Attention wars, psychopower and platform environments: an autoethnographic study on BeReal

Abstract

The last two decades have seen an attention war play out between digital platforms, with social media as the main battleground. This has led to the development of techniques such as the hook model to capture users' attention and subconsciously direct their behaviour towards private ends. Bernard Stiegler has called this new form of governance “psychopower”. Drawing on autoethnographic research, this paper presents an analysis of the social media platform BeReal, focusing on the role of the platform's environment design in capturing users' attention. Our findings show that the platform succeeds in holding users' attention through nudges and habit formation. We also found a strong link between attention capture, emotional exchange and the experience of affects.