Kelsie Nabben. Written with Nathan Schneider, Ronen Tamari, and Michael Zargham
This paper arose out of the need to consider attention as a (scarce) resource in governance in digital contexts. It was co-authored with colleagues via Metagov (a not-for-profit research collective).
Attention economies = the analysis of human attention as a resource.
Governance surface = the means available for organisational adaptation and action.
We found that existing theoretical frameworks for the governance of community-managed resources (such as Ostrom’s rules for managing the commons and others) lack adequate consideration for how people’s attention is engaged, directed, and sustained over time.
To address this gap, this paper puts forward heuristics that assess how attention relates to governance in online organisations. The heuristics serve as analytical and normative tools to enable researchers and system designers to better understand attention in a governance system. They invite consideration of whether the structure of attention in a system is appropriate, efficient, and just. The heuristics are informed by literature on attention economies and governance, as well as three case studies that consider recent attempts to address attention in the design of governance surfaces in blockchain-based systems.
Read the full paper at: https://osf.io/preprints/mediarxiv/cdrmp_v1
Originally published at https://kelsienabben.substack.com.
