Die „Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit“ als heuristische Kategorie einer kulturhistorisch orientierten Mediengeschichte

Abstract

The „economy of attention” as a heuristic concept of a cultural-history oriented media history In the light of confusing amounts of available data, the question as to how attention is gained has become an important topic that should be situated in twentieth-century modernity, as an aspect of acceleration. The struggle for attention is a competitive one, since attention always constitutes one of various realizable possibilities. That is especially true for the mass media. In order to attract an audience, they had to explore the preferences of their consumers more and more accurately. Hence, a whole industry for measuring attention evolved whose new polling techniques generated specific constructions of the social, thereby structuring the imagination of social realities in media society. But while pointing to the various practices engendering trust between the media selling their products and their consumers, “attention economy” as an analytical concept blends out the influence of media actors. In their theoretical reflections, Georg Franck and others simply ignore individual agency.