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Attracting Versus Sustaining Attention in the Information Economy

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Digital Transformation: Challenges and Opportunities (WEB 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 328))

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Abstract

Attention is a scarce resource possessed by a person. In the information age, we observe the rapid increase of information available and the decrease of individual’s attention. This calls for efficient attention allocation amidst information overload. Prior literature suggests attention allocation is a two-stage process – attracting attention and sustaining attention. In this study, we refer to attention theory from psychology literature to explore what attract users’ attention and why users stay on with particular social media content. We use YouTube as the empirical setting to differentiate attracting attention from sustaining attention and examine factors that influence attracting and sustaining attention. The results of this study show that factors that attract attention are different from the factors that will sustain attention in the information age.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Meaningful words contain non-function words such as conjunctions, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs.

  2. 2.

    Video category of our dataset includes film & animation, sports, travel & event, people & blogs, comedy, entertainment, howto & style, and education. Video category is based on the video content and is different from channel category.

  3. 3.

    The channels of the dataset are from four countries, US, CA, GB, and CH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Yimiao Zhang & Kim Huat Goh

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  1. Yimiao Zhang
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  2. Kim Huat Goh
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Correspondence to Yimiao Zhang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Seoul, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Wooje Cho

  2. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ming Fan

  3. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

    Michael J. Shaw

  4. Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Byungjoon Yoo

  5. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Han Zhang

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Zhang, Y., Goh, K.H. (2018). Attracting Versus Sustaining Attention in the Information Economy. In: Cho, W., Fan, M., Shaw, M., Yoo, B., Zhang, H. (eds) Digital Transformation: Challenges and Opportunities. WEB 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 328. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99936-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99936-4_1

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