The urban political economy of attention: the case of São Paulo's Centro

Petter Törnberg

Chapter 5 in Handbook of Platform Urbanism, 2025, pp 61-73 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The media has long interested urban scholars, but the pervasiveness of digital mediatisation has revealed limitations in how the media is conceptualised within the field. This chapter takes a digital ethnographic approach, focusing on the case of São Paulo's gentrifying Centro neighbourhood, to explore how cities adapt to social media – developing an understanding of urban mediatisation focused on attention as a new form of capital in the contemporary urban economy. Interviews with investors reveal that restaurants and bars increasingly view themselves as hubs for the exchange of attention capital, adapting their business practices to align with social media logic and become more ‘viral’. Attention flows through the urban economy: purchased from influencers, offered to customers, and traded with suppliers. As it integrates into the city's political economy, attention re-shapes urban aesthetics and transforms the built environment – with profound implications for urban life.

Keywords: Social media; Attention economy; Attention-as-capital; São Paulo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035313754
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035313761.00012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22403_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().