Attention industries both react to and actively create audience fragmentation

Evidence

“Audience fragmentation” was the industry term for what the new cable networks were molding themselves to, and it was of a piece with the idea of appealing to clusters through PRIZM. Of course it was never entirely clear whether “fragment” was being used more as a verb or a noun: Were the networks reacting to fragmented audiences, or were they in fact fragmenting them? In retrospect, they were doing both. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 617

Categorization

• XREF: The verb/noun ambiguity of ‘fragment’ echoes the chicken-and-egg problem of personalization algorithms today — do platforms serve or manufacture polarized attention segments? Also parallels the ‘both’ answer reached about demand-shaping in the advertising chapters. — connects to: Rapid reading and advertising skimming reflect a broader erosion of sustained attention — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 647; The war technostructure outsourced demand creation to the attention industry — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 150; Audience measurement ceded programming control to ratings rather than taste or decency — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 494 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that media both serve pre-existing audience divides and actively manufacture them, simultaneously, is a subtle dialectical claim that generalizes well beyond cable TV to today’s feed democracy.

Broader Connections

• The rise of personalized web consumption ended broadcasters’ power to compel attention #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 921