British war propagandists discovered mass attention’s power before commerce did

Evidence

Their lineage can be traced to the nineteenth century, when in New York City the first newspapers fully dependent on advertising were created; and Paris, where a dazzling new kind of commercial art first seized the eyes of the person in the street. But the full potential of the business model by which attention is converted into revenue would not be fully understood until the early twentieth century, when the power of mass attention was discovered not by any commercial entity but by British war propagandists. The disastrous consequences of propaganda in two world wars would taint the subsequent use of such methods by government, at least in the West. Industry, however, took note of what captive attention could accomplish, and since that time has treated it as a precious resource, paying ever larger premiums for it. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 15

Categorization

• SEED: The claim that propaganda discovered attention manipulation before commercial advertising did is a counterintuitive angle for a piece on the origins of the attention economy.
• CANDY: The fact that British war propagandists, not advertisers, first cracked the code of mass attention is a surprising, memorable tidbit.
• XREF: connects to: Britain pioneered state-controlled broadcast propaganda before Nazi Germany did. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 414; Post-war capitalism discovered attention as a new market. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 126; WWI imperial powers treated global public opinion as strategically important as the battlefield — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 662 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• WWI imperial powers treated global public opinion as strategically important as the battlefield #corroborates (0.85) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 662
• Post-war capitalism discovered attention as a new market. #complicates (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 126
• Wartime government advertising legitimized commercial advertising as respectable #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 172
• America adopted British propaganda techniques and scaled them far larger #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 149