The Dynamics of Audience Fragmentation: Public Attention in an Age of Digital Media

Abstract

Audience fragmentation is often taken as evidence of social polarization. Yet the tools we use to study fragmentation provide limited information about how people allocate their attention across digital media. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding fragmentation and advocate for more audience-centric studies. This approach is operationalized by applying network analysis metrics to Nielsen data on television and Internet use. We find extremely high levels of audience duplication across 236 media outlets, suggesting overlapping patterns of public attention rather than isolated groups of audience loyalists.

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