Scarcity Of Attention Research Articles

Rivals for Attention: How Competition for Scarce Time Drove the Web Revolution, What it Means for the Mobile Revolution, and the Future of Advertising

Most online businesses try to get the attention of people and then sell advertisers access to that attention. The scarcity of attention — there’s only 24 hours in a day and much of that is spoken for — results in intense competition for people’s time and incentives to develop creative ways to people’s attention. Competition for attention helps explain how the web-based ecosystem has evolved over the last two decades and why ostensibly different companies see themselves in mortal combat. This paper describes this “attention market” and what it means for the past, present, and future of online competition.

Coping with the unknown – time and technology in formal organizations searching for safety

The article deals with the paradoxical fact that, while living in a safer society, we feel that we live in a more vulnerable society than before. To explain this paradox a socio-systemic analysis of formal organizations searching for safety is undertaken. The use of technology as structural coupling between social systems and environment is first of all focalized in order to study the hypothesis according to which technology not only saves time, but also makes time scarcer than before. As a result technical plants not only solve but also produce prevention problems. That is, any technical control of dangers is a risk. Two related problems are taken into consideration: the scarcity of time and the scarcity of attention. This leads to the conclusion that formal organizations searching for safety are anticipatory systems which usually cope with the temporal paradox of normalizing rare events. Two forms of unfoldment of such a paradox are finally discussed, namely strategic planning and insurance.

Governing for the long term: democracy and the politics of investment

In Governing for the Long Term, Alan M. Jacobs investigates the conditions under which elected governments invest in long-term social benefits at short-term social cost. Jacobs contends that, along the path to adoption, investment-oriented policies must surmount three distinct hurdles to future-oriented state action: a problem of electoral risk, rooted in the scarcity of voter attention; a problem of prediction, deriving from the complexity of long-term policy effects; and a problem of institutional capacity, arising from interest groups' preferences for distributive gains over intertemporal bargains. Testing this argument through a four-country historical analysis of pension policymaking, the book illuminates crucial differences between the causal logics of distributive and intertemporal politics and makes a case for bringing trade-offs over time to the center of the study of policymaking.

Os jornalistas como “comunidade interpretativa transnacional”

Based on a comparative research on newspapers from 13 European countries, this paper explores the concept of journalists as a “transnational interpretative community” (Zelizer, 1993; Traquina, 2002). Conducted by the EU Kids Online network, a two-month media analysis (October-November 2007) was focused on news involving children and the internet. This comparison identifies particularities of national coverage, on the one hand, and shared cross-national narratives, on the one hand, these being particularly visible in the news coverage of two international events covered by almost all papers. A shared culture is therefore visible in the ways journalists frame risks and opportunities experienced by children online, not apart from the scarcity of attention to the communicative rights expressed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

Social Networks that Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the declared set of friends and followers.

The value of openness in an attention economy

Virtually all forms of openness can be motivated by the scarcity of attention, the lynchpin of the Attention Economy. This term, which I introduced previously, is often misunderstood as simply a variant of the money economy. Instead it is an entirely new system, which, I continue to argue, is fast becoming the dominant economy on the Internet as well as in the world as a whole. A theory of how we pay attention to other humans suggests why receiving it is both desirable and difficult. Humans can absorb as much attention as can be obtained, which differentiates it from other sorts of scarce goods. The theory also suggests a typology of openness, permitting an analysis of the different forms addressed in this Conference, along with others, both existing and potential. In this context, it seems reasonable to speculate on how attention–economic activity manifested through openness may help lead to further dominance of this type of economy. Groupings based on and espousing openness eventually may come increasingly to replace profit–making firms and even non–profit institutions such as universities, while making the pursuit of money largely irrelevant.

Oppositional defiant disorder: A systematic review of evidence of intervention effectiveness

This research synthesis examines rigorous evaluations of interventions for children diagnosed with ODD. The primary goal was to identify and synthesize through meta-analysis what is known regarding the effectiveness of various treatments. A secondary goal was to assess the degree to which treatment effectiveness is being evaluated in multiple domains. Seven studies were identified that measured outcomes in six domains. As in prior reviews, interventions demonstrate improvements in the child’s behavior at home and parental stress/strain. Support for improvements in behavior and performance in school is not as strong due in part to a scarcity of attention to the multiple domains of functioning. The interventions reviewed here demonstrate some benefit and no harm; however, there is room to strengthen the research base.

Limited Attention as the Scarce Resource in an Information-Rich Economy

This paper uses basic empirical facts from attention and perception psychology for a behavioral approach to equilibrium analysis at the industry and the macroeconomic level. The paper endogenously determines whether an economy is information-rich and whether scarcity of attention complements economic scarcity. A conventional economic equilibrium results if subjects have free attention capacity. At the positive level, the impacts of ITprogress, international integration and media on equilibrium diversity and level of attentionseeking activities are shown. At the normative level, welfare, efficiency and optimal policy interventions are characterized. Finally, behavioral effects of intensified attention-seeking on market power, sectoral economic structure and work-leisure choice are considered.

Robust Reliability of Projects with Activity-Duration Uncertainty

Today's projects suffer from high uncertainty, great demand for accelerated speed, and severe scarcity of attention of the project manager. At the same time, the schedules of today's projects are expected to be more reliable than ever. This paper presents a new concept for improving the reliability of a project schedule suffering from uncertainty in the duration of its activities. The paper shows that the technique for applying the new concept requires minimal information, incorporates subjective information, is simple to use, and assists in the preparation of project schedules at a desirable level of reliability. Specific examples demonstrate the use of the technique for: (1) calculating the reliability of the project schedule; (2) enhancing the reliability of the project schedule; (3) reducing project duration without diminishing its reliability; and (4) examining how overlapping of project activities affects its reliability.

Elisha Bates and Social Reform

ELISHA BATES AND SOCIAL REFORM By Donald G. Good* Elisha Bates was a controversial Friend of early nineteenthcentury America, regarded by many Friends in America and England as both "alarming" and "brilliant."1 He has been described as the "official organ" and "the most prominent" among Ohio Orthodox Friends in 1828? as a "man of great talents" ;3 and as a man of "strong intellect" who wrote with "marked ability" in his Doctrines of Friends which was judged to be "one of the best brief accounts of Friends' views in existence" in the early nineteenth century.4 Commenting from a perspective outside the Society of Friends, Alexander Campbell's Millennial Harbinger referred to Elisha Bates as one of the "ablest and most devoted" opponents of the views which came to be associated with the name of Elias Hicks.5 The significance and character of Elisha Bates's role in the shaping of Ohio orthodoxy has not been intensively explored by Quaker historians.6 His printing establishment in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, enabled him to publish three periodicals with wide circulation and a number of his own books and pamphlets. In view of his prominent role in Ohio Quakerism, it seems appropriate to examine his life and thought in more detail. Reasons for the scarcity of attention given to Elisha Bates's contribution to early nineteenth-century Quakerism * Donald Good is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy, William Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa. 1 William P. Taber, Jr., "The Expanding World of Ohio Wilburites in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century," Quaker History, LVI, No. ? (Spring, 1967), 20. 2 Samuel M. Janney, History of tL· Religious Society of Friends (Philadelphia , 1867), IV, 295. 3 Anna B. Thomas, J. Bevan Braithwaite, A Friend of tL· Nineteenth Century (London, 1909), p. 61. 4 George Vaux, "The Beacon Controversy," TL· Friend, LXXII (June 3, 1899), 363. 6 Alexander Campbell, The Millennial Harbinger (Bethany, Virginia, 1837), New Series I, 85. 6 Two studies made long ago are an M.A. thesis at Ohio State University by Robert J. Leach, "Elisha Bates, 1817-1828: The Influence of an Ohio Publisher upon Quaker Reform," 1939 (a portion of which appeared in the Bulletin of Friends Historical Association, XXIX (1940), 17-29), and a bibliography of works by and about Bates by Elliott H. Morse; see the Bulletin of Friends Historical Association, XXVIII (1939), 104. 81 82Quaker History west of the Alleghenies might include the general neglect of Quaker history in America during this period7 and the tendency among some Friends to treat with "studied neglect" those individuals who brought pain and disgrace upon the Society in a manner similar to that of James Nayler.8 Elisha Bates was disowned by Ohio Yearly Meeting in 1837 after involved disciplinary proceedings in which he tried to gain tolerance for his views on the authority of Scripture and for his action of receiving water baptism. In spite of this unhappy and frustrating conclusion to his experience among Friends, it should be noted that his earlier ministry was well received by many Friends in America and England. During this period of his service among Friends, he was significantly involved in three major issues of nineteenth-century Quaker history. Antislavery and other social concerns claimed most of his attention from 1816 to 1824. Between 1825 and 1832 he became involved in the conflict which was later labeled the "Hicksite" controversy . As a result of his growing convictions about the authority of Scripture and his visits to England in 1833 and 1836, Elisha Bates became a noteworthy participant in the "Beaconite" controversy from 1833 to 1836. In connection with these three sets of events Elisha Bates developed a progressively stronger evangelicalism, until he found himself very far in advance of other Friends of his day. However, he manifested tendencies that other evangelical Friends in America came to reflect in large numbers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The present study will devote itself only to the first of the three central concerns to which Elisha Bates addressed himself—the social and moral issues of the time, to which his earliest publications were directed. The Bates family of Virginia can be traced back...