Attention by design : A critical study of attention economy

Abstract

Social media and different digital platforms and their effects on users has been studied a lot in recent years. With billions of users worldwide, they have gained an immense power to track and steer peoples’ attention and behavior via newly emerged technology. Ethics of these practices and the resulted consequences have now been raised and acknowledged to a growing extent, both in popular media and in academic research. The purpose of this thesis is to critically analyze and frame the core conceptual marketing principles that are applied to compete in the social media environment where consumer attention and its’ monetization are paramount. The research is qualitative and deductive in nature. The empirical data for used research method, content analysis, was collected from various sources, where the main emphasis was on highlighting views and insights of industry experts. In order to fulfil the purpose of the study, following research objectives are set. Firstly, historical evolution of marketing is studied and related technological drivers are being identified in parallel with theories of human cognition and behavior. Second objective is to explore the market configurations of attention economy, noting the scarcity of main competitive resource in this environment; human attention. Thirdly, this thesis aims to increase the overall understanding of the characteristics and meanings of the attention economy in social media context and different asymmetries it creates between platforms and consumers. The research results show that due to applied ad-based business model and following economic incentives, social media platforms rely on two mutually supportive competitive elements that can be categorized under the main theoretical findings from the thesis. These are business model & design choices and psychology. The interpretation of data revealed and confirmed the highly interconnected relationship between advanced technology applied by platforms to drive their economic incentives and deliberate exploitation of human mind and psychology. Thesis suggests that technological, economical, ethical and moral reframing of social media industry is needed for designing more desirable digital environments.