Abstract

CAPUTO, Mariano. The Problem of the Image on Social Media: Scrolling, Algorithmic Montage, and Trolls in Times of Resentment. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2025, n.94, pp.103-119.  Epub Oct 25, 2025. ISSN 0123-885X.  https://doi.org/10.7440/res94.2025.06.

Walter Benjamin’s question about the historical conditions of perception takes on renewed urgency in a moment defined by political extremisms that rely on algorithmic modalities of image distribution. From an Althusserian perspective attentive to the ideological and subjective dimensions of the platformization of social life, this article advances the hypothesis that social media reinforces a tautological mode of organizing the sensible. This mode narrows subjective fields of vision and reshapes the very scene of political interlocution. The argument develops in three sections. The first defines the spatio-temporal dispositif of platformized images, drawing on Rancière’s critique of the dilemma between spectator passivity and activity. The second argues that the algorithmic montage of the visible is the cornerstone of a strategy for controlling subjective time, one that depends on scrolling as a practice of reception that produces a specific effect on subjects’ ideological and imaginary relation to the world. The third examines how trolling contributes to radicalized variants of neoliberalism. Trolls trigger a decentralization of punitivism and transform the structures of resentment through the evaluative stance promoted by platforms. The conclusion contends that the tautological shock of algorithmic montage shapes the nexus between communication and culture, extending into the formation of subjectivities. The very stage on which political interlocution unfolds is displaced toward tautology, leveling out the diverse and contradictory experiences of inhabiting a shared historical time.

Keywords : algorithms; image; montage; perception; politics; social media.

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