Web news and social media make our attention "distorted"

Web news and social media make our attention “distorted”

The topic has quickly attracted public attention but then the focus is unclear, the poll results are clear, and social media and the rapid spread of any news through them have a major contribution to public awareness.

The era of information technology and social media change the way to which behaves as human attention. A recent study has shown that people are more and more inclined to focus on a larger number of topics but in a shorter time. Our attention is short-lived, “distorted”. People are focusing more on things – but they often focus on things in a short time, say researchers from the Technical University of Denmark.

They consider that the scope of global attention is narrowed by the amount of information being presented to the public. The study was published in the science journal Nature Communications. Researchers have explored several types of media attention, including a few (but not limited to) movie tickets, Google Books, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, scientific publications, and more.

Researchers then created a mathematical model for predicting three factors: the “heat” theme, its development in the public sphere and the desire for a new topic, explained Dr. Philip Hoover, a professor of applied math at University College Cork, Ireland. Empirical data tells about periods in which topics quickly attract public attention, but then the focus is so blurred.

Exceptions are only for the publication of Wikipedia and scientific papers. For example, the global trend in Twitter in 2013 will last an average of 17.5 hours, but in 2016 the focus will remain on the topic of only 11.9 hours.

It seems that the attention of the world community has, to say, a certain size, but the themes and elements that compete for winning this attention have become more and more compressed, says Professor Sneh Lehmann of the Technical University of Denmark, working on the research.

“Content increases as a volume that draws our attention, and our desire for” news “lets us skip the themes,” says Philip Lorenz-Scrien of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who also participates in the research. In the statement, Guardian, Lorenz-Scriven, and Hevel said the most unexpected thing in the research was that the level of attention the topics came to remain almost constant.

“Summaries of the peaks of collective concern (maximum popularity) remain stabile, while slopes of their dynamics become steep, meaning that the themes are becoming more popular faster, but the interest disappears at a similar pace.”

Social media have a major contribution to social awareness and the rapid spread of any news The role is also the so-called “fear of not missing something” that causes people to infinity and very often move through social media, to stir up anxiety that will avoid something important, but social media definitely play a role, but guilt is not “This trend began at least a hundred years ago,” said researchers, but Lorenz-Spencer and Hevel argue that quality journalism will always have a place in the public sphere, probably not in social media.

“Visionary or well-researched stories ( good journalism) will always have [своето] space, but social media delivery is probably not the most effective way to spread a longer, more detailed story. “Although there is no way to accurately say what impact it is to the wider public, researchers have the following assumptions:”

If none of the topics discussed publicly will be reduced to the minimum amount of information that is being reported before we go to the next topic, it certainly breaks the quality of information on that topic. On the other hand, things that are visible only in a very short period may not be relevant to long runs. ”

Web news and social media make our attention “distorted”