Description
This paper examines how social media platforms, particularly Twitter/X, function as infrastructures that design communication—structuring how text is produced, visualized, and read. Drawing on Mark Aakhus’s concept of communication as design and Cristina Rivera Garza’s idea of Twitter as a “laboratory of contemporary textuality,” I argue that interfaces shape not only content but also temporal experience: what is seen, when, and by whom. Tracing the shift from chronological to algorithmic timelines, the paper shows how platforms replace public rhythm with predictive sequencing optimized for engagement. Visualization no longer reflects activity—it orchestrates attention. Building on Orit Halpern’s Beautiful Data, I place this within a broader history of cybernetic aesthetics that promise to rationalize uncertainty. Data visualizations—timelines, trends, prompts—become temporal infrastructures that condition how publics emerge. What we read and when is no longer a shared temporality, but a form of calculated circulation. Platforms modulate textual time and reconfigure historical awareness.
