Temporality, Attention, and the Crisis of Communication in the Platform Ecosystem

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, media have undergone not only profound technological and organizational transformations but also a radical reconfiguration of the temporalities and attention economies that structure communication. The rise of digital platforms, mobile interfaces, and algorithmic infrastructures has substantially reshaped the production, circulation, and consumption of information, giving rise to new temporal regimes that deeply affect the experience of the present, the construction of the public agenda, and forms of democratic participation (Couldry & Mejias, 2019).

Whereas mass media historically contributed to organizing shared temporalities through viewing rituals, regular news cycles, and moments of collective simultaneity (Dayan & Katz, 1992), the contemporary media ecosystem privileges asynchronous, fragmented, and continuous forms of consumption. Notifications, personalized feeds, real-time updates, and engagement metrics generate a condition of permanent urgency, in which “breaking news” tends to become an ordinary mode rather than an exception (Witschge et al., 2019). In this context, attention emerges as a scarce and contested resource, subject to the logics of capture, acceleration, and competition that redefine journalistic practices and user experiences (Crary, 2013).

These transformations not only concern the rhythms of news production but also more broadly affect the morphology of the public sphere and the forms of social experience. The erosion of simultaneity, the compression of the present, and the fragmentation of attention contribute to reshaping how citizens orient themselves within information flows, construct shared meanings, and attribute relevance to events. At the same time, practices and formats have emerged that appear to resist or negotiate these temporal logics, reopening questions about the possibility of more reflective forms of communication that are less subordinated to immediacy (Lindgren, 2016).

This Special Issue will critically explore the relationship between time, attention, and communication in the platform era, adopting theoretical and empirical perspectives that include journalism studies, media studies, political communication, audience studies, and the sociology of time. Our goal is to understand how new temporal regimes shape news production, consumption practices, agenda-building processes, and, more broadly, the conditions of possibility in the contemporary public sphere.

Submitted papers should be original theoretical essays or empirical studies addressing, among others, the following themes:

• Analyse the reconfiguration of journalistic and media temporalities within the platform ecosystem;
• Investigate the role of attention as a cultural and political resource;
• Explore the tensions between acceleration, fragmentation, and forms of slowing down or resistance;
• Contribute to debates on the crisis of the public sphere and transformations in democratic communication.

Topics of interest also include the following:

• Fragmentation of the information experience;
• Algorithmic temporalities and content visibility;
• Political communication, crises, and emergencies as dispositive of acceleration.

References:

Couldry, N., & Mejias, U. A. (2019). The Costs of Connection. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Crary, J. (2013). 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso.

Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1992). Media events: The live broadcasting of history. USA: Harvard University Press.

Lindgren, M. (2016). Personal narrative journalism and podcasting. The Radio Journal–International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 14(1), 23-41.

Witschge, T., Anderson, C. W., Domingo, D., & Hermida, A. (2019). Dealing with the mess (we made): Unraveling hybridity, normativity, and complexity in journalism studies. Journalism, 20(5), 651-659.

Dr. Daniele Battista
Dr. Laura Cervi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journalism and Media is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• temporalities of media
• platformization
• algorithmic visibility
• political communication
• democratic communication
• public sphere