The Marketplace of Attention

Scholarly discussions of audiences are as fragmented as the readers and viewers they analyze. Theories of selective exposure, bubbles, preference formation, rational ignorance, uses and gratification, scheduling patterns, and counter-programming all vie for attention. This book skillfully draws these theories and evidence together to answer a simple but vexing question: how much do we know about how audiences are generated, and what does that imply about the marketplace of ideas?

James T. Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication, Stanford University

A thorough and thought-provoking primer on how the interplay of users and structures affects the creation of audiences that are neither as participatory nor as polarized as some digital theorists have imagined.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Webster provides an astute explanation of how the transformation from a media world with limited choice to one of bountiful supply is affecting audiences, media, and society. He focuses on how individuals exercise personal choice and create discrete consumption patterns, and what is now required to garner their attention. He shows that traditional conceptualizations of audiences are no longer expedient and argues for a new understanding of how audience and social needs can be evaluated and met. This is an important book for understanding media audiences and behavior.

Robert G. Picard, Director of Research, Reuters Institute, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

An engaging, coolheaded look at the changing media landscape. There have been many breathless accounts of how new media might be changing the world, predicting we are on the verge of either utopia or disaster. Webster pulls together hard evidence and frontier research to tell us what actually is happening, cutting through the hyperbole and offering a balanced account of where we have been and where we are going.

Matthew Gentzkow, Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

The Marketplace of Attention is a worthy addition to cross-disciplinary shelves. It's lucid, accessible and thoughtful—and in our fast-moving media market, who can ask for more than that?

Times Higher Education

James G. Webster makes important theoretical contributions in this book that will inform a wealth of testable hypotheses about audience choice and the influence of messages in a fragmented, segmented, media environment. His principal contribution may be his cool-headed yet provocative approach. Webster at once offers an exciting characterization of a dynamic marketplace of attention as well as a careful check on theorists and empiricists making broad claims about the dire consequences of media choice or micro-targeting.

The International Journal of Press/Politics