Attention Economy

Attention economy reminds me of Putnam’s famous argument that TV (or Internet) has a time displacement effect on people’s civic engagement. But the attention economy provides a more sophisticated measure of people’s use of time, which is attention. Most of mass communication studies still utilize the time spent on media consumption to measure the media use. This approach fails to account for the increasing thinner attention people paid to the media, even when they claim to spend time with it.

Attention economy also proposed two interesting laws:
First, the amount of information increases, the demand for attention increases.
Second, the more attention to have begin with, the easier it is to get more.

The first one can be used to explain the information overload phenomenon. However, the increase in demand for attention may be disappointed by the supply. What people are paying attention to and which get the most devoted attention can be an interesting topic for mass communication studies. The second law shows a rich get richer model in attention economy. I am wondering whether some media outlets are more attention efficient than others. Especially new media, would reading twitter less attention consuming than reading New York Times? Therefore, one media does not have to be dominant attention grabber in order to succeed, media requires less attention may attracts more users, who live in a information overload society.