New power relations in the digital attention economy as a challenge to place and city branding

Abstract

The paper examines the factors changing the global paradigm of competition between places and cities in the information and networked society. Three groups of factors are determined: (1) the transformation of the global paradigm of civilization confrontation, (2) glocalization in all many-valued inconsistencies of this process, and finally (3) the digital-interactive revolution and the Web-generated social. The second part of the presentation is devoted to the challenges posed by the digital transformation of social structures for place marketing and city branding. Based on the concepts of economics of attention and critical digitalism, the author shows how the network environment changes the communicative practices of the place. A structural model of new power digital actors for a megacity / region is proposed. This includes traffic monopolists, network elites and network brands. The possible directions of communication logistics of a place in interrelation with these actors of network power practices are shown.