In this theoretical paper, we aim to provide a renewed conceptualization of the relations between visibility and media by contextualizing older debates on “mediated visibility” within ongoing studies of algorithmic systems. While the concept of visibility is explicitly employed (or implied) by a large part of the latter scholarship, it has rarely been systematized theoretically. We set out to do this. Our goal is to specify the central tenets of what we term algorithmic visibility. We define it as an emergent form of media visibility regime, in which hybrid forms of media architecture and interaction give rise to the unprecedented entanglement of gatekeeping and surveillance, two historically separated forms of power operations through visibility management. To explore the broader significance of this regime, we also briefly consider how it impacts on the construction of the public domain, focusing on one element: political recognition.

The nature of our argument demands establishing, first, a clear definition of “visibility regime” and, second, describing older regimes of media visibility to pinpoint what exactly can be considered new. This is done in the first part of the paper. We draw on Brighenti (2010) to argue that a visibility regime may be conceptualized as composed of three dimensions: architectonic (related to the visibility diagrams), interactional (which forms of interaction this architecture affords) and political (the power operations which stem from these architected interactions). John Thompson’s (1995, 2005) work is useful to analyze the mass media regime of visibility, marked by the diagram of the broadcast (many-see-few), the emergence of what he calls “mediated quasiinteraction” and preoccupations on who has the control over gatekeeping operations. The writings of leading theorists on the participatory paradigm of Internet studies (such as Benkler, 2006; Castells, 2009; and Jenkins, 2006) provide the basis of our discussion of the network regime of visibility. Architected through the heterarchical network visibility diagram (many-see-many), its richer forms of interaction are said to dilute the