Attention and Advertising

In this week’s reading (the final week of readings – Week Eleven!!) was about attention and advertising – particularly focusing on the advertising world in schools, something I had not previously known a lot about. The first reading, Introduction by Tim Wu focused on the educating and funding partners and Twin Peaks public school, highlighting not only their disadvantaged background that makes them resort to this type of payment. An aspect that shocked me was the fact that the children are given free McDonald’s happy meals in lieu of getting good grades, something that wouldn’t happen in Australia. Advertising on a grand scale was first seen in newspapers in New York City – however, it has now made its way into schools, particularly in the United States, probably due to the influx of technology. This theme of technology and the interconnected attention span is driven in the second reading, ‘Epilogue to The Attention Merchants”. In this reading, the author highlights that the attention merchants (eg: the advertisers) target the young and affluent, not only for their reasoning to spend money but also their time – trolling through website after website. This is seen through sponsoring in places such as Youtube and Instagram but also on the side banners of websites such as Facebook, where they tailor make your advertisements based on your website searches (scary, I know). This highlights the commercial exploitation of individuals through the media and advertising as they are not given a say whether or not they can “opt in” to advertising – it is just given to them (thus, it is not up to the individual to decide). Hence, these readings summarize that it is not the individuals who determine the advertising, rather, it is what the advertising want individuals to see or not to see.