Algorithmic Regimes of Perception: Belief Formation, Social Action, and Digital Mediation

This article examines how digital platforms and generative artificial intelligence systems have transformed the social conditions under which perception and belief formation take place. It develops the concept of algorithmic perceptual regimes to describe historically specific configurations in which technological infrastructures, social dispositions, and symbolic structures shape what becomes perceptually available and cognitively actionable for social actors. The analysis draws on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus and perceptual schemas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodied perception, and predictive processing approaches associated with Andy Clark and Jakob Hohwy. These perspectives are brought into dialogue with Gilles Simondon's reflections on perceptual regimes, Slavoj �i�ek's account of ideological perception, and contemporary scholarship on platform capitalism, algorithmic governance, and artificial intelligence.

The article argues that algorithmic systems do not merely mediate access to information or transmit preexisting perceptual content. Rather, they participate in structuring the perceptual and interpretive schemas through which social actors understand reality, evaluate credibility, form beliefs, and orient action. In this sense, digital platforms and generative AI systems constitute a novel form of sociotechnical power that exceeds traditional models of media influence and remains insufficiently theorized within contemporary sociology. To address this gap, the article proposes the concept of the algorithmic perceptual dispositif as an analytical framework for examining the relationship between technological infrastructures, perception, cognition, and social power. It concludes by outlining a research agenda for a sociology of perception capable of addressing the transformations associated with digital modernity and generative artificial intelligence.