The Race for Attention in an Era of Post-truth

This paper examines how popular social media influencer Andrew Tate was able to attract vast amounts of attention and amass millions of followers in the year of 2022. Focus is placed on Tate due to the controversy of his online communications as well as the relevancy of his negative influence concerning the young males he targets. As a result, this study takes a qualitative exploratory approach where a multi-modal discourse analysis was conducted in order to understand how Tate constructs his message and personal brand in order to garner the attention he has received. With the research question: How does Andrew Tate construct his personal branding in podcasts, interviews and talk shows in order to compete within online attention economies? A subject of study that remains unexplored academically due to the recency of Tate’s popularity. The phenomenon of Tate’s success also highlighted the incompleteness of current research regarding personal branding, of which this study aimed to solve. This was done by combining academic frameworks regarding attention seeking, personal branding and authenticity management strategies. This study found that Tate was able to compete in the attention economy by making use of strategies including engaging in disruptive discourse, creating ante-narratives (stories with no end), orientating (the practice of delivering advice) and attuning his message to an audience of men who feel disenfranchised, of which demonstrate ‘attention capacity.’ Another motivating factor for why this study was conducted was to bring awareness to the societal importance of critical thinking in this era of digital communications. This is due to how developments in communication technologies have brought about an increased relevance of economies of attention and post-truth. Phenomenon which research argues contributes to the quantity and quality of information available, loss of trust as well as the fragmentation of values. The reason for the relevancy of post-truth is that this paper argues that online economies of attention are contributing to the dissemination of alternative ‘truths’ into the mainstream. Where influencers such as Andrew Tate can take advantage of this for enhancing their own influence and monetary gain.