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The Production and Consumption of Social Media

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  • Apostolos Filippas
  • John Horton

Abstract

We model social media as collections of users producing and consuming content. Users value consuming content, but doing so uses up their scarce attention, and hence they prefer content produced by more able users. Users also value receiving attention, creating the incentive to attract an audience by producing valuable content, but also through attention bartering -- users agree to become each others' audience. Attention bartering can profoundly affect the patterns of production and consumption on social media, explains key features of social media behavior and platform decision-making, and yields sharp predictions that are consistent with data we collect from EconTwitter.

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  • Apostolos Filippas & John Horton, 2021. "The Production and Consumption of Social Media," Papers 2104.00834, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2104.00834
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Guy Aridor & Rafael Jiménez-Durán & Ro'ee Levy & Lena Song, 2024. "The Economics of Social Media," CESifo Working Paper Series 10934, CESifo.

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