Attention economy is the strategy behind an aggressive stance to gain space amidst the excess of information

By Mariana Zylberkan | 28/09/2024

“The most powerful way to enter is by being criticized, [creating] controversy, destruction,” explained Pablo Marçal (PRTB) during an interview with the Primo Rico channel, on the 19th, about his strategy to reach what he calls “stratospheric levels of collective unconscious”, that is, to become very well-known.

The practice could be seen during the Flow Podcast debate, on Monday (23), from which he was expelled after disrespecting the rules by entering into conflict with his opponent Ricardo Nunes (MDB), who is seeking re-election.

Behind the scenes, a member of his team punched Nunes' marketing expert, leaving his face bloodied.

Pablo Marçal (PRTB) clashes with Ricardo Nunes (MDB) in the debate between candidates for Mayor of São Paulo on RedeTV! – Folhapress
The strategy publicly adopted by Marçal days after being hit with a chair by José Luiz Datena (PSDB) —until then the peak of the aggressive environment he had been building since the beginning of the campaign— is based on a theory born in the economic environment transported to the digital world as an efficient tool for profit.

The so-called “attention economy” considers the time spent by users on social media to be a limited commodity and, therefore, disputed in exchange for monetization — a term used to refer to payments made by social media to page owners who produce content that generates mass views.

The concept predates social networks and was created in the 1970s by psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. He linked the theory of scarcity that governs economic relations to human cognitive capacity.

To stay ahead amidst the excess of stimuli, as Marçal explains, one way is to access intense emotions, such as anger and indignation, because they capture users' attention more and instigate engagement.

“Algorithms are designed to keep people online, and as content becomes more radicalized through hate and visceral reactions, people react more and stay online,” says Ana Carolina Noronha, a linguistics professor at Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista).

The day after the TV Cultura debate, in which Marçal was hit with a chair, the profile of the self-proclaimed former coach achieved twice the engagement. He made 23 posts that generated an average of 265 thousand interactions each. In the previous three months, the average had been 133 thousand.

Survey of Democracia em Xeque Institute and the Observatory of Internet Conflicts also identified that 49 accounts with Marçal's name on TikTok totaled 14,1 million views and more than 4,8 million followers over nine days, at the beginning of September.

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