Call for papers: The dark sides of digitalization: Technologies as sources of social tensions and risks

2026-03-04

The editorial team of Przegląd Socjologiczny invites authors to submit articles for the thematic issue:

The dark sides of digitalisation: Technologies as sources of social tensions and risks

Editors of the thematic issue:

Dr Anna Turner, IFiS PAN

Dr hab. Kamil Filipek, UMCS

Dr Małgorzata Winiarska-Brodowska, UJ

From the very beginning, new technologies have reflected the fundamental ambivalence of human experience. Digital modernity, promising emancipation and unprecedented access to knowledge, has increasingly revealed its shadow in the form of tensions and risks that elude simplistic definitions of progress.

We see a need for discussion on the darker sides of technology, which like digital smog settles into everyday social practices and permeates structures of power, the economy, culture and knowledge. Technological determinism, driven by visions of datafication and the optimization of society, often diverts attention from questions about its limits and consequences. Digital reality begins to resemble a Faustian pact of the twenty first century. What price do we pay for the promise of convenience and personalization?

We give particular attention to the widespread expansion of social media platforms, which in recent years has been followed by the rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence tools. The symbiosis of humankind and technology is now reenacted in our relationship with AI systems. We ask: who adapts to whom? Does the individual adjust to artificial intelligence, or are algorithms shaped in our image and according to our needs? Or perhaps - echoing Theodor Adorno’s warning - does adaptation itself become a form of disgrace, a resignation from critical thought and free will?   

In this issue, we return to the Faustian and Promethean aspirations of modernity: the desire for knowledge and the pursuit of human self-realization. Yet the legend of Faust reminds us that everything has its price. Faith in technological solutionism is today intertwined with the logic of late capitalism, in which human value is measured by the capacity for consumption. Culture is often treated as commodity, something to be easily acquired, processed, and monetized. Dystopian visions of privacy no longer belong solely to literary imagination when digital mirrors of identity reflect images subordinated to the logic of platforms. 

We invite critical reflection on technology within the scope of tensions and risks. We welcome submissions of both theoretical and empirical articles, as well as interdisciplinary contributions that move beyond the traditional boundaries of the social sciences.

Suggested thematic areas include:

  • Employment in the age of platforms and automation
  • Technological solutionism and ideologies of progress
  • The platformisation of social life and the erosion of institutions
  • Culture as commodity
  • Digital identities, alienation, and the crisis of subjectivity
  • Disinformation as a tool of destabilization
  • Cyberviolence and hate speech
  • Networked hacktivism
  • Conflict and violence in digital environments
  • Datafication, surveillance, and the crisis of privacy
  • Artificial intelligence as a source of social inequalities
  • Digital exclusion and the obligation to be online
  • Algorithmic decision-making and technological determinism

Please send submissions in Polish or in English by 15th July 2026 (the issue is planned for publication in March 2027) to the following email addresses:

przegladsocjologiczny@gmail.com

anna.turner@ifispan.edu.pl

Please prepare your submission following the guidelines for authors:

https://journals.ltn.lodz.pl/Przeglad-Socjologiczny/information/authors