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Consumer Attention: Corporeality, Surveillance and the Attention Enclosure

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Abstract

As digital space refracts human movement, rendering ephemeral actions in time and space into traceable GPS-monitored data flows, movement has become fetishized, visualized and subjected to new forms of surveillance. Thanks to GPS-enabled devices, smartphone applications and movement trackers, brands are engaging in the surveillance of consumers, with many individuals inviting brands to track their movements. By examining brand interventions in digital surveillance, this study uncovers the impact of self-quantification on individuals and suggests new ways to think about attention and consumer movement. By examining how brands mediate space and movement via brand experiences and pop-up activations, this study exposes the blurring of digital and material space to explore how the firewalls of online space are transposed onto material and physical space.

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Huber, R. (2019). Consumer Attention: Corporeality, Surveillance and the Attention Enclosure. In: Doyle, W., Roda, C. (eds) Communication in the Era of Attention Scarcity. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20918-6_8

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