ATTENTION!attention

60 Second Pause

Put away your cell phones Close your laptops Close your eyes Where does your attention go?

Multitasking

Kaiser Family Foundation Profiles of Generation M2

Not just kids

Stephen Colbert interview with Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains”

Yes, we are a little less focused, thanks to the electric stimulus of the screen. Yes, we are reading slightly fewer long-form narratives and arguments than we did 50 years ago…But what of the other side of the ledger? We are reading more text, writing far more often, than we were in the heyday of television.

And the speed with which we can follow the trail of an idea, or discover new perspectives on a problem, has increased by several orders of magnitude. We are marginally less focused, and exponentially more connected. That’s a bargain all of us should be happy to make.

Steven Johnson Yes, People Still Read, But Now It’s Social

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/business/20unbox.html

Attention is the fundamental building block for how individuals think, how humans create tools and teach each other to use them, how groups socialize, and how people transform civilizations.

Howard RheingoldAttention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies, Educause

Paying attention to what you pay attention to

is a key social literacy

(also called meta-cognition)

Millions of business, interests, political groups and individuals are spending billions of dollars to get YOUR attention.

Nevada is still the winner: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/09collins.html

American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children are potentially exposed to 40,000 advertisements per year.

Media Matters estimates that the typical American adult is exposed to approximately 600 advertisements per day.

Yet journalism exists NOT to sell a product, convince you to believe something, push you to vote a particular way, manipulate you to give your money away, etc.

Journalism exists so that our society can function. It is the collective conversation we are having about what we have done, are doing and should be doing in the future.

How does journalismget attention in this chaotic environment?

Techniques we do not endorse

Naked News Haiti News Network

What does work?

What about news grabs your attention?

Should journalists pay more attention to the stories that are getting the most traffic, that are emailed the most? Does that violate their independence?