The alertness regime dominates the mediasphere because it captures advertiser attention fastest.

Evidence

The attractions and distractions that presently occupy our mediasphere issue directly from the domination exercised by the alertness regime on our mass-media apparatuses, with a direct connection to the way in which they are financed. With its daily dose of scandals, catastrophes and ‘crisis’ discourses, the alertness mode is indeed the one through which our attention is most quickly and easily captured in the short-term horizon of audiences and advertisers. Behind the media enthralments and the attention regimes which bring them into being, we must, therefore, look for the environmental reasons for our collective attention and distraction in the very particular form of capitalism that governs the infrastructure of our communication networks. Better understanding of our attention ecology requires that we sketch out the anatomy of contemporary capitalism. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 134

Categorization

• XREF: The link from alertness dominance to financing is the precise Frankfurt→digital-media causal bridge the reader wants. — connects to: Competition among attention merchants drives content to ever more lurid extremes. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 49; Large agencies industrialized advertising into an endless machine for attention capture — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 183; Rapid reading and advertising skimming reflect a broader erosion of sustained attention — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 647
• SEED: Article angle: the economics of attention — why scandals and crises are structural necessities, not lapses, of an ad-funded mediasphere.

Broader Connections

• Competition among attention merchants drives content to ever more lurid extremes. #corroborates (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 49
• Rapid reading and advertising skimming reflect a broader erosion of sustained attention #qualifies (0.74) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 647
• Large agencies industrialized advertising into an endless machine for attention capture #complicates (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 183