Digital imagination and empirical invisibility: algorithmic power in innovation policies

Abstract

This article is devoted to a sociological analysis of the transformations in power relations within digital society through the lens of innovation policies. It focuses on social networks and digital platforms as infrastructures that not only facilitate communication but also shape new regimes of visibility, participation, control, and the distribution of symbolic capital. It is demonstrated that contemporary innovation processes are becoming increasingly dependent on algorithmic mechanisms for the selection, ranking, and normalisation of social action, thereby shifting power from open institutional centres to opaque digital infrastructures. The article pays attention to the phenomenon of algorithmic power as a specific form of mediated governance that operates through personalisation, metrics, recommendation systems, and platform-mediated selection. The concept of empirical invisibility has been proposed to describe the structural limitations of sociological knowledge in a platform environment, where the key mechanisms through which social order is produced remain hidden due to the commercial closure of platforms, the opacity of algorithms, and fragmentation of data. Five methodological traps in the analysis of digital innovation policies have been identified: algorithmic, performative, ephemeral, ethical, and reflexive. It is demonstrated that these traps are not random research difficulties but rather structural manifestations of the transformation of power relations in the digital sphere. The article argues that for Ukraine, the analysis of such transformations is of particular importance, as innovation policies are becoming one of the key instruments for the modernisation of public administration, economic recovery, security resilience, and integration into global digital spaces. At the same time, the platformisation of innovation creates new risks: the exacerbation of digital inequality, dependence on private technological infrastructures, the opaque distribution of access to the public sphere, and asymmetry between the state, citizens, and technology corporations.