Critics often blame the attention economy for elevating content that appeals to our baser instincts. The argument goes like this: Media outlets, eager to increase their market share of attention in a fragmented media environment, use digital metrics like pageviews to better understand what consumers want. That data then informs content decisions, resulting in more cats-playing-piano-type stories and fewer stories about policy. The more pageviews that cats playing piano get, the more incentivized outlets are to produce such content. As a result, traffic analytics become both the method and the objective.
In monetizing our gaze, the media environment responds to market forces that demand traffic as proof of consumer attention. The implication is that these analytics tell us what people pay attention to. But that assumption about attention is not supported by empirical evidence.
Metrics can tell reporters and editors that the audience for a story is, for instance, disproportionately mobile and driven by Twitter. It can even tell them how much time people spent on the page. But they don’t tell us how many people actually read the story.
What these metrics capture is exposure: a necessary but insufficient requirement for attention.
Attention is elusive, often cursory, difficult to measure, and it is essential to understanding news consumption. In a forthcoming book project, my co-author Johanna Dunaway and I use eye tracking to show the ways that attention conditions learning in a mobile news environment. Another recent study found that mobile app users learn less from news consumption than do people getting news from other sources, despite spending more time with news. This research shows us that focusing on exposure only tells half the story: Without knowing what a person pays attention to, we know only that a person clicked, not that they learned.
This distinction between attention and exposure is vitally important for the news industry because, unlike other products, the news is a consumption good — meaning people have to consume a story in order to appraise its value.
Instead of taking these characteristics into account, traffic-driven news decisions are motivated by exposure rather than attention, elevating proliferation and retention over comprehension. That may be a suitable strategy for platforms like Facebook, which are advantaged by time-in-app, regardless of whether users are just habitually scrolling. Such an information structure belies the attention required to lend news its value — and yet news judgements often draw on similar metrics like time-on-page.
In other words, cats-playing-piano may get the initial exposure, pageviews that can be reported back to advertisers — but did it garner enough attention to create value for the reader? Cat lovers though we may be (I actually prefer dogs), a story that merits only minimal attention is more likely to be forgotten and thus warrants little value-added for the source beyond that click. A story that earns attention, on the other hand, elicits more thoughtful engagement with the information and increases recall, likely motivating other desirable attitudes and behaviors like trust and return visits.
Though there are certainly circumstances under which traffic is the goal, the news industry cannot be both motivated and sustained by exposure alone. Long-term success requires attention as well. In other words, we need to start thinking about what happens after the click to truly leverage the greatest economic value of digital news. Mistaking clicks for attention distorts consumer demand to the detriment of the news industry and the public.
Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University.
Critics often blame the attention economy for elevating content that appeals to our baser instincts. The argument goes like this: Media outlets, eager to increase their market share of attention in a fragmented media environment, use digital metrics like pageviews to better understand what consumers want. That data then informs content decisions, resulting in more cats-playing-piano-type stories and fewer stories about policy. The more pageviews that cats playing piano get, the more incentivized outlets are to produce such content. As a result, traffic analytics become both the method and the objective.
In monetizing our gaze, the media environment responds to market forces that demand traffic as proof of consumer attention. The implication is that these analytics tell us what people pay attention to. But that assumption about attention is not supported by empirical evidence.
Metrics can tell reporters and editors that the audience for a story is, for instance, disproportionately mobile and driven by Twitter. It can even tell them how much time people spent on the page. But they don’t tell us how many people actually read the story.
What these metrics capture is exposure: a necessary but insufficient requirement for attention.
Attention is elusive, often cursory, difficult to measure, and it is essential to understanding news consumption. In a forthcoming book project, my co-author Johanna Dunaway and I use eye tracking to show the ways that attention conditions learning in a mobile news environment. Another recent study found that mobile app users learn less from news consumption than do people getting news from other sources, despite spending more time with news. This research shows us that focusing on exposure only tells half the story: Without knowing what a person pays attention to, we know only that a person clicked, not that they learned.
This distinction between attention and exposure is vitally important for the news industry because, unlike other products, the news is a consumption good — meaning people have to consume a story in order to appraise its value.
Instead of taking these characteristics into account, traffic-driven news decisions are motivated by exposure rather than attention, elevating proliferation and retention over comprehension. That may be a suitable strategy for platforms like Facebook, which are advantaged by time-in-app, regardless of whether users are just habitually scrolling. Such an information structure belies the attention required to lend news its value — and yet news judgements often draw on similar metrics like time-on-page.
In other words, cats-playing-piano may get the initial exposure, pageviews that can be reported back to advertisers — but did it garner enough attention to create value for the reader? Cat lovers though we may be (I actually prefer dogs), a story that merits only minimal attention is more likely to be forgotten and thus warrants little value-added for the source beyond that click. A story that earns attention, on the other hand, elicits more thoughtful engagement with the information and increases recall, likely motivating other desirable attitudes and behaviors like trust and return visits.
Though there are certainly circumstances under which traffic is the goal, the news industry cannot be both motivated and sustained by exposure alone. Long-term success requires attention as well. In other words, we need to start thinking about what happens after the click to truly leverage the greatest economic value of digital news. Mistaking clicks for attention distorts consumer demand to the detriment of the news industry and the public.
Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University.
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Mario García Think small (screen)
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own