In 2007, as part of the third round of strategic planning for its digital transformation, The Associated Press decided to do something a little different. It hired a research company called Context to conduct an in-depth study of young-adult news consumption around the world. Jim Kennedy, the AP’s director of strategic planning, initially agreed to the project because he thought it would make for a “fun and entertaining” presentation at the annual meeting. It turned out to be more than that; the AP believed that the results held fundamental implications for the role of the news media in the digital age. Chief among the findings was that many young consumers craved more in-depth news but were unable or unwilling to get it. “The abundance of news and ubiquity of choice do not necessarily translate into a better news environment for consumers,” concluded the researchers in their final report. “Participants in this study showed signs of news fatigue; that is, they appeared debilitated by information overload and unsatisfying news experiences . . . . Ultimately news fatigue brought many of the participants to a learned helplessness response. The more overwhelmed or unsatisfied they were, the less effort they were willing to put in.”
The idea that news consumers, even young ones, are overloaded should hardly come as a surprise. The information age is defined by output: we produce far more information than we can possibly manage, let alone absorb. Before the digital era, information was limited by our means to contain it. Publishing was restricted by paper and delivery costs; broadcasting was circumscribed by available frequencies and airtime. The Internet, on the other hand, has unlimited capacity at near-zero cost. There are more than 70 million blogs and 150 million Web sites today—a number that is expanding at a rate of approximately ten thousand an hour. Two hundred and ten billion e-mails are sent each day. Say goodbye to the gigabyte and hello to the exabyte, five of which are worth 37,000 Libraries of Congress. In 2006 alone, the world produced 161 exabytes of digital data, the equivalent of three million times the information contained in all the books ever written. By 2010, it is estimated that this number will increase to 988. Pick your metaphor: we’re drowning, buried, snowed under.
The information age’s effect on news production and consumption has been profound. For all its benefits—increased transparency, accessibility, and democratization—the Internet has upended the business model of advertising-supported journalism. This, in turn, has led news outlets to a ferocious focus on profitability. Over the past decade, they have cut staff, closed bureaus, and shrunk the newshole. Yet despite these reductions, the average citizen is unlikely to complain of a lack of news. Anyone with access to the Internet has thousands of free news sources at his fingertips. In a matter of seconds, we can browse The New York Times and The Guardian, Newsweek and The Economist, CNN and the BBC.
News is part of the atmosphere now, as pervasive—and in some ways as invasive—as advertising. It finds us in airport lounges and taxicabs, on our smart phones and PDAs, through e-mail providers and Internet search engines. Much of the time, it arrives unpackaged: headlines, updates, and articles are snatched from their original sources—often as soon as they’re published—and excerpted or aggregated on blogs, portals, social-networking sites, rss readers, and customizable homepages like My MSN, My Yahoo, myAOL, and iGoogle. These days, news comes at us in a flood of unrelated snippets. As Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, explains, “The economic logic of the age is unbundling.” But information without context is meaningless. It is incapable of informing and can make consumers feel lost. As the AP noted in its research report, “The irony in news fatigue is that these consumers felt helpless to change their news consumption at a time when they have more control and choice than ever before. When the news wore them down, participants in the study showed a tendency to passively receive versus actively seek news.”
Consider this foreward to Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Not a lot has changed, only the depth of the damage and threat:
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
-- Neil Postman
Foreward to the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Posted by Michael Roberts on Tue 18 Nov 2008 at 02:32 PM
Is it sensible to say "the American public is no better informed now than it has been during less information-rich times"? Isn't that a lot like saying "I was teaching, but they weren't learning"?
Posted by Howard Weaver on Tue 18 Nov 2008 at 04:53 PM
Ironically, this article has 7 pages to read. Can't I just get an abstract?
Posted by Micah Sittig on Tue 18 Nov 2008 at 07:28 PM
The length of this article — much of which states the obvious about the information age — is a bit paradoxical. You write about information overload, but fall into the same traps of assuming more information (and words) is a good thing and somehow aids in effective communication. Seven pages? Really?
Posted by Brendan on Wed 19 Nov 2008 at 09:02 AM
I would say that what is paradoxical is not the length- but the fact we are reading it online -for "free"- while being sold the subscription to the magazine on the right column. Also paradoxical is that readers reading this right now are likely to be thinking "I should be doing something else instead of reading this", or resisting the temptation to link to it from their blogs or forward it to a friend before actually finishing reading it. Of those commenting here, who actually finished reading it? The question is, also, would they have finished reading it on the paper version?
What's paradoxical is that an article discussing our shorter attention spans and, generally, the dumbing-down of culture in the age of too much digital information, gets readers who can't deal with it because it is, er, "too long".
Posted by Ernesto Priego on Wed 19 Nov 2008 at 10:38 AM
I would like to see a study that analyzes how this breadth of information changes consumer behavior beyond news media absorption. The phenomenal increase of information available to people affects not just the perception an individual has regarding the applicability of said information; but the amount of content also changes how one processes said content. A person's formal way of thinking and behaving in the world can literally shift -- whether it be to accommodate this continual surge of news and editorial of varying value, or to purposefully ignore this influx of specialized content.
Posted by Aaron H. Bynum on Wed 19 Nov 2008 at 05:39 PM
I have read this on-line article, which I found informative, and the comments, which I enjoyed as well. A number of aspects of the new frantic and distracted New York media environment remain unfocused. The most fundamental one is recursion, since if you read a sufficient number of books in history, economics, and political science, at least eight print newspapers a day, and spend about three hours a day reading news on the Internet, you will begin to benefit massively from recursion, thus organizing the information powerfully, even if there is much more of it. For example, in reading Philip Bobbitt's remarkable "Terror and Consent," you will encounter some of the same ideas on paradoxes of choice as those that appear in Bree's article.
If we were to mine cognitive science directly to enhance our skills in Memory and Perception/Attention/Orientation/Adaptation, we would find it far easier to respond to this new information "flood." I have not heard of a high quality first-year university course that adopts the principle of recursion in relation to cognitive science to orient students to all university studies, including of Internet news sources.
Such a course could start with William James's "The Principles of Psychology" and end with "Terror and Consent," a good example of a deep text that many have struggled to assimilate so as to write effectively about its implications. Orientation to information is still poorly understood.
For example, scholars have been puzzling over the source of the name "Moby" for over 150 years, but it is clear from the "diabolical" logic in the novel, and the linkage between the whale Moby Dick and the word "symbol," that the author repackaged--ymbo--into "moby" into Moby. Why is what is so easy so hard to see, or to accept, unless some mysterious authority tells you it is OK to notice now?
The feeling of learned helplessness is a byproduct of extreme obsolescence in education, especially in junior high and high school, but also in the increasingly high schoolish B.A.s of America.
New York's educational system is infantile, right from Joel Klein, trying to position himself for some new parasitic position with some useless organization such as the College Board. If Kaplan is in the New York schools, if the Pearson admission test produces severely racially segregated "elite" schools, you know the system is in collapse. If students were educated, they would not experience learned helplessness in reading Internet news. That feeling is just an artifact of a 1950s school system.
The New York media should review all practices. AP is barbaric in writing simple present tense stories. What about "what might have been" or what "must have happened"? Such barbarism should be driven out of the media before it catches. Soon Joel Klein will be saying, "Let's shed the 60 verb elements of the past and write like five year olds."
The worst New York practice is ongoing at The New York Times, where the inability of the on-line editors to read text proves that American education is disordered. This is my comment at The Lede today, which was of course not posted:
American military and intelligence strategy should be powerfully refocused to destroy all elements of Al Qaeda, in a timetable that ideally would extend no more than two years, but certainly no more than four.
The best book about the legal context for this needed reshaping of U.S. policy is "Terror and Consent," by Philip Bobbitt, who should be a central part of the Obama administration. He should have the weight to ensure that his ideas on strategic legal reform will be put into effect as soon as possible. We need reviews of this book that go well beyond the feeble analysis by Niall Ferguson in The New York Times.
American schools grades 7-12 should offer honors social sciences programs in history, politics, and economics as reinforced by foreign language training and the full employment of language (the corpus revolution in linguistics) and literature "Tree of Smoke," "Libra," and "No Country For Old Men"). High school education in honors social sciences in New York should be introduced in January 2009. The new freedom towers should have a large national-model social sciences school.
ETS/College Board/Kaplan trash is contaminating New York education and half killing America. Social sciences students in honors programs should begin the day with an 8-print newspaper reading cycle (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, USA Today, The Australian, Times of London, and Globe and Mail). They should have to internalize the cycle, which takes hard work, so that they could practice the very pattern recognition and information coherence that would have stopped 9/!! cold.
The failure of America to educate its potential honors social sciences students is tantamount to criminal mischief. Anyone who reads T.J. Waters's "Class 11" closely will see that inept teaching extends into CIA training, despite the glowing reports on CIA education initiatives in "Enemies of Intelligence" by Richard Betts. "Legacy of Ashes" is a far better book.
Where is The New York Times report on the Royal Dutch Shell scenarios mentioned by Bobbitt, along with an analysis of an advance copy of Bobbitt's own global scenarios?
The death of Al Qaeda is the only rational goal for American foreign and internal policy, which must be restructured and integrated according to the Bobbitt analysis. That means the individual death of all Al Qaeda practitioners of terror.
Posted by Clayton Burns on Wed 19 Nov 2008 at 07:49 PM
The proliferation of news outlets is very misleading. Most are part of large conglomerations or blogs that basically rehash news gleaned from other news sites. There is very little original reporting as evidenced by abstracts of the Network newscasts and for that matter local news reportage. The lack of originality is systemic and obvious to anyone who follows news reporting.
The second fact not mentioned is that people gravitate to the news sources that tend to reenforce their own political and personal perceptions of the world and reject those who challenge those perceptions.
Posted by Ed Ruff, jr. on Thu 20 Nov 2008 at 12:39 AM
Ms Nordenson has done a great job synthesizing a great deal of information into a first-rate piece of explanatory journalism. I don't find the length of this story paradoxical. I think it shows that Bree has done her homework and is showing us what she learned by not attempting to cut up our food for all of us internet-addled news junkies. For more evidence that she's right on the mark, consider the circulation of The Economist, which has been rising substantially. In many ways it would seem to be an unlikely magazine to thrive when everything is being chopped up into bits, tweets and blog posts. But thrive it does, largely (I think) because it doesn't pander to its audience and seeks to deliver context and in-depth explanations of why the world is as it is. Meanwhile Newsweek and Time are cutting staff. Why? Possibly because, unlike The Economist, their work has been commoditized. They, and the rest of us who love and believe in the power of journalism, need to figure out how to make our journalism an indispensible utility.
Posted by Andrew on Tue 25 Nov 2008 at 12:22 AM
For very pertinent example of this via-a-via the extraordinary Twittering of the Mumbai attacks over the last 24 hours see:
http://tinyurl.com/5hv9hc
"Even if the truest signal was actually coming through Twitter it was so drowned in rumour, personal utterance, revenge and irrelevance as to be incomprehensible. In the flattened world of the Social Web there is clearly no filter on decency or taste."
Posted by Ben Malbon on Thu 27 Nov 2008 at 10:35 AM
This is much deeper and broader...it is the collapse of our civilization ....and being wittingly or Not, you decide, no matter, really mute...the the MediaOcracy, see www.beyondpuke.com - InPoliticallyCorrect..
We can trace this all back to the 60's when the populist, now far left movement, with the help of the Lamestream Media used the very principles state to creat what is now the new socialst movement forming, the MediaOcracy.
I know Con, I'm an Ex-Con, I know Sales, I'm a mastersalesman, I'm a self made successful publisher who understands the media's dark side, and live in general. I came UP from Hell, only to find out all the many who wish to enter it. Made popular and sexy by PopCulture the infectious drug the media delivers....
Know one knows what only I can know....It's the Culture Stupid.
Tony Venuti
now live on radio in phx...google "Beyondpuke"
Posted by Tony Venuti on Thu 27 Nov 2008 at 07:52 PM
Tony V., You need to proof your copy. Minimum standards of coherence would be appreciated.
Posted by Clayton Burns on Thu 27 Nov 2008 at 08:40 PM
For those of us who love long-form journalism -- either because of the factual investigation that it permits, or because of the scope it gives to the more narrative form (or both -- the problem of attention on the internet is possibly the biggest challenge of the moment. The internet can provide an opportunity, by offering new forms of access and distribution, but the financial model is the key stumbling block. Similar issues beset other long-form writing, including fiction.
A couple of years ago, in article for the British monthly current affairs magazine Prospect, I argued that the internet had hastened the "end of the middle" in the market for information, with readers going to the net for short, instant information. (http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=8212). But I thought there was a taste for what I called "slow journalism" at the other end of the spectrum. I think the taste is there, and it certainly can be cultivated where it is not, but again, the business model remains key.
How do we square this circle?
Posted by Susan Greenberg on Wed 31 Dec 2008 at 07:07 AM
Sorry, I pressed a button before I had finished editing my thoughts (another problem with internet communication).
I meant to say that although "attention" levels have an impact on our appreciation of serious, multi-layered journalism (and perhaps to other ambitious writing forms -- professors often complain that students today don't like to read books of any kind), it is not the only issue. The net could deliver good journalism more widely, but who will pay for the labour of research and writing? Also, who will do the work of professional editors in selecting and contextualising the work? These tasks are being pushed downwards, onto the shoulders of the individual consumer, who has to decide not just where to look but what to print out and what to store, and then how to retrieve it. Even tagging requires a level of organisation and time that not everyone can invest.
Posted by Susan Greenberg on Wed 31 Dec 2008 at 12:18 PM
Give me quality content with thoughtful, pithy analysisand I'll subscribe to the paper version. Give me blather and I'll skim online.
Posted by Tina on Sun 4 Jan 2009 at 03:56 PM