The Political Economy of Attention

“Online advertising and platformization have brought the rise of a media ecosystem characterized by fierce competition for attention, largely unrestrained by editorial control and journalistic standards (Bessi et al., 2014; Pedersen et al., 2021).”

“That is true also for the gift of attention and its complex political economy (Pedersen et al., 2021).”

“…governance, and valuation of digital traces and user engagement have been criticized in the tradition of audience commodi fi cation by media corporations (Fuchs, 2012; Smythe, 1977), also referred to as the creation of an “ attention economy ” (Birch et al., 2021; Pederson et al., 2021).”

“…paper to elaborate on the cultural histories of attention that characterize what is commonly described today as ‘ attention capitalism, ’ and the e ff ects that our technological milieu has had on our neural capacities for attention (Citton 2017; see Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver 2021 for a summary).”

“…is intended to function like a recommendation engine, hooking, looping or ‘ trapping ’ (Seaver, 2018) the driver into certain kinds of driverly Big Data & Society attention not dissimilar to those found on other cultural, digital platforms (Bucher, 2012; Pederson et al., 2021; Siles et al., 2020).”

“…are said to matter – contrary to an accurate copy or replica – illustrates how the digital twin is a boundary-making or attention machine that has a politics in the sense that it foregrounds and brings to attention some features of the world and not others (Barad, 2007: 148; Pedersen et al., 2021).”

“Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok extract and sell profitable user data by creating marketplaces in which individuals compete for attention (Pedersen et al., 2021).”

“…economic and social aspects of the attention economy: what are the properties of attention markets and how do they change social and epistemic dynamics (Ciampaglia et al., 2015; Davenport & Beck, 2001; Franck, 2019; Hendricks & Mehlsen, 2022; Hendricks & Vestergaard, 2019; Pedersen et al., 2021)?”

“Prominent authors like Williams (2018) and Pedersen et al. (2021) point to Herbert Simon’s essay Designing Organizations For An Information-Rich World (Simon 1971) for providing the initial formulation of what we now know as the attention economy.”

“The allocation of attention on social media platforms carry significant political, economic, and social ramifications [18].”

“The effect has been “shortening of attention spans, polarization, outrageification of culture, mass nar-cissism, election engineering, [and] addiction to technology” (Pedersen et al., 2021: 310).”

“With the pace of information fluctuations accelerating, social media platforms have intensified the competition for attention as part of their business models (Pedersen et al. 2021).”

“Adult ADHDers are often portrayed as powerless in the face of SFVC, with assumptions that they stay up all night and experience worsened symptoms, positioning them as “the ultimate victims” in the attention economy [10, 132].”

“In this market, doing attention (Pedersen, Albris and Seaver 2021), that is acts of attention (reading, downloading, citing), is registered as bibliometric indicators in bibliographic data infra-structures and read as signs of value.”

“…of attention, such an approach could be applied to wider studies of infrastructure of structuring and manipulating our attention for political or economic purposes (Pedersen et al. 2021), such as gambling machines (Schüll 2012), advertisements (McCre-ery 1995), and roads (Harvey and Knox 2015).”

“This is because media outlets compete for the scarce resource of audience attention which, in turn, ensures advertising revenue (Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver 2021; Wu 2016).”

“…Citton ’ s (2017) important work in which he discusses the dangers of conceptualizing attention as an economic resource, and instead argues for discussing it in terms of ecologies of attention (see further also e.g. Stiegler, 2010; Terranova, 2012; Crogan and Kinsley, 2012; Pedersen et al., 2021).”

“Nowadays, visibility and attention are presented as a currency, and also as a resource that can be optimized, hence stretchable and plastic ( Pedersen, Albris and Seaver 2021).”

“…governance, neoliberalism, consumer sovereignty The introduction to this special issue well delineates the terms of the “digital attention crisis” (Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver 2021; Seaver 1Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, New York, NY, USA Corresponding Author: Natasha…”

“Attention deprivation is entangled with temporality and beyond material spaces (Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver 2021).”

“…a growing disciplinary imperative to “pay attention to attention” (Cook 2018) and has advanced proposals for how to study attention anthropologically (Pedersen et al. 2021), the systematic use of attention as a theoretical lens through which to understand human interaction is still in its…”

“These pressures may be intensified in digital environments, where audience metrics, limited attention, and competition for visibility encourage outlets to package information in cognitively accessible and attention-grabbing ways [41–43].”

“Building on this premise, Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver (2021) reconceptualize attention as a politically and economically contested field in which platforms, advertisers, and users continuously negotiate the terms of visibility and extraction.”

“…are predicated on battles for and of attention, and their pressing insights on how the ‘technologies of attention’ in our digitized and datafied worlds (Franck, 2019; Pedersen et al., 2021; van Krieken, 2019) enter organizational competitions of attention have hardly ever been considered.”

“By making engagement metrics visible and consequential, platforms help constitute attention markets in which political expressions acquire differential returns (Pedersen et al., 2021).”

“This concept describes a state in which individuals interact passively with devices and online content, being constantly influenced by notifications, short videos, and recommendation algorithms (Dabas & Tuli, 2025; Dorosz et al., 2025; Pedersen et al., 2021; Rismanto, 2025; Sun, 2025).”

“The reliance on data measurements fits well with Pedersen et al.’s (2021) Latourian point about treating attention not as a matter of fact but as a matter of concern; it is an artifact of economic culture.”

“Human attention functions as a limited resource subject to intense competition [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].”

“…Палаты представителей США Нэнси Пелоси в 2022 г. 11 ) демонстрируют высокую эффективность deepfake в подрыве доверия к политическим институтам [7], разжигании социальной розни, фальсификации Источник: составлено автором по материалам [3–5; 8] Source: compiled by the author based on materials…”

“…indicators such as “ followers ” (for example, on X and Instagram) or “ views ” (for example, on YouTube) that become the metrics through which attention is converted to older currencies (that is, money) via advertising, direct sales, and other economic activities (Pedersen et al. 2021).”

“…McKay 2020; Seaver 2022); they include aggregation algorithms that are being inserted into wireless devices, which, in turn, inform internet providers of the locations, desires, and habits of their users (Couldry and Hepp 2017; Just and Latzer 2017; Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver 2021; Simone 2004).”

“…and meditation practices that were perhaps once considered fringe or tied to a “New Age” identity (see also Sutton, 2020), but which are now promoted at the highest echelons of power to combat the perceived crisis of attention amongst political leaders (Cook, 2016; Pedersen et al., 2021).”