Accelerating dynamics of collective attention
Across longitudinal datasets from several domains, covering multiple decades, the authors find steeper gradients and shorter periods in how cultural items gain collective attention, driven by growing production and consumption of content that exhausts limited attention resources more quickly. THE UNIT IS THE CULTURAL ITEM, NOT THE PERSON: it measures how long a topic holds the public's attention, not how long a person can hold theirs. Hari credits Lehmann throughout; the first author is Lorenz-Spreen
Across longitudinal datasets from several domains, covering multiple decades, the authors find steeper gradients and shorter periods in how cultural items gain collective attention, driven by growing production and consumption of content that exhausts limited attention resources more quickly. THE UNIT IS THE CULTURAL ITEM, NOT THE PERSON: it measures how long a topic holds the public's attention, not how long a person can hold theirs. Hari credits Lehmann throughout; the first author is Lorenz-Spreen
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-18.
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Lorenz-Spreen, P., Monsted, B. M., Hovel, P., & Lehmann, S. (2019). Accelerating dynamics of collective attention. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1759. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-09311-w.