Phenomenal algorhythms: The sensorial orchestration of “real-time” in the social media manifold

Abstract

If our sociality is intertwined with the logics of social media, then the examination of the temporalities that are immanent in these technologies contributes to the understanding of our very conditions of existence. And even if algorithmic sorting is increasingly employed to deliver what is “relevant” at the “right-time,” the notion of “real-time” still permeates these platforms’ operations. Through a critical phenomenological approach, I examine the interplay of chronological and algorithmic ordering. To operationalize the idea of temporality as both subjectively experienced and always arranged by the platforms themselves, I use rhythm as an analytical device. Based on accounts of lived experience obtained through the conduction of the diary-interview method with London-based social media users, I foreground how “the algorithm” is used as a vehicle to make sense of platforms’ temporalities, reflecting struggles and negotiations over social coordination and temporal control. I argue that realtimeness is also rhythmic, and can therefore be scrutinized as a “sensorial orchestration.”

Keeping time with digital technologies: From real-time environments to forest futurisms

“…Critical studies of the real-time in digital media scholarship largely focus on social media rather than environmental contexts, but usefully highlight how the real-time does not just exist in the world, but rather is socio-technically constructed as ‘realtimeness’ (Weltevrede et al., 2014). Realtimeness emphasises speed, immediacy, instantaneity, and a sense of unmediated encounter, and is shaped by specific devices, infrastructures, and practices that ‘pace’ the interplay between computation and experience in the temporal unfolding of data (Lupinacci, 2022; Wajcman, 2015 ; Weltevrede et al., 2014). Realtimeness increasingly organises ‘digital ecologies’ (Turnbull et al., 2023), from forest monitoring networks and data infrastructures (Gabrys, 2022; Zweifel et al., 2023) to mediated human–nonhuman encounters through livestreams and mobile apps (Kamphof, 2013; Westerlaken et al., 2023).…”

“…They are paradoxical structures: at once distributed and centralised, transparent and opaque, top-down and bottom-up (Van Dijck et al., 2018). Temporally, platforms often produce and valorise realtimeness as a quality of interactions with accumulating or newly available data (Lupinacci, 2022; Weltevrede et al., 2014). Such data practices record but can also influence the pacing of nonhuman rhythms, forest labour and living (Prebble et al., 2021).…”

When Stories Turn Institutional: How TikTok Users Legitimate the Algorithmic Sensemaking

“…Several scholarly investigations have examined the harmonious character of the interaction between users and algorithms. This harmony is achieved through a complex entanglement of what Lupinacci (2022, p. 9) presents as “your individual preferences and past engagement.” According to Bucher (2020), algorithmic harmony is characterized by the presence of carefully structured temporal markers, as it delivers content recommendations at opportune moments. For Siles (2023, p. 35), TikTok users feel a kind of interpellation, defining it as “the work embedded in algorithms to convince [users] that [such platforms] are speaking directly to them.” Bucher (2019) also explored the concept of identity profiling as a key function of algorithms.…”

No Targets, Just Vibes: Tuned Advertising and the Algorithmic Flow of Social Media

“…Following this history, we argue that digital advertising is not just algorithmically targeted ads, but also productively understood as algorithmically tuned flows. Digital platforms tune and trade the rhythms of users to advertisers (Carmi, 2020; Lupinacci, 2022). If targeted advertising involves delivering an ad to a particular person at a precise moment, tuned advertising draws our attention to the continuous optimization of the relationships between ads, content, and consumers, and the synthetic creation of promotional images and copy by generative algorithmic models (Carah et al, 2023).…”

“…The cultural surround that digital advertising creates is one where an algorithmic flow tunes endless, mutating, personalized rhythms and “vibes.” We argue that critical accounts of digital cultures need to center this automated sequence of ads and the associated experience of rhythm and flow. Tuned advertising constructs and reflects the “rhythmic” (Carmi, 2020; Lupinacci, 2022) nature of digital platforms as their algorithmic models aim to generate a harmonious “right-timeness” (Bucher, 2020) in the flow of images, video, and ads. As Williams (1974) observed for the programmed flow of television, the algorithmic flow of our digital cultures is built by and for advertisers.…”