Business Media Coverage of the Diffusion of Attention Technologies, 1990-2017

• In Event: Techology in/and the Organization

Abstract

Organizations in the digital networked media environment must increasingly rely on data about audiences’ allocation of their attention in order to obtain positive returns on their marketing budgets, or successful outcomes of health or political campaigns or other interventions. Thus a variety of attention technologies and an intermediary media industry have developed over time. Applying concepts of the information and knowledge economy, information economics, media advertising models, the attention economy, and diffusion of innovations theory, this study evaluates coverage of organizations’ adoption of attention technologies (tracking, storage, and analytics) in articles in the business press from 1990 to 2017. The study analyzes how attributes of these innovative attention technologies are communicated over time in terms of positive and negative relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, communicability, uncertainty, and reinvention.

Authors

• Ronald E. Rice, U of California, Santa Barbara

• Zane T. Hoffmann, Oracle