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Agenda-Setting, Justice, and Collective Attention

What should we collectively pay attention to? Who should have the power to decide that?

Attractors of Attention & Setting the Agenda

In 2023, Instagram’s top four followed accounts were Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Selena Gomez, and Kylie Jenner [1].  The top 4 followed accounts on Twitter were Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, and (again) Cristiano Ronaldo [2].  With the exception of Obama, not one of these individuals has been elected to public office. How confident would you be leaving it to these individuals to decide what is most important to us as a society? Should they have the power to set the agenda and to shape our collective attention, or what we as a society pays attention to?

 

 

 

 

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash
 

The amount of attention that people get increases their ability to influence what others in turn pay attention to [3].  In this way, they are able to set the public agenda and decide, in part, what we as a collective will pay attention to. If Cristiano Ronaldo posts something about climate change to Instagram, 607 million of his followers [1] will see it. And insofar as what we pay attention to shapes what we believe and what we think, individuals who are able to attract a lot of attention are able to shape what others believe and think. This gives them a lot of power [3, i].

 

This, however, is in tension with one of the basic principles of democracy that everyone should have an equal say in matters of political significance [4, ii]. If we take this seriously, then what Cristiano Ronaldo says should count for no more than what you or I have to say. But when individuals like Cristiano Ronaldo have greater power to influence what others pay attention to (and subsequently the beliefs or opinions they may form) than others, their voices seem to end up counting for more [3].

 

Another concern is that the amount of attention one gets—and the power one has to influence public opinion—often does not coincide with one’s level of expertise [3]. What happens when these individuals speak about issues that are of high societal significance, like vaccination, climate change, or global justice? Most celebrities, for example, are not experts about vaccination. However, according to one study, anti-vaccination sentiments expressed by some celebrities during the COVID-19 pandemic had an influence on individuals in the public adopting a similar stance [8].

In light of this, some people think that celebrities have special duties not to spread misinformation or undermine trust in authoritative sources [9].  But we might also think there is something problematic about celebrities expressing their views, even if we thought those celebrities were “on the right side of the issue.” That is, one might suggest that it shouldn’t matter whether a celebrity was for or against vaccination, or for or against measures to curb climate change, or against the war in Ukraine; what should matter is that they have the relevant expertise to speak on those issues. 

 

With that said, there are lots of people who are experts but who do not get any attention, or who do not get as much attention as they should get. Women and minorities, for example, are often overlooked as authorities in areas where they do in fact hold the relevant expertise. It has been suggested by some philosophers that a failure to recognize the expertise of persons where such recognition is due is a specific kind of injustice called "epistemic injustice" [10]. "Epistemic" is a term that describes of or related to knowledge or knowing [11], and epistemic injustices wrong individuals in their capacities as knowers: they either prevent an individual from acquiring knowledge or from acting as a source of knowledge. According to some philosophers, an unequal distribution of attention can contribute to epistemic injustice [12]: by paying attention to the voices of some individuals and not others, one strengthens and weakens, respectively, the positions of those individuals to contribute to collective knowledge. 

How does this discussion apply to politicians? Politicians also garner and are able to direct public attention, but they too often lack the relevant expertise on the topics they bring to our attention [13].  Would it also be problematic if your head of state spoke out against vaccination? On the one hand, we might also think there is something problematic about the level of influence politicians can have over what the public pays attention to (and potentially the opinions they form) on matters on which they are not experts. On the other hand, we might think that they are elected representatives and, as such, their ability to direct the attention of the public is at least more legitimate than that of celebrities—that is, so long as what they direct attention to is intended to represent the views of those they represent.

Painted thumbs up, smiley face, and heart emojis

Reflection Exercises

  1. Do you think there is something wrong about non-expert celebrities expressing their anti-vaccination views to the public? Would your opinion change if they expressed views that supported vaccination? In short: does the content of the message matter or is the level of expertise what is most important?
     

  2. Do celebrities have a duty to use their voices for political reasons? What problems might this pose? Do you think celebrities should be able to speak on any political topic they desire?
     

  3. There are a lot of people who are experts in various fields who do not get much attention, and thus have little influence on the public agenda. Do you think that is problematic? Do such experts deserve to get more attention than they do? Should their voices count for more than those who are not experts? If so, is that incompatible with democracy?
     

  4. Are there other criteria, besides expertise, that might make someone deserving of more attention than they get? We might, for example, think that an important part of political deliberation is to hear the voices of everyone – not just those who are experts or who are able to attract a lot of attention.

 

Journalism, Attention, and Democracy

Front-page news headlines capture the attention of readers and put particular issues forward as worthy of attention. This is an important role – arguable the chief role – of journalism in a democratic society: to bring important information to the public in an accessible way and to make issues that are relevant salient [14]. Indeed, journalism is often referred to as “the fourth power” to describe the important role it plays in shaping political issues [15].


 


 Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash

But how effective is journalism at meeting this aim? Does it always highlight the most news-worthy items?
 

One thing to notice is that media outlets are also embedded within the attention economy. Many outlets depend on advertisement for their revenue [16]. This, we have seen requires an audience. And even where media is publicly funded and not so heavily reliant on advertisement, smaller audiences may translate to less funding and require more justification for their continued existence. Media outlets thus have an incentive to attract viewer attention.

 

But there will often be a tension between what we might take to be genuinely news-worthy and what might be on the news because it is the kind of thing that will attract attention. These two things often come apart. For example, in June 2023, many media outlets provided constant coverage of the Titan submersile that went missing on its way to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.  On board were 5 wealthy passengers, who paid $250,000 for their tickets [17]. Before its fate was known, the world was captivated by the story the missing seacraft, and approximately 1.2 million dollars was spent on search and rescue efforts [18]. A week earlier, a migrant ship ("the Adriana") carrying an estimated 750 passengers quietly capsized off the coast of Greece, killing all but about 100 of those aboard [19]. No rescue efforts were launched [20], and the level of news coverage was pale in comparison to the Titan.
 

There is no doubt that the story of the Titan had attention-grabbing elements. Who could resist watching a story unfold about billionaires on board a missing submarine on a mission to explore the world’s most famous shipwreck? But we might ask whether the Titan is what we should have been all paying attention to.

Attention is a scarce resource that needs to be distributed

We have talked about attention being a scarce resource for the user. One simply cannot attend to everything at once. When one attends to one thing, one takes away attention from something else. We have seen that when you attend to the fire alarm that is set off in the café where you are working, for example, your attention is taken away from reading your book. And when we attend to the passengers on the Titan submersile, we take attention away from those on the Adriana.

 

This invites the question: what should we pay attention to? It is wrong to pay attention to the victims of the Titan and not those of the Adriana?

 

One possible answer is to say that in order to act (and in this case, to put together rescue efforts), one first needs to pay attention. So, by not paying attention to the plight of those on board the Adriana, any chance of rescue was forgone. (As it turns out, unlike in the case of the Titan, the passengers on the Adriana could have been helped [20].) We might then take up a consequentialist stance and say that we should pay attention to whatever will produce the best outcomes. If paying attention to the Adriana makes it possible to save more lives, then we should have paid attention to the Adriana and not to the Titan.

 

But what if no rescue efforts were possible in either case? One might say that one still has a duty to bear witness [21] to the plight of individuals – that is, to recognize a tragedy and the lives lost as a way of showing respect. In failing to pay attention, we fail to fulfill that duty. The problem here is that if it is not possible to pay attention to everything, there will be occasions where we fail to bear proper witness to some events.

 

Another option is to say that attention, as a scarce resource should be distributed in a way that is fair. And we could say that distributing attention based on what is most “attention-grabbing” is not fair.

 

John Rawls introduced a way to establish fairness in society. He suggested we take up an imaginary standpoint -- what he called the veil of ignorance -- from which we did not know who we were and what social positions we occupied [22].  This imaginary standpoint was to prevent individuals from choosing principles that would privilege themselves [22, 23]. Behind the veil of ignorance, one did not know, for example, one’s gender, one’s race, one’s country of origin, or one’s economic background.  One is then tasked to set up a society anew and choose what basic rules would be in place for how to distribute wealth, power, opportunities, and so on. Rawls thought that the resulting principles chosen from behind the veil of ignorance would be fair.

 

Rawls thought that individuals from behind the veil of ignorance would choose a society that distributed its resources roughly equally, and any inequality in society should be distributed in a way that make the situations of those who are worse off better [24, pp.42-43]. In this regard, Rawls was primarily concerned with inequalities in income wealth [22, p.61], but we might take inspiration from this and say that we too should distribute our attention in ways that are more likely benefit those persons who are worse off. And that should have been to the 750 migrants aboard the Adriana and not the 5 billionaires aboard the Titan.

pile of newspapers

Reflection Exercises

  1. Do you agree that there is a distinction between attention-worthy and attention-grabbing news? Try to come up with a few examples of news stories that have been particularly attention-grabbing, but not necessarily attention-worthy.
     

  2. Citizens are often encouraged to read or watch the news. Some people think we have a duty to do so [iii]. Do you agree? What if the news gives us more attention-grabbing rather than attention-worthy content? Does that affect obligations we might have?
     

  3. Do you think there is something morally wrong about paying so much attention to the victims of the Titan vs. those of the Adriana? If so, what is the problem?
     

  4. Do you think that attention can be viewed as a scarce resource? In what ways is attention different from other resources, like income? How do you think we should decide as a society how attention should be distributed?

References

[1] Wikipedia contributors. (2023, October 24). List of most-followed Instagram accounts. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:09, October 27, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_most-followed_Instagram_accounts&oldid=1181698931
 

[2] Wikipedia contributors. (2023, October 25). List of most-followed Twitter accounts. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:10, October 27, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_most-followed_Twitter_accounts&oldid=1181845934
 

[3] Archer, A., Cawston, A., Matheson, B., & Geuskens, M. (2020). Celebrity, democracy, and epistemic power. Perspectives on Politics, 18(1), 27-42.
 

[4] Buchanan A. (2002). Political legitimacy and democracy. Ethics, 112, 689–719. https://doi.org/10.1086/340313

 

[5] Kolodny, N. (2014). Rule over none I: what justifies democracy? Philosophy and Public Affairs, 42, 195–229. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12035

[6] Anderson E. (2009). Democracy: Instrumental vs. non-instrumental value. In: Christiano T, Christman J (eds) Contemporary debates in political philosophy. Blackwell, London, pp 213–227.

 

[7] Kapelner, Z. (2023). What does it mean to have an equal say?. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 1-15.

[8] White, B. M., Melton, C., Zareie, P., Davis, R. L., Bednarczyk, R. A., & Shaban-Nejad, A. (2023). Exploring celebrity influence on public attitude towards the COVID-19 pandemic: social media shared sentiment analysis. BMJ Health & Care Informatics, 30(1).

 

[9] Archer, A., Alfano, M., & Dennis, M. (2022). On the uses and abuses of celebrity epistemic power. Social Epistemology, 1-15.
 

[10] Fricker, M. (2019). Testimonial injustice. Contemporary Epistemology: An Anthology, 149-163.

 

[11] Smith, L., & Archer, A. (2020). Epistemic injustice and the attention economy. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 23(5), 777-795.
 

[12] Wiktionary contributors. epistemic. (2023, August 31). Wiktionary. Retrieved 11:05, December 14, 2023 from https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=epistemic&oldid=75887717.

[13] Jones, B. D., & Baumgartner, F. R. (2005). The politics of attention: How government prioritizes problems. University of Chicago Press.
 

[14] Siegel, S. (2022). Salience principles for democracy. In S. Archer, (ed.), Salience: A philosophical inquiry, (pp.235-266). Routledge.

[15] Wikipedia contributors. (2023, October 17). Fourth Estate. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:10, October 29, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fourth_Estate&oldid=1180564696
 

[16] Wu, T. (2017). The attention merchants: The epic scramble to get inside our heads. Vintage.
 

[17]  Chung, C. (2023, June 20). Extreme travel rescue operations are vast in scale and cost. Who foots the bill Is murky. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/titanic-submersible-search-rescue-costs.html#:~:text=The%20passengers%20aboard%20the%20submersible,of%20diving%20to%20the%20Titanic

 

[18] Horton, A. and Lamonthe, D.  (2023, June 23). What the Titan seach should cost—and who will pay for it. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/23/titan-search-cost/
 

[19] Wikipedia contributors. (2023, October 19). 2023 Messenia migrant boat disaster. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:47, October 27, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2023_Messenia_migrant_boat_disaster&oldid=1180886023

 

[20] Matina Stevis-Gridneff, M. and Shounali, K. (2023 July 1). Everyone knew the migrant ship was doomed. No one helped. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/world/europe/greece-migrant-ship.html#:~:text=Rather%20than%20send%20a%20navy,not%20want%20to%20be%20rescued

 

[21] Ben-Pazi, H. (2015). Ethical dwelling and the glory of bearing witness. Levinas Studies, 10, 221-248.


[22]  Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Harvard University Press.
 

[23] Wenar, L. (2021). "John Rawls.” In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelmen (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Edition) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/rawls/
 

[24] Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Harvard University Press.

Notes

[i] Archer et. al. (2020) [3] refer to this kind of power, to both influence what others think and believe and empower or disables others to do the same, as “Epistemic power.”

[ii] For a discussion of what exactly it means to have an equal say in political decision-making, see Kapelner (2023) [7].

[iii] We credit Anna Harford for this question concerning duties we have to watch the news.

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