Of course, advertisers have always vied for attention, and ad-supported media isn’t new. TV, radio, and print depend on advertising revenue, and, like the Internet, the greater the viewer- or readership, the higher the yield, at least in general. But there’s a sly difference between how traditional media channels generate advertising revenue and how Web channels do. Traditionally, media outlets and publications sell ad space or commercial slots, commanding fees that correspond with exposure. On the Web, however, because everything is traceable, advertisers don’t pay flat rates according to audience size. They pay for direct, quantifiable engagement: views and clicks. As a result, online publishers must entice or force these views and clicks if they hope to generate revenue and stay in business. In other words, because attention is a scarce commodity (each of us has only 24 hours of attention to give per day), and because of the Web’s rapidity, publishers must increasingly employ garish and garrulous tactics in order to elicit or command attention. And there is huge money in doing this successfully. A single viral post can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a tempting albeit intensely competitive marketplace, and publishers of viral news enter it daily. But it’s this marketplace that has, in effect, flipped the roles of media and ads. Whereas traditional media is supported by advertisements, digital media is proliferated to support advertisements. The marriage between media and ads appears to be the same, but the primary product has shifted. It’s not information or news that is being sold, it’s ads that are being sold under the guise of information. And, again, the currency is human attention.



How does all this threaten democracy? The short answer is that the public sphere is now the digital sphere, and the digital sphere is a marketplace that immediately coopts any and all participation and then sells it back to us. In other words, the public sphere was once a democratic apparatus (at least in theory), a space where citizens came together to discuss societal problems and influence political action, but now it is a virtual world that commodifies all such discussion, packaging it as information, promising an increase in knowledge for consuming it, and profiting the moment it is consumed. Such a sphere effectively diminishes voice by amplifying voice; the louder everyone becomes, the less anyone is heard. Yet the more outrageous and divisive or penetrating and poignant your voice — or article or video — the more likely it will be reified and consumed as Web fodder. In fact, the increasingly competitive marketplace demands more outrageousness, more divisiveness. Even organizations like Upworthy, A Plus, and Collective Evolution, that claim to counter mainstream sensationalism with “positive news,” are profiting from hijacking emotions. And they know this, which is why they practically beg viewers to comment and share, with their glaring buttons, solicitous popups. Trigger the algorithms, direct the traffic, laugh all the way to the bank. Thus, to participate in today’s sphere is to be an engaged citizen and an enthralled spectator — engaged citizen because this is the state of our democracy, spectator because it’s an illusion of democracy.

Ironically, any critique of the modern public sphere, such as this one, is immediately subsumed. Take for example the conversations regarding fake news and echo chambers, now happening in the public sphere. Both conversations are inherently political, yet it’s reasonable to think that each will morph into clickbait and revenue rather than policy change or overhauls in journalism ethics and news dissemination. Already the conversation regarding fake news is polarized, with the political left decrying alternative news sources while Donald Trump and his supporters accuse mainstream outlets like CNN and NBC of pandering in falsity. But there is little conversation across the divide, if any at all, as newsfeeds and search engines algorithmically target, rouse, and reinforce sentiments. Enter the echo chamber. The echo chamber is the result of the social media newsfeed, where people shout their opinions and then are served up that which reinforces their opinions. According to left-leaning news media, it’s how Trump got elected. Despite this affront, right-leaning news media are practically ignoring the topic. And because the term is fast becoming politically loaded, it appears discussion regarding echo chambers has about as much chance of fostering dialogue as did “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” In a sense, the intellectuals on the left, in their discussion of echo chambers, are talking to themselves. Go figure.

But it’s all buzzworthy, and thus profitable.