Algorithmic publicity: Rethinking the conditions of visibility in the public sphere

The article develops the concept of algorithmic publicity to theorize the pre-discursive structuring of visibility in digital environments. It argues that algorithmic infrastructures shape the conditions under which content becomes publicly accessible, relocating the dynamics of communicative rationality and systemic coordination to the infrastructural level. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas, the argument situates these developments within the trajectory of modernity as a reconfiguration rather than a rupture. Existing approaches, including communicative capitalism, platform society and surveillance capitalism, remain focused on processes within visibility, leaving its underlying conditions insufficiently theorized. Algorithmic publicity addresses this gap by conceptualizing visibility as a regime produced by predictive systems that operate prior to communication. This transformation extends the systemic media of money and power into the formation of visibility. The ‘Fediverse’ is introduced as a conceptual test case, illustrating the contingency and contestability of these infrastructural arrangements.