If I may, I would like to expand your thesis even further - virtually all of today’s media in the US was hijacked by the attention economy when social media platforms added “news” plus the “like” function to their platforms. With the ubiquitous use of smartphones coupled with the presentation of the news (headlines) DESIGNED to attract t…
If I may, I would like to expand your thesis even further - virtually all of today’s media in the US was hijacked by the attention economy when social media platforms added “news” plus the “like” function to their platforms. With the ubiquitous use of smartphones coupled with the presentation of the news (headlines) DESIGNED to attract the attention of the viewer, traditional print media decided they had to redesign their articles to attract viewership. Hence, the model we had been used to of in-depth articles and investigative reporting had to change to attract the attention of all who are glued to the phones.
A marketing model based on attention-frequency was insidiously coupled with this attention model, providing a revenue stream for the social media platforms and eventually the print media as they had to depend on this revenue stream to support their businesses. So now the role of the “free press” no longer provides a check on governments but has been captured by the attention-marketing-economy which is designed to hook us with emotion-laden headlines and/or pithy OPINION based versus FACT-based short statements and governments world-wide have struggled because of this shift. Some governments have recently begun to try to come to terms with this major shift in how we all get our “news”. For example, the European Union is actively engaged in developing guidelines designed to standardize some broad based guidelines to return its legacy news outlets to fact based reporting. We, in the US, will need to closely monitor what they are doing to see if our government has the political will to adopt such practices.
If I may, I would like to expand your thesis even further - virtually all of today’s media in the US was hijacked by the attention economy when social media platforms added “news” plus the “like” function to their platforms. With the ubiquitous use of smartphones coupled with the presentation of the news (headlines) DESIGNED to attract the attention of the viewer, traditional print media decided they had to redesign their articles to attract viewership. Hence, the model we had been used to of in-depth articles and investigative reporting had to change to attract the attention of all who are glued to the phones.
A marketing model based on attention-frequency was insidiously coupled with this attention model, providing a revenue stream for the social media platforms and eventually the print media as they had to depend on this revenue stream to support their businesses. So now the role of the “free press” no longer provides a check on governments but has been captured by the attention-marketing-economy which is designed to hook us with emotion-laden headlines and/or pithy OPINION based versus FACT-based short statements and governments world-wide have struggled because of this shift. Some governments have recently begun to try to come to terms with this major shift in how we all get our “news”. For example, the European Union is actively engaged in developing guidelines designed to standardize some broad based guidelines to return its legacy news outlets to fact based reporting. We, in the US, will need to closely monitor what they are doing to see if our government has the political will to adopt such practices.
Thank you for this thoughtful and edifying response.
I very much doubt the govt will act to change anything.