Information Foraging in the Attention Economy
Year: 2021
Type: preprint
Abstract: Over the past 200 years, rising rates of information proliferation havecreated new environments for information competition and, consequently, new
selective forces on information evolution. These forces influence the
information diet available to consumers, who in turn choose what to consume,
creating a feedback process similar to that seen in many ecosystems. As a first
step towards understanding this relationship, we apply animal foraging models
of diet choice to describe the evolution of long and short form media in
response to human preferences for maximising utility rate. The model describes
an increase in information rate (i.e., entropy) in response to information
proliferation, as well as differences in entropy between short-form and
long-form media (such as social media and books, respectively). We find
evidence for a steady increase in word entropy in diverse media categories
since 1900, as well as an accelerated entropy increase in short-form media.
Overall the evidence suggests an increasingly competitive battle for our
attention that is having a lasting influence on the evolution of language and
communication systems.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Charlie Pilgrim, Weisi Guo, Thomas T. Hills
Language: English
Topic: Digital Media and Philosophy
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3186522193