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@academico.ufpb.br | Daniel Marques: danielmarquescontato@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>*