The Attention Economy: A Journalist’s Guide to Epistemic Security
The digital age, defined by the information economy, is also known as the attention economy due to the glut of data, making critical autonomy – the ability to understand and evaluate information more vital than ever. With billions of people accessing and creating streams of discourse on the Internet daily, knowledge has never been more widely available. This growth of information is accompanied by an increase in unreliable and misleading content. Cognitive constraints, systemic biases, and the rapid spread of misinformation pose significant challenges to democratic societies.
In this environment educators and journalists play an indispensable role in fostering informed, discerning audiences. Journalists equipped with deep insights and effective digital strategies can navigate the complexities of attention scarcity and promote epistemic security—a cornerstone of informed and resilient societies in an era dominated by digitalisation.
The rise of the attention economy puts increasing pressure and stress on journalists who also face threats and abuse in the fast-paced newsroom and production environment. It also has far reaching implications for citizens if they are not intelligently and critically informed about what’s going on around them and how news may affect them. Herbert Simon’s striking observation in 1971 remains aptly relevant today: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
In the competitive sphere of digital platforms, where attention is the most valuable currency, content providers are incentivised to create sensational, emotive, and identity-affirming material. Consequently, attention and interest rather than truth, often dictates which information is amplified, shaping public discourse and understanding. People’s lack of interest in world news on British TV channels, including the BBC News Channel because the news items don’t directly and immediately affect them demonstrates this point
Former BBC Director General John Birt’s classic notion of ‘bias against understanding’ has resurfaced to highlight today’s audience which is not capable of handling news. Birt presumed intellectual inferiors are associated with the ‘ordinary’ men and women of Britain who did not understand the background to the news they were told in news summaries, a strong motivation for appending a background to every news story had to be explained any time there was any news. Because ‘ordinary people’ were deemed intellectually inferior, the message of any report had to be reinforced by relevant vivid visuals. Survey research shows that few people are prepared to effectively navigate the digital world. For example, the Pew Research Center found as recently as 2017 that only 17 percent of US adults have the skills and confidence to learn new information effectively online (J. B. Horrigan, 2019) Hence, triggering an additional role for journalists to explain – Birt’s news reporting for explaining has resurfaced as a mission which makes actual investigative reporting more important in today’s age. Today’s data economy calls for a rethinking of documentary journalism as a vital tool for underpinning in-depth investigative reporting which is disappearing. Documentary journalism in the post-truth era enhances the audience’s understanding of news from different perspectives, reinforcing epistemic newsgathering, interviewing and reporting in the Digital Age. Documentary examines the factors contributing to this decline and explores how documentary storytelling can be revitalised to strengthen epistemic journalism -a knowledge-driven, truth-seeking approach to media.