Mass media exploit receiver attention through a stark production-to-reception asymmetry.

Evidence

In a face-to-face dialogue, the attention time of the participants unfolds according to a common temporality in the present (at a 1 minute: 1 minute scale). In a talk given in a full lecture theatre, the preparation time invested beforehand by the presenter – a time that may be considered as the form of the attention that he gives to his listeners in advance – compensates to a degree for the structural asymmetry of the lecture situation (10 hours of preparation x 1 speaker equals 30 minutes of lecture x 30 listeners). Even if preparing TF1’s or France 2’s ‘Journal de 20 heures’ (the Evening News) mobilizes the attention of one hundred people for two days, and even if most of the six million viewers only watch it distractedly, the orders of magnitude lose all proportion as you move from one side of the camera to the other (1,600 production hours ≠ 3,000,000 reception hours). — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 192

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretely illustrates what ‘over-economy of scale’ in attention terms means via specific ratios.
• SHARE: Good for someone working on attention or media economics — the 1,600 vs 3,000,000 production/reception hours stat.
• XREF: connects to: Mass-media profits derive from non-reciprocal attention exchange — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 251; Broadcast communication between elites and audiences is systematically distorted by structure — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 783; Presential joint attention differs in kind from media-captured attention by its participant-limited scale. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 304 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass-media profits derive from non-reciprocal attention exchange #corroborates (0.92) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 251
• Communication distortion stems from asymmetric positions between producers and audiences. #corroborates (0.88)
• Broadcast communication between elites and audiences is systematically distorted by structure #corroborates (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 783
• Mass media exploit receivers because industrial production meets artisanal biological reception. #expands (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 189
• Broadcast mass media turn audiences into passive listeners with no means of reply. #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94
• Structural differences between broadcasters and audiences cause systematic communication distortion #corroborates (0.82)
• Presential joint attention differs in kind from media-captured attention by its participant-limited scale. #expands (0.78) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 304
• Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24