Skip to main content
Open Book Publishers

9. Attending to the Online Other: A Phenomenology of Attention on Social Media Platforms: A Phenomenology of Attention for Social Media Platforms

Chapter of: Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(pp. 215–240)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: Missing Long Abstract
  • ONIX 2.1
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: This work does not have any ISBNs
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
Title9. Attending to the Online Other: A Phenomenology of Attention on Social Media Platforms
SubtitleA Phenomenology of Attention for Social Media Platforms
ContributorLavinia Marin(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0421.09
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0421/chapters/10.11647/obp.0421.09
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightLavinia Marin
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-10-16
Long abstractLavinia Marin draws from phenomenology to lay bare another aspect of the ubiquitous presence of social media. By taking the phenomenology of attention as a starting-point, she show that attention is – rather than only a scare resource as analysts departing from the perspective of the attention economy would have it – foundational for our moral relations to other beings. She argues that there is a distinctive form of other-oriented attention that enables us to perceive other beings as living beings that are worthy of care. This mode of attention presupposes a form of affectivity and involves the recognition of the other as a moral being capable of forming judgments, as well as someone having certain vulnerabilities. Her analysis shows that by prioritizing homogenous interactions and standardization, social media platforms hinder us from engaging in this mode of attention, thereby undermining our capacity of recognizing to others as surprising, changing, and fallible beings.
Page rangepp. 215–240
Print length26 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Lavinia Marin

(author)
Assistant Professor at the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section at Technische Universiteit Delft
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8283-947X

Lavinia Marin is an Assistant Professor at the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section, TU Delft, the Netherlands. Her current research investigates the conditions of possibility for epistemic and moral agency (both at the individual and group level) for users of social networking platforms using approaches from ethics and situated cognition. In addition, she is involved in a 4TU.CEE research project focused on conceptualizing experiential ethics education for engineers.

References
  1. Alfano, M. (2016). Moral psychology: An introduction. Polity Press.
  2. Arielli, E. (2018). Sharing as speech act. Versus.
  3. Bombaerts, G., Anderson, J., Dennis, M., Gerola, A., Frank, L., Hannes, T., Hopster, J., Marin, L., & Spahn, A. (2023). Attention as practice: Buddhist ethics responses to persuasive technologies. Global Philosophy, 33(2), 25, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-023-09680-4
  4. Brady, W. J., Gantman, A. P., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). Attentional capture helps explain why moral and emotional content go viral. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(4), 746–756, https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000673
  5. D’Angelo, D. (2020). The phenomenology of embodied attention. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 19(5), 961–978. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-019-09637-2
  6. Dennis, M. J. (2021). Towards a theory of digital well-being: Reimagining online life after lockdown. Science and Engineering Ethics, 27(3), 32, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00307-8
  7. Fisher, M. (2022). The chaos machine: The inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world. Little Brown and Company.
  8. Floridi, L. (2009). Web 2.0 vs. the semantic web: A philosophical assessment. Episteme, 6(1), 25–37, https://doi.org/10.3366/E174236000800052X
  9. Fogg, B. J., Cueller, G., & Danielson, D. (2007). Motivating, influencing, and persuading users: An introduction To captology. In A. Sears & J. A. Jacko (Eds), The human-computer interaction handbook (2nd edition, pp. 133–147). CRC Press.
  10. Fredriksson, A. (2022). A phenomenology of attention and the unfamiliar: Encounters with the unknown. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14117-1
  11. Gallagher, S. (2020). Action and interaction. Oxford University Press.
  12. Gallagher, S. (2022). Phenomenology. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11586-8
  13. Greenfield, S. A. (2015). Mind change: How digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains (1st edition). Random House.
  14. Han, B.-C. (2017). In the swarm: Digital prospects. MIT Press.
  15. Harney, M. (2020). Perception and its objects. In A. Daly, F. Cummins, J. Jardine, & D. Moran (Eds), Perception and the inhuman gaze: Perspectives from philosophy, phenomenology, and the sciences (pp. 109–127). Routledge.
  16. Hoffner, C. A., & Bond, B. J. (2022). Parasocial relationships, social media, & well-being. Current Opinion in Psychology, 45, 101306, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101306
  17. Klenk, M. (2022). (Online) manipulation: Sometimes hidden, always careless. Review of Social Economy, 80(1), 85–105, https://doi.org/10.1080/00346764.2021.1894350
  18. Jacobs, H. (2021). Husserl, the active self, and commitment. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20(2), 281–298, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09706-x
  19. Jennings, C. D. (2020). The attending mind (1st edition). Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108164238
  20. Koralus, P. (2014). The erotetic theory of attention: Questions, focus and distraction: The erotetic theory of attention. Mind & Language, 29(1), 26–50, https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12040
  21. Mackenzie, C. (2019). Feminist innovation in philosophy: Relational autonomy and social justice. Women’s Studies International Forum, 72, 144–151, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2018.05.003
  22. Murdoch, I. (2014). The sovereignty of good. Routledge.
  23. Osler, L. (2021). Taking empathy online. Inquiry, 1–28, https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2021.1899045
  24. Panizza, S. C. (2022). The ethics of attention: Engaging the real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil (1st edition). Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003164852
  25. Panizza, S. C., & Hopwood, M. (2022). The Murdochian mind (1st edition). Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003031222
  26. Pitchford, M. C. (2020). The empire of outrage: Topical systems at the death of Cecil the lion. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 106(2), 156–178, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1744033
  27. Raskoff, S. Z. (2022). Nudges and hard choices. Bioethics, 36(9), 948–956. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13091
  28. Roholt, T. C. (2023). Distracted from meaning: A philosophy of smartphones. Bloomsbury Academic, https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350172685
  29. Smith, D. L. (2020). On inhumanity: Dehumanization and how to resist it. Oxford University Press.
  30. Timms, R., & Spurrett, D. (2023). Hostile scaffolding. Philosophical Papers, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2023.2231652
  31. Van De Poel, I., Frank, L. E., Hermann, J., Hopster, J., Lenzi, D., Nyholm, S., Taebi, B., & Ziliotti, E. (Eds). (2023). Ethics of socially disruptive technologies: An introduction (1st edition). Open Book Publishers, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0366
  32. Watson, G. (2013). Moral agency. In H. LaFollette (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of ethics (1st edition). Wiley, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee294
  33. Watzl, S. (2017). Structuring mind: The nature of attention and how it shapes consciousness (1st edition). Oxford University Press.
  34. Watzl, S. (2022). The ethics of attention: An argument and a framework. In S. Archer (Ed.), Salience (1st edition, pp. 89–112). Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351202114-6
  35. Watzl, S. (2023). What attention is. The priority structure account. WIREs Cognitive Science, 14(1), e1632, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1632
  36. Wellner, G. (2014). Multi-attention and the horcrux logic: Justifications for talking on the cell phone while driving. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 18(1), 48–73, https://doi.org/10.5840/techne201432712
  37. Whiteley, E. K. (2023). ‘A woman first and a philosopher second’: Relative attentional surplus on the wrong property. Ethics, 133(4), 497–528, https://doi.org/10.1086/724538
  38. Williams, J. (2018). Stand out of our light. Cambridge University Press.
  39. Wu, T. (2017). The attention merchants: The epic scramble to get inside our heads (1st Vintage Books edition). Vintage Books.
  40. Zahavi, D. (2014). Self and other: Exploring subjectivity, empathy, and shame (1st edition). Oxford University Press.