The group traced Bolsonaro’s rise to big data social media manipulation of attention

Evidence

We started as an underground association of artists, performers, and interventionists. We created a nonprofit to support work we believed in—work that centered on durational forms of sustained attention in groups (practically speaking, we mostly led educational programs in museums). Then, in 2018, a whole bunch of us ended up in Brazil as part of the São Paulo Biennial, an event that took place in the immediate wake of the election of Jair Bolsonaro, whose rise was seen by many to reflect the shifting politics of Big Data social media, with its bad actors and bilious cliques. We had come from Poland, Turkey, England, Hungary, Germany, France, and elsewhere, and we were galvanized by the anger we felt in Brazil—and by a shared sense that the “politics of attention” (and specifically the wholesale commodification of attention) demanded urgent address. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 25

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Frankfurt School material on how mass media and attention regimes produce fascism — the causal claim that data-driven media politics engineered an authoritarian outcome. — connects to: Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign bombarded millions with fake news via WhatsApp groups — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 336; The rise of Bolsonaro galvanized attention activists around attention’s commodification — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 25; Social media microtargeting drove Brazil’s 2018 far-right electoral outcome — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1336 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: the São Paulo Biennial as a flashpoint where art-world actors became politically galvanized — a case study of how cultural institutions surface political crisis.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign bombarded millions with fake news via WhatsApp groups — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 336; The rise of Bolsonaro galvanized attention activists around attention’s commodification — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 25; Social media microtargeting drove Brazil’s 2018 far-right electoral outcome — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1336 (+1 more)