[Air-L] CFP | "The Betting Epidemic: Gambling, Financialization, and Digital Platforms" | Revista Alceu, Brazil

[Daniel Marques]

Revista Alceu (PUC-Rio, Brazil), a peer-reviewed, open-access journal
(Qualis A3 / CAPES), invites submissions for a thematic dossier:

The Betting Epidemic: Gambling, Financialization, and Digital Platforms

Guest Editors: Thiago Falcão (Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil) and
Daniel Marques (Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil)

Submission deadline: June 30, 2026

Expected publication: December 2026

Over the past decades, gambling has taken on new sociotechnical contours.
Sports betting, online casinos, and digital gambling platforms have
reorganized its ludic dimension, shifting it from an episodic practice to
continuous forms of engagement, risk exposure, calculation, and the promise
of return. Under the guise of entertainment, these platforms articulate
affective capture, persuasive design, datafication, and metrics-driven
business models, converting attention, expectation, and leisure time into
economic value.

This process is not confined to the financial sphere. The popularization of
digital betting produces significant cultural, subjective, and political
effects, especially when associated with narratives of individual
entrepreneurship, social mobility, and personal responsibility. By
presenting betting as an accessible and meritocratic opportunity, these
platforms may intensify regimes of instability, indebtedness, and
precarity, particularly among vulnerable populations.

The dossier seeks to investigate digital betting platforms as a structural
and multidisciplinary phenomenon in which design plays a transversal role.
Understood as a form of technopolitical mediation, design participates in
the organization of conduct, the construction of decision-making
environments, the modulation of affective states, and the naturalization of
risk, in articulation with algorithmic infrastructures, regulatory regimes,
advertising strategies, and media imaginaries.

We welcome contributions addressing, among other topics, the following
central axes:


   1.

   Political economy of betting and the financialization of everyday life:
   1.

      gambling, betting, and the financialization of everyday life and
      leisure;
      2.

      business models and the political economy of betting platforms;
      3.

      relations between digital betting platforms and financial markets;
      4.

      parallels between betting, gamblification, and platformized work;



   2.

   Digital infrastructures, data, and algorithmic opacity:
   1.

      datafication, collection, modeling, and monetization of behavioral
      data;
      2.

      algorithmic opacity and informational asymmetries;
      3.

      digital platforms and their technical infrastructures;



   3.

   Platform design, attention, and regimes of engagement:
   1.

      persuasive design, dark patterns, and choice architectures;
      2.

      affective capture, the attention economy, and regimes of engagement;



   4.

   Culture, media, and betting imaginaries:
   1.

      advertising, influencers, and the spectacularization of betting;
      2.

      sports, esports, and the normalization of betting;
      3.

      masculinities, ideologies, and betting imaginaries;
      4.

      childhood and betting imaginaries;



   5.

   Social inequalities and sociopolitical impacts:
   1.

      class, race, and gender, and the cultural and political effects of
      betting;
      2.

      addiction, indebtedness, and psychosocial impacts;



   6.

   Regulation, ethics, and public policy:
   1.

      platforms, regulation, ethics, and public policy;
      2.

      national and international regulatory frameworks;
      3.

      limits and contradictions of “responsible gambling” policies;



   7.

   Resistance, frictions, and alternatives:
   1.

      critical alternatives, frictions, and counter-design.


Articles may be submitted in Portuguese, English, or Spanish.

No submission or publication fees are required from authors.

Full CFP and submission guidelines:
https://revistaalceu.com.puc-rio.br/alceu/announcement
Contact: Thiago Falcao: thiago.falcao at academico.ufpb.br |  Daniel Marques:
danielmarquescontato at gmail.com
*Daniel Marques*
Departamento de Mídias Digitais - DEMID/UFPB
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Culturas, Linguagens e Tecnologias -
PPGCULT/UFRB
Doutor em Comunicação e Cultura Contemporâneas - Póscom/UFBA
Fulbright Alumni - C21/University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
*Google Scholar
<https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=l9tQQuwAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&authuser=1>
| Lattes
<http://lattes.cnpq.br/9571839733024528>*
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