This article places Georg Franck’s ‘The Economy of Attention’ in the context of the broader discussions of ‘the attention economy’, and the increasing significance of attention in a knowledge society characterised by ever-increasing flows of information and data. I highlight the four core elements of Franck’s theory of the economy of attention: first, the importance of the fundamental human desire for attention; second, his emphasis on the parallels between attention and money, making it more literally a form of capital than is usually assumed; third, the self-reproducing character of attention capital, earning interest just as money does; fourth, the connections between the economy of attention and the expanding impetus towards everyone becoming a celebrity and a ‘brand’ within what he calls ‘mental capitalism’, with the field of academic labour a key example.
CITATION STYLE
van Krieken, R. (2019). Georg Franck’s ‘The Economy of Attention’: Mental capitalism and the struggle for attention. Journal of Sociology, 55(1), 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783318812111
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