Citation

Paasonen S. Distinktion 2018; 19(2): 214-229.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/1600910X.2018.1475289

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The so-called attention economy of social media relies on continuous attempts at capturing the ever fleeting and restless attention of users as they click away, move between tabs and refresh pages in the hope of novel titillating, amusing, interesting or distracting content. Its fast speeds and circulations have been associated with perpetual states of distraction where user attention is manipulated for the purposes of data extraction. Zooming in on this landscape, this article inquires after the price of social media as modes of exchange taking place between human and nonhuman actors consisting of individuals, corporations, algorithms and data, regularly within incommensurable scales of value and importance. It addresses the role of affect in the generation of both monetary and personal value, as well as the ambivalent sense of creepiness that the default leakiness of user data entail: here, affect emerges as fuel and motivator of user actions, as well as something that is increasingly tracked, analysed and manipulated as data for corporate profit. The article argues that considerations of price facilitate productive avenues into value alongside, and beyond, analyses of exploitation within new media economy and communicative capitalism.

Language: en

Keywords

affect; boredom; exploitation; manipulation; micro events; price; Social media