Democracy needs more than elections, institutions and access to information. It also needs attention: citizens willing and able to engage with complex issues, listen to different perspectives and distinguish what matters from what merely demands to be noticed.
But our attention is increasingly contested. Politicians, journalists, activists, influencers, platforms and algorithms all compete to decide what we see, what we talk about and what disappears from view. So perhaps the democratic question of our time is not simply 'who gets to speak?', but 'who gets heard – and who decides what deserves our attention?'
In this conversation, Lisa Loeb and Claes de Vreese explore attention as a democratic resource. What does research tell us about how media, algorithms and AI shape the public agenda? Why do some societal problems remain almost invisible while others dominate public debate? And what happens when the logic of the attention economy collides with the slower, messier requirements of democracy?
