consumer culture, marketing, cyber-security, media studies, cultural theory, and the digital humanities.

Sessions will combine oral presentations and roundtable discussions centred on conceptual, crticial, creative, and empirical approaches to the study of cybernetic culture and its discontents.

This is an opportunity to exchange ideas, gain constructive feedback, and contribute to an expanding interdisciplinary conversation about the cultural, ethical, and critical dimensions of the digital world.

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🔴 Themes & Areas of Inquiry ​

​We invite conceptual, critical, creative, and empirical contributions that venture into the obscured, illicit, and affective zones of cybernetic culture, asking what they reveal about visibility, power, and the recursive entanglements of human and machine.

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Core Themes​ 2026:

1. Subcultural Deviance and Digital Publics
   Examines how online communities and subcultures form around resistance, identity, and shared moral codes — from countercultural networks and radical movements to viral trends that challenge or reshape public norms.
   
2. Visibility, Exposure, and Control
   Explores how digital platforms shape what is seen or hidden online — through surveillance, privacy management, influencer culture, and the social consequences of visibility, cancellation, and exposure.
   
3. AI Intimacy and Algorithmic Desire
   Investigates how humans interact emotionally and socially with artificial intelligence — from chatbots and virtual companions to personalised algorithms that simulate intimacy, creativity, and desire.
   
4. Dark Economies and Data Shadows
   Unpacks the economic and infrastructural dimensions of digital life — including cryptomarkets, data exploitation, misinformation networks, and the blurred boundaries between legitimate and illicit online trade.
   
5. Digital Emotion and Affective Systems
   Analyses the emotional architecture of digital culture — how platforms design for outrage, empathy, and play, turning feeling into a key driver of attention, participation, and value creation.

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Together, these sessions invite critical, creative, and empirical approaches to understanding how digital technologies organise power, shape affect, and transform what it means to connect, consume, and belong online as we move through the visible and invisible layers of the internet, from playful networks and niche cultures to its darker economies and emotional underworlds.

🔴 Suggested Areas of Inquiry (not exhaustive)​​

Subcultural Deviance and Digital Publics

• Platform subcultures and digital deviance
• Populism, misinformation, and online radicalisation
• Hidden or alternative online communities
• Dark tourism and the consumption of taboo or harmful digital content

Visibility, Exposure, and Control

• Surveillance capitalism, data economies, and platform governance
• Privacy, visibility, and the politics of self-presentation
• Cancel culture, public shaming, and online accountability
• The aesthetics of exposure in influencer and visual culture

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AI Intimacy and Algorithmic Desire

• Human relationships with chatbots, virtual companions, and AI influencers
• Automated emotion, personalisation, and algorithmic matchmaking
• The ethics and governance of emotional AI and simulated companionship
• AI creativity, embodiment, and the aesthetics of digital desire

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Dark Economies and Illicit Online Markets

• Cryptomarkets, digital fraud, and financial exploitation
• Data harvesting, surveillance infrastructures, and platform monetisation
• Misinformation economies and coordinated influence operations
• The circulation of illicit, hidden, or unregulated digital trade

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Digital Emotion and Affective Systems

• Emotional capitalism and the gamification of engagement
• Outrage, empathy, and emotional manipulation across platforms
• Play, pleasure, and entertainment in attention-driven economies
• The design and governance of digital emotion in everyday life

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​🔴 Submission Guidelines​

We invite all interested participants to submit a circa 500-word abstract (excluding references) in a word document outlining their proposed presentation or project.

Abstracts should include:

• Title of the paper, author name(s), and affiliation(s)
• Keywords (3–5)
• Key objectives and/or research questions
• Methodological or conceptual approach
• Preliminary findings, expected contributions, or implications

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Please submit abstracts to the workshop co-chairs by email:

Sophie James: s.james7@lancaster.ac.uk

James Cronin: j.cronin@lancaster.ac.uk

We encourage submissions from all members of the department, including faculty, staff, and students, across all disciplines. Your contribution is invaluable to the success of our event and will help us to create a diverse and enriching programme.

🔴 Submission Deadline

Please submit your abstract by Friday, 23rd January 2026.

​Notifications of acceptance will be sent by Monday, 17 February 2026.