Attention! - III: Pauses and Punctuations of Experience

Abstract

In recent years, attention has become a topic of increasing public concern. Digital distractions, addictive design patterns, and ad-driven platforms are said to be decreasing individual attention spans; political crises are described as canny distractions or failures of collective attention. Meanwhile, academic critics call for new forms of attention as solutions to analytic and political problems. This panel will draw together work that attends to attention, using the analytic tools of STS to foreground “attention” itself as an object bound up with the social production of knowledge, scientific and technical infrastructures, and broader discourses of economic value and cultural values. What work does the concept of attention perform in popular and expert conversations? How might closer attention to attention interrupt common sense discourses about its value and purpose? What work can attention perform, when it is attended to with greater precision and care?

Chair

• Rebecca Jablonsky, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Individual Presentations

• Hacking Attention, Hacking Intentions: Digital Detoxers’ Perceptions of Technology Design - Theodora Sutton, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

• Logics of Attention in Web-Based User Experience Design and Engineering - Lake Polan, University of Chicago

• From an Attention Economy to an Intention Economy - Alex Beattie, Victoria University Wellington

• Pausing Public Attention: News Technologies and Journalistic Silences - Mike Ananny, University of Southern California Annenberg

• Patented Emotions: Attention, Appropriation, and Capture - Tero Karppi, University of Toronto

Session Organizer

• Tero Karppi, University of Toronto