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Feature films, tv set shows, homemade videos, tweets, sites, and breaking media: Digital mass media offer an always accessible, obviously inexhaustible supply of entertainment and information. Although selections seems endless, general public attention is not. How do digital mass media find the people they need in an period of infinite choice? In The Market place of Attention, Adam Webster talks about how people take shape in the digital time. Webster identifies the factors that induce audiences, like the preferences and behaviors of mass media users, the role of internet sites, the resources and strategies of mass media providers, and the growing impact of mass media measures - from rankings to user referrals. He features these factors into one complete framework: the marketplace of attention. In doing this, he shows that the marketplace works in ways that belie our best hopes and anxieties about digital mass media. Some observers declare that digital mass media empower a new participatory culture; others fear that digital mass media encourage users to retreat to isolated enclaves. Webster shows that public attention is at once diverse and focused - that users move across a number of outlets, producing high levels of audience overlap. So although people are fragmented in ways that could astonish midcentury broadcasting professionals, Webster argues that this doesn't sign polarization. He questions whether our personal preferences are immune system from media affect, and he identifies how our encounters with mass media might change our tastes. Within the digital era's marketplace of attention, Webster claims, we typically encounter ideas that minimize across our predispositions. Along the way, we will remake the marketplace of ideas and reshape the 21st-century general public sphere.
