Here’s the proposal I wrote, hopefully it both conveys the subject matter and also my writing voice for tone matching.
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Further, to what extent will all of these notions impact the next generation of the working class, whose societal experience is bound tightly to the ecosystems that gave rise to economized attention and digital influence?
I plan to research, distill and explore this through the lens of themes: 1) Instagram and the Attention Economy – the current revenue models of Instagram and how it leverages user behavior as the cornerstone for algorithmic learning and optimizations. 2) The Marketing Shifts that gave rise to the Influencer and the current landscape of how brands market to their consumer base. 3) The Influencer Society, which will illuminate the mechanics of sponsorship, commerce and personality through the lens of iconic influencers and their respective industry categories. Here an understanding of how they have indirectly created the rubric for success through their own behavior will be explored in addition to the implications that their existence has had economically(commerce, marketing) and sociologically(education, aspirations, career).
The intersection of these thoughts will illuminate the emergence of this new economy, how it flourishes and seek to hypothesize the future societal and economic implications therein.
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I also began doing some research but will need much more:
https://journal.businesstoday.org/bt-online/2021/the-attention-economy-asher-joy
https://medium.com/@goboldfish/the-age-of-the-attention-economy-fueled-by-social-media-addiction-9c8b8150cbf6
Instagram:
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Here’s a rough outline I had been forming on topically what I wanted to cover as well:
Topics I want to discuss:
The State of Attention:
– The history of social media as it relates to interaction, time spent and translating behavior into dollars
– How it works
Instagrams business practices of revenue generation.
– How does Instagram make money based on our behavior?
– What have been the rippling effects of sticky user experiences and dark patterns that perpetuate increased app usage over time, and what are ethical problems within them?
– How have social platforms, particularly Instagram changed the flow of communication between brands and their consumers?
The rise of Influencer Culture and the development of individual revenue streams
– How did the attention economy and Instagrams process of revenue generation create the Influencer economy?
– What are the technological and societal levers that created a runway for influencer societies to not only exist but thrive?
– How did Influencers transition from seen as hobbyists and OUTSIDE of the respected conversations of culture to being critical elements within it?
– How has big business and traditional capitalism responded to the power of influence in relation to their proven systems of traditional marketing and advertising?
Higher Education, Classism and Academia:
– What does the emergence of influence mean for the next working class generation, as it relates to higher education?
– etc.
