Attention as Capital: we know what you clicked online

In a world of almost infinite information and content, compounded by the rise of generative AI, the limited and valuable resource in online spaces is human time and attention. Today, like any other resource, attention has become capitalised and this project explores how our attention is captured, manipulated and artificially farmed online. The techniques that are used to manipulate our attention online have real world consequences in terms of sexism, racism, classicism, hate and social division.

From this guiding concern we created CaturA, a parody social media model that highlights a participant’s weakness to attention farming and clickbait. Through a gamified digital experience we attempted to create a microcosm of how current social media platforms reward and encourage incendiary content. 

We presented CaturA as part of an exhibition We know what you clicked online to the RCA community. We represented each individual’s result visually at the end of the game and digitally on a live map of all the collected results, projected in the exhibition space. Participants could see their results in comparison to others who had taken part. It offered the audience a chance to step back and reflect on how they interact online, the visual result acting as a provocation, rather than a summation of their behaviour. Presenting and testing the game live was also a chance to discuss with participants, either in person, or through reflection cards, about their experience of interacting with clickbait and how CaturA had caused them to reflect on this. In this way the experience, despite exploring the way we individually behave on social media, became a very real life social interaction too.