Commodified Attention, Commodified Speech, and the Rejection of Expertise^*

* Association for Social Economics at the ASSAs 2018

Abstract

In this paper I aim to consider some aspects of the system of communications within which expertise may be created and accepted … or rejected. For speech to be recognized as an expression of expertise, it has to be recognized as making a legitimate truth claim grounded in something other than, and broader than, the speakers’ narrow self-interest. Almost by definition, the content of the truth claims made by an expert are difficult for the nonexpert to assess. To recognize expertise must be an expression of trust. The communications system we inhabit has two features that corrode that trust: commodified access to attention and commodified speech. The advertising industry and the media that serve it treat our attention as a commodity. Attention sellers have developed into niche marketers and attention buyers have developed the practice of placing narrowly targeted orders for eyes and ears. As a result, we are grouped into such different attention clusters, it is nearly impossible for anyone to be recognized as a trustworthy speaker by members of multiple clusters. In addition, much of what we hear is said by people who speak on behalf of others to earn a paycheck. We are continually confronted with speech that is untethered from any authentic speaker—it is neither fully the speech of the buyer nor of the paid producer—and we encounter this speech as members of bundles that are increasingly disjoint from one another. These are not conducive conditions for the cultivation of broadly recognized expertise.

Keywords:

• marketplace of ideas
• audience attention
• conflict of interest
• expertise
• trust

Notes

* Association for Social Economics at the ASSAs 2018

¹ A friend recounted to me the professor’s introduction to a television screenwriting class she took as part of the MFA in screenwriting program at University of Southern California. The professor began by asking the class, ‘Why do we write for television?’ Members of the class suggested answers focused on issues like telling compelling stories that resonate with audiences. ‘No,’ he responded. ‘We write for television so that the station has something to fill the time between Lexus commercials.’