The attention economy was first theorised by political scientist Herbert A. Simon in 1971, sensing that the tendency towards information overload would create paralysis. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients”, he wrote. “Attention transactions" would replace financial transactions as the focus of our economic system, and especially in the worlds of politics, advertising and social media, so it came to be.
Intangible factors became paramount to the processes of promotion and distribution, namely immediacy, personalisation and free accessibility. "Attention economics" forms a potential consumer's attention as a resource – advertisers follow a model they called AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention is therefore the first stage in the process of converting non-believers and non-consumers. There is no time to digest, only to react, or not.
Progressively this directive takes over all aspects of communication, bringing us to the current conditions of widespread disinformation and its supposed remedy, the digital detox. If “ignorance is bliss”, in its latest guise, ignorance becomes essential for maintaining a certain level of mental health.
Disinformation fosters conspiracy theories, anxiety, incredulity, with the dangerous outcome that nobody believes anything anymore, or could that be the opposite?... Extremism emerges as the only way of attracting attention.
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