The Cybernetic Culture Workshop 2026: Digital Underworlds – Hidden, Obscured, Transgressive Spaces on the Internet, held at Lancaster Castle on Friday 10th April brought into focus a set of questions that feel increasingly urgent: as digital environments continue to expand and entangle with everyday life, so too do the less visible, more ambiguous spaces that sit at their edges – spaces that are difficult to categorise, govern, or fully comprehend. The workshop functioned as an interdisciplinary forum to consider the darker side of internet communities, the arrival of new digital forms of dark tourism, crystallisation of conspiratorial thinking, and the pernicious impact of artificial intelligence and surveillance on various publics.

Generously funded by the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS) and Lancaster University Management School’s Centre for Consumption Insights (CCI), the workshop brought researchers at different stages in their career, from across a wide gamut of disciplines, together to discuss, generate ideas, and establish collaborative potential on researching emerging terrains and the forms of culture, risk, and meaning that circulate within them.

Lancaster Castle, a popular dark tourism hotspot, offered a thematically appropriate backdrop for these discussions. A site historically associated with systems of control, judgement, and exclusion, it served as a powerful reminder that the governance of “hidden” spaces (whether physical or digital), has always been entangled with questions of power and legitimacy. In this sense, the workshop did more than explore digital underworlds; it situated them within a longer trajectory of social and cultural regulation.

Across Unlikely Boundaries

Bringing together a highly engaged group of around 40 participants, the workshop fostered an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and openness. Attendees travelled from across the UK and internationally, creating a rich mix of academic disciplines alongside industry expertise. Speakers came from Lancaster University, the University of Central Lancashire, the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester, Loughborough University, and Aalto University (Helsinki). Conversations flowed across boundaries that rarely meet, bringing distinct perspectives into dialogue: colleagues from the Vice-Chancellor’s Office and security professionals, including those connected to GCHQ, engaged alongside scholars in consumer behaviour, marketing, and tourism, as well as researchers working at the forefront of AI. This diversity was not incidental; it was essential. The complexity of cybernetic culture and digital underworlds demands precisely this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue.

At the Edges of the Internet

The idea of “digital underworlds” invites us to look beyond the polished, curated surfaces of the internet and into the less visible, more ambiguous spaces where experimentation, transgression, and alternative forms of sociality unfold. These underworlds take multiple, often overlapping forms: from the hidden layers of AI systems and the training data that quietly shapes their outputs, to the algorithmic curation of social media feeds that determines what is seen, amplified, or obscured, and the growing circulation of synthetic and manipulated content that unsettles distinctions between the real and the artificial. They are also present in more elusive online communities – spaces that are harder to access, less regulated, and sometimes marked by more extreme or harmful modes of interaction.

The focus on digital underworlds speaks directly to several pressing societal challenges, including public engagement with online environments, digital participation, cybercrime, youth cultures, and inequalities in visibility and access within platform economies. In this respect, the themes explored through the workshop have clear relevance for both policy and practice, particularly in relation to the governance, ethics, and socio-economic implications of increasingly complex digital ecosystems. By engaging with these issues, the workshop aligns closely with ESRC priorities concerning digital transformation and its societal consequences, while also contributing to broader debates on how such environments are experienced, regulated, and contested.

Extending the Underworld

One of the most striking outcomes of the workshop was the emergence of shared lines of inquiry across disciplines. Despite differing methodological approaches and areas of expertise, participants repeatedly converged around common concerns: the ethics of engagement in opaque digital spaces, the role of anonymity and identity, and the implications of these dynamics for governance and regulation. These intersections were not only intellectually stimulating but also generative, with several conversations already developing into plans for collaborative writing, joint publications, and future grant proposals.

Far from being peripheral curiosities, today’s digital underworlds are spaces where contemporary anxieties, desires, and forms of collective imagination are actively being produced and negotiated. As such, they demand sustained scholarly attention, not only to understand their dynamics, but to critically engage with their broader implications for society.

Looking ahead, the workshop marks not a conclusion but a point of departure, with plans already emerging for future collaboration and the continuation of this dialogue at the next Cybernetic Culture Workshop in 2027.

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the question is not only where these underworlds will go next, but how we, as researchers, might continue to trace, theorise, and engage with them.

Dr Sophie James is a Lecturer in Security and Protection Science in the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University Management School.

James Croninis Professor of Marketing and Consumer Research in the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University Management School.