Measuring Competition for Attention in Social Media: National Women’s Soccer League Players on Twitter

Federico Rossi () and Gaia Rubera ()
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Federico Rossi: Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907; Corresponding author
Gaia Rubera: Marketing Department, Bocconi Institute of Data Science & Analytics Center, and Claudio Demattè Research Division at SDA, Bocconi University, 20100 Milan, Italy

Marketing Science, 2021, vol. 40, issue 6, 1147-1168

Abstract: Despite increasing use of social media, little is known about user competition and its effect on social platforms. In this research, we propose a model where social media users supply content in return for user attention. Using Twitter data on soccer players from the National Women’s Soccer League, we estimate a demand model where users decide how to allocate their attention among players, based on their content posted on social media and their performance on the soccer field. We consider the amount of tweets mentioning a player’s account as a measure for the level of attention captured by the player. On the supply side, players decide the amount of social media content posted on the platform. We show that the attention substitution between players depends on their posting activity and soccer performance but also on personal characteristics, such as physical attractiveness and team affiliation. Our analysis suggests that the competitive pressure to capture user attention is responsible for about one out of three tweets posted by players. This additional content benefits the social network, increasing by 7% the users’ activity on the platform. We also quantify the effect on user activity of a revenue-sharing model in which the platform rewards players for posting tweets.

Keywords: social media; competition for attention; empirical IO; structural models; Twitter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:40:y:2021:i:6:p:1147-1168

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