Attention asymmetries stem from production structures, not individual bad will.

Evidence

Such asymmetries come much less from the bad will of agents than – as Marx noticed – from the very nature of the relations of information and attention production. Georg Franck pertinently insists on the fact that the source of these disproportions and distributive injustices is to be found in the effects brought about by the development of mass telecommunication technologies during the twentieth century. … The relationship between the attention invested by the suppliers and that collected in return is strictly asymmetrical. The suppliers disseminate information in the form of technical reproductions, while the consumers pay with live attention for each copy. Only through this asymmetry is it possible to collect such masses of donated attention, which is what makes a medium attractive for those appearing in it and which allows the media their lavishness in conferring the modern peerage of prominence. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 189

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: So-called selective perception follows structured patterns, not random individual variance.; Economic accounts of attention falsely derive the collective from individual activity — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 79; Attention is a socially produced and politically governed resource, not merely a scarce one. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 19 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• So-called selective perception follows structured patterns, not random individual variance. #corroborates (0.85)
• Economic accounts of attention falsely derive the collective from individual activity #corroborates (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 79