Attention dynamics on social technology platforms in organizations: An empirical study of structural and temporal mechanisms
2026-06-25
In an era of digital ubiquity, organizations increasingly face challenges of capturing, managing, and channeling the limited attention of workers. This study examines interdependent patterns of attention allocation on a social technology platform. We collected digital traces and personnel records from a European aviation company and analyzed 56,502 time-stamped communicative events of 3346 workers using bipartite relational event models. The findings show that structural and temporal mechanisms of attention dynamics collectively shape worker engagement on the platform: popular threads are more likely to attract additional attention; workers tend to engage in threads where their colleagues are active; workers revisit threads they have previously participated in; and highly active workers are inclined to contribute to less popular threads. This study offers a conceptual and analytic frame that demonstrates the value of viewing social technology platforms as an interdependent network of workers making decisions as to how to allocate limited attention resources.