Political issues only become contested once enough people attend to them

Evidence

There are a few levels to our claim that attention is political. The FIRST is that “politics”—what your aunt or uncle probably means when they use the word—has always been about attention! Name the first hot-button topic that comes to mind: immigration, welfare, reproductive rights, voting rights, what have you. Each of those topics became a political “issue” because enough of the American public decided it was worthy of their attention, at which point people began to disagree over what, exactly, to do about it. This disagreement—channeled, mediated, and (in the best cases) resolved through a set of deliberative processes—is what we call “politics.” — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 446

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Issues become political only when enough public attention first lands on them — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 446; Parties organize political conflict rather than merely reflecting preexisting disagreements — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 193; Protesters only reach targets when they go where audiences already are — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 67