Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DISTRACT (The Political Economy of Distraction in Digitized Denmark)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-06-30
DISTRACT combines social and data science to explore the political economy of distraction. Combining qualitative and quantitative data, our interdisciplinary team investigates the mental, social, and material techniques by which attention is captured, retained, and distracted in the world’s most digitized country, Denmark.
Subproject 1 explores dynamics of political attention in Denmark. The focus is both on ideological positions on digital distraction and on how actors capture, retain, and distract polical attention in online and offline contexts. As such, the project contributes to social science scholarship on “issue attention” and related questions pertaining to how politicians and the public interact and influence each other via e.g. digital platforms.
Subproject 2 - Coding Distraction studies software practices, infrastructures, and valuation regimes in the digital attention economy, with a focus on social networks and practices of programmers. Combining (n)ethnographic and computational methods and seeking to contribute to relevant social science literatues the project’s data stems from both the Danish app development market and international coding networks.
Subproject 3 - Defying Distraction investigated practices and discourses pertaning to socalled digital disconnection and detox, including moral discussions about the good life in the digital age and specific attentional technologies and practices developed to limitat and control peoples use of digital devices and platform..
Subproject 4 - Regulating Distraction explores the social and psychological effects of remote work and online collaboration in work and educational contexts. More specifically, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and methods, the projects seeks to contribute to an empirically informed understanding of how the attention of some actors is regulated by other actors to reach certain goals.
Subproject 1 explores dynamics of political attention in Denmark. The focus is both on ideological positions on digital distraction and on how actors capture, retain, and distract polical attention in online and offline contexts. As such, the project contributes to social science scholarship on “issue attention” and related questions pertaining to how politicians and the public interact and influence each other via e.g. digital platforms.
Subproject 2 - Coding Distraction studies software practices, infrastructures, and valuation regimes in the digital attention economy, with a focus on social networks and practices of programmers. Combining (n)ethnographic and computational methods and seeking to contribute to relevant social science literatues the project’s data stems from both the Danish app development market and international coding networks.
Subproject 3 - Defying Distraction investigated practices and discourses pertaning to socalled digital disconnection and detox, including moral discussions about the good life in the digital age and specific attentional technologies and practices developed to limitat and control peoples use of digital devices and platform..
Subproject 4 - Regulating Distraction explores the social and psychological effects of remote work and online collaboration in work and educational contexts. More specifically, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and methods, the projects seeks to contribute to an empirically informed understanding of how the attention of some actors is regulated by other actors to reach certain goals.
DISTRACT is now beyond its peak capacity, but substantial research activity still going, finalizing data analyses and publishing results, and organizing the concluding conference. Internal meetings and seminars that previously focused on research methodology, ethics, GDPR etc., now focus more publication seminars to finalize data analyses and write up results based on data from both quantitative and qualitative sources collected within each subproject. In addition to the substantial number of thirty publications already produced by the team, the final 14 months of the project is expected to result in a significant number of additional publications, in addition to the three DISTRACT PhDs that remain to hand in their theses, and the concluding conference with three panels of very prominent speakers planned for Nov 2024.
Key research activities that have taken place in the course the DISTRACT project include:
(1) Covid 19 related research in the form several talks and papers concerning both issue attention dynamics on Danish social media and new pandemic-induced social and existential possibilities and problems in work and leisure contexts. A blog on Distract Covid-19 research (https://coronakrisen.github.io) gave rise to significant media attention in the form of resulted in several interviews of PI and other team members.
(2) Fieldwork experiments Folkemødet (People’s Meeting) have resulted in the development of new interdisciplinary methods and digital infrastructures, a number of high-level publications, as well a outreach and impact for both scientific and non-scientific audiences, including the Danish Parliament.
(3) Research in screentime, digital detox, and digital dependence have resulted in a policy brief for the Copenhagen Tech Policy Committee, as well as several papers in peer-reviewed journals. Given the increasing national and internation focus and debated on digital distraction and screen time issues, project findings have been publicized via prominent Danish newspapers, and TV and radio programs.
(4) Development and dissemination of new digital platforms for ethnographic research in Big Data and Society, Social Science Computer Review, Anthrodendum, and forthcoming anthropology textbook published by Samfundslitteratur.
(5) In addition to the above activities, which relate specifically to Subprojects 1 and 3, Distract team members have published prominent interdisciplinary and field journals, including Dreyer Lassen et al’ paper on smartphone usage and academic performance in Psychological Science (2020), PI and co-PI’s co-authored paper on “The Political Economy of Attention” in Annual Review of Anthropology (2021); Otto, Blok, and Salka’s article on GitHub network published in Journal of Cultural Economy (2023); Lehmann et al’s “Exposure to urban and rural contexts shapes smartphone usage behavior” published PNAS Nexus (2024); DISTRACT researchers’ Pedersen’s and Otto’s contribution as co-editors and authors to the book “The Economic Lives of Platforms: Rethinking the Political Economy of Digital Markets” published in 2024 on Bristol University Press; Albris et al’ special issue on digital trust in Journal of Cultural Economy (ultimo 2024) and well as Enggaard et al’s newly accepted paper on computational discourse analysis to be published in Nature: Scientific Reports.
Key research activities that have taken place in the course the DISTRACT project include:
(1) Covid 19 related research in the form several talks and papers concerning both issue attention dynamics on Danish social media and new pandemic-induced social and existential possibilities and problems in work and leisure contexts. A blog on Distract Covid-19 research (https://coronakrisen.github.io) gave rise to significant media attention in the form of resulted in several interviews of PI and other team members.
(2) Fieldwork experiments Folkemødet (People’s Meeting) have resulted in the development of new interdisciplinary methods and digital infrastructures, a number of high-level publications, as well a outreach and impact for both scientific and non-scientific audiences, including the Danish Parliament.
(3) Research in screentime, digital detox, and digital dependence have resulted in a policy brief for the Copenhagen Tech Policy Committee, as well as several papers in peer-reviewed journals. Given the increasing national and internation focus and debated on digital distraction and screen time issues, project findings have been publicized via prominent Danish newspapers, and TV and radio programs.
(4) Development and dissemination of new digital platforms for ethnographic research in Big Data and Society, Social Science Computer Review, Anthrodendum, and forthcoming anthropology textbook published by Samfundslitteratur.
(5) In addition to the above activities, which relate specifically to Subprojects 1 and 3, Distract team members have published prominent interdisciplinary and field journals, including Dreyer Lassen et al’ paper on smartphone usage and academic performance in Psychological Science (2020), PI and co-PI’s co-authored paper on “The Political Economy of Attention” in Annual Review of Anthropology (2021); Otto, Blok, and Salka’s article on GitHub network published in Journal of Cultural Economy (2023); Lehmann et al’s “Exposure to urban and rural contexts shapes smartphone usage behavior” published PNAS Nexus (2024); DISTRACT researchers’ Pedersen’s and Otto’s contribution as co-editors and authors to the book “The Economic Lives of Platforms: Rethinking the Political Economy of Digital Markets” published in 2024 on Bristol University Press; Albris et al’ special issue on digital trust in Journal of Cultural Economy (ultimo 2024) and well as Enggaard et al’s newly accepted paper on computational discourse analysis to be published in Nature: Scientific Reports.
In sum, DISTRACT continues to advance the state-of-art pertaining to the political economy of attention within numerous scientific literatures cross-cutting anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, and psychology. Methodologically, the team has also made significant developments and breakthroughs in terms of bringing together and integrating in social and data science data, techniques, and methods.