Thursday, October 1, 2009

The questions on attention

The readings for this week dealt with the intriguing topic of “attention,” but it also prompted the following questions for me.

Q1. Where do people pay attention to? For media products, do they focus their attention on the information channel (medium) or the information itself? One may have a different concept than the other and ultimately produce different effects.

Q2. I wonder how people get attention. This piece mentioned the effect of attention on media use, exposure, etc., but it seems to ignore where people’s attention comes from. Also, what are the differences between attention, interest, and exposure? Is attention a psychological dimension or behavioral one?

Q3. It is not true that people have the same degree of attention, thus I am curious about how the levels of attention (low, medium, and high) exert different effects on media consumption.

Q4. The pieces mentioned that the attention economy represents the laws of supply and demand, and that as the amount of information increases, the demand for attention increases. However, does the amount matter only? What about the characteristics of information as opposed to its amount?

Q5. Is attention the first condition for media consumption or information access? What are the other factors prior to attention; what fosters that attention?

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