“Le Devoir” is launching a new podcast series focusing on our relationship with attention.
Scrolling through your Instagram feed during a particularly exciting scene in a movie, missing your bus stop because TikTok keeps us captive, receiving ads on our social media for a product we were talking about with a friend… that tells you. something ? In 2023, more than ever, our attention is a hotly contested and expensive commodity.
This is what pushed The duty to make it the subject of his first podcast series of the year. Over the coming months, you will discover in this format journalistic investigations, series of interviews and in-depth work around a theme, as is the case for the first offering, entitled Your attention please.
The series is available in four episodes and as many angles revolving around our relationship to attention. “Attention, in the cognitive sense, is ultimately where our brain focuses its attention,” explains Dr.D Annick Vincent, psychiatrist. There are several types of attention. » So many types of attention, therefore so many ways of managing the wanderings of our highly stimulated minds.
First of all, Your attention please looks at disconnection. Alarmed by his own consumption of social networks and by this involuntary appendage now grafted to his arm, his smartphone, Liam decides to take a trip back to the past: goodbye iPhone, hello flip phone. Initially envisioned as a one-week experience, the 18-year-old student would not go back: “it’s freedom,” according to him.
Then we focus on the financial value of our attention. What we call the attention economy corresponds to “all media activities that allow advertising or any marketing-type advertising activity to capture your attention,” explains Sandrine Prom Tep, associate professor in the Department of marketing from the School of Management Sciences of UQAM.
It’s the ability of algorithms to grasp the essence of our interests and immerse us in them the moment we open our phones that makes our attention such a coveted commodity. As the maxim goes, if it’s free, you are the product…
The third episode of Your attention please presents two people whose professional lives are based on a capacity for attention that must be impeccable. Catherine LeBlanc is an air traffic controller, while Tyrone Foster is a former bodyguard who notably provided security for big stars, like Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys.
In both cases, a careless mistake can have tragic or even fatal consequences. There is no question, therefore, of letting your mind wander when lives are at stake.
The fourth and final episode explores attention deficit hyperactivity disorder through the advancement of our knowledge of this neurological particularity, the diagnostic journey of those who suspect they have it and finally, the available treatments. The quest for perfect attention is also sold on the black market, as demonstrated by a student who resold his surplus medications to his fellow students enrolled in a particularly competitive program.
The podcast Your attention please is available on all listening platforms. It is also possible to listen to it on the website of the Duty, as well as on YouTube. Hosted by Philippe Papineau, Your attention please is a creation by Félix Deschênes.