{"id":11981,"date":"2021-07-08T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/?p=11981"},"modified":"2021-07-08T10:01:57","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T08:01:57","slug":"it-is-time-to-regulate-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/it-is-time-to-regulate-social-media\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"It is Time to Regulate Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Era of Media Warming<\/h3>\n

by Dominique Boullier, CEE
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

What has happened to our media system over the past decade? How have we managed to reach the current level of \u2018media warming\u2019, which is a general inflammation of our minds, influenced by high frequency stimulations and reactions? The \u2018cool\u2019 social media of the 2000s and web\u00a02.0 have undergone a radical transformation, and have monopolised our attention for both receiving and producing messages, particularly pictures and videos.
\nDominique Boullier, sociology professor at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE), adopted a pluridisciplinary approach for his publication \u2018Comment sortir de l\u2019emprise des r\u00e9seaux sociaux<\/a> \u201c(How to escape the grasp of social networks) <\/i>(Le Passeur, 2020). A useful book to counter the toxic impacts of the current operation of digital networks and smartphones.
\nShortly before 2010, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were monetised by selling advertising space to brands, proposing increasingly specific targeting to reach audiences whose engagement rate (responsiveness) and not just exposure they claimed to be able to measure. Every interface was modified to this purpose. The Retweet button, invented in 2009, has become the primary tool of virality (no need to copy the tweet, or even read it, thus establishing a hierarchy between the tweets). Other examples include the hashtag, which condenses a theme into a single word, messages that, even with a 280-character limit, remain very brief, and trending topics that are defined according to the speed of reaction of Twitter accounts to a tweet (not its popularity). I use the term \u2018the atomic clock of public space\u2019 to describe this mechanism specific to Twitter, insofar as even journalists end up selecting and prioritising their subjects according to Twitter indicators. Pre-2010, the Like button appeared on Facebook and other social networks\/platforms, and the display of view, like and share scores, known as \u2018vanity metrics\u2019, became generalised. Everyone chases these reputation indicators, from companies to ordinary users, politicians, celebrities and even researchers!<\/p>\n

Attention Kept on High Alert<\/h3>\n
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\u00a9Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

Our attention has gradually become captive of these platforms, which have become quasi-obligatory, using formalised methods in what is called captology. All these elements were already known to cognitive science, which have studied the diversity of attention regimes according to duration and intensity. I propose to consider four main attention regimes:<\/p>\n