The second wave of attention economics attention as a universal symbolic currency on social media and beyond

Maxi Heitmayer

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Since the advent of social media, capturing and holding the attention of people has become paramount for the success of products, political messages and even research. The economics of attention is often seen as part of the market economy. We argue that a larger societal transformation is underway, which will see attention become the defining currency that moves individuals, exchanges, and many other elements of society. This paper connects the attention economy to the institutional foundations of modernity. It then discusses how attention can be accumulated and exchanged like a currency and proposes a dual-stream model distinguishing between calcified and flow attention. Based on this model, we investigate recent developments facilitating the use of attention as a currency, and their potential impact on our daily lives more generally. We conclude by providing an outlook and concrete questions for future research to understand where the economics of attention economy is heading.

Keywords: attention economy; social media; systems theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2025-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Interacting With Computers, 31, January, 2025, 37(1), pp. 18 - 29. ISSN: 0953-5438

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/124333/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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:ehl:lserod:124333

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().