Article

Convergence: The International

Journal of Research into
Three myths of digital media New Media Technologies
1–10
ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1354856517700385
James G. Webster journals.sagepub.com/home/con
Northwestern University, USA

Abstract
Accounts of our digital future, both optimistic and dystopian, are often founded on three myths:
users are in charge, big data is neutral and people will opt to live in enclaves. This article describes
and challenges those myths. As an alternative, it posits a dynamic model of the digital media
marketplace in which users, media and metrics constantly interact. It concludes by arguing that the
structural features of the marketplace play an important role in shaping crossmedia encounters
and inviting readers to consider the power of media to reshape preferences.

Keywords
Audiences, big data, digital media, marketplace of attention, metrics, pull media, push media, users

The social impact of digital media has been the subject of widespread speculation, but there is little
consensus. Some believe that we are at the dawn of a new participatory culture. Others are con-
vinced that digital media will tear society apart. Most of these arguments, optimistic or dreary, are
built on erroneous assumptions about digital media and how people use them. In this article, I
critique three of the most prevalent myths. As a corrective, I describe a theoretical framework I call
‘the marketplace of attention’. It better reflects the dynamic nature of the digital media environ-
ment by invoking a structurational model where the use of crossmedia both shapes and is shaped by
the environment.

The three myths

Popular and scholarly commentaries about our digital futures make a number of compelling, if
unfounded, assumptions about digital media: first, that users are now in charge; second, that big
data is neutral; and third, that given a chance, people will opt to live in media enclaves. Sometimes,
these assumptions reflect the theoretical commitments of the author(s). Often, they are buttressed
by anecdotes or other questionable evidence, and they typically lead to compelling stories of hope
or despair. To be sure, not everyone subscribes to these myths, but they are prevalent enough to
identify and challenge.

Corresponding author:
James G. Webster, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Email: j-webster2@northwestern.edu
2 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies XX(X)

Users are in charge

Digital media allow people to choose from an endless supply of offerings. Users can also make
their own media and share what they like with everyone else. All this can be done ‘anywhere
anytime’. The widespread availability of these media resources has led to a growing chorus of user
empowerment. In business, we hear that the ‘consumer is king’ (Gottlieb, 2010; Markillie, 2005).
In the blogosphere, the public has morphed into the ‘people formerly known as the audience’
(Rosen, 2006). In academe, media users are now ‘prosumers’, who ‘are demanding the right to
participate within the culture’ (Jenkins, 2006: 24). Whether these newfound freedoms are being
used for good or ill varies depending on whom you read, but all such narratives assume users have
unfettered agency.
In a digital media environment, agency – or the power to act – appears in different ways. Three
expressions of agency are particularly relevant here: the freedom to choose, the freedom to create
and the freedom to share.
The sheer number of media choices has grown steadily over the years, as has scholarly interest
in choice-making (Hartmann, 2009). Long gone are the days when a few newspapers or networks
controlled the public sphere (Katz, 1996; Williams and Delli Carpini, 2011). The convenience and
super abundance of digital media affords unprecedented freedom of choice. The only questions
seem to be how people will use this power and whether we’ll like the result.
Anderson’s popular book, The Long Tail, revels in the death of ‘hit-driven culture’ and the
ability of users to find niche media suited to their tastes (Anderson, 2006). This, we’re told, will
nourish a robust popular culture. Others fear people will make poor choices. For example, they
could avoid news that they find ideologically objectionable (Levendusky, 2013; Stroud, 2011;
Sunstein, 2007) or ignore news altogether (Aalberg et al., 2013; Prior, 2007). Neither would bode
well for participatory democracies. All of these scenarios suggest the emergence of media enclaves
– another myth I address below.
Digital technologies have also been a boon to people who want to create media. Their con-
tributions run the gamut from using social media for self-promotion (Marwick, 2013), to propa-
gating memes (Shifman, 2014), to collaborating on more elaborate productions (Benkler, 2006).
Perhaps, no form of user-generated content has received more attention than grass-roots, citizen
journalism (Gillmor, 2006; Schmidt and Cohen, 2013). The tone of most writers documenting the
freedom to create is optimistic. Ordinary people can now make their own contributions to the
marketplace of ideas. Whether they have anything really new to say or whether anyone else is
listening is less certain (Webster, 2014). Indeed, the freedom to create seems empty without a
corresponding freedom to share the result, and it is the nature and extent of sharing that is pivotal
when judging social impact.
Several writers have argued that digital media give new life to ‘sharing economies’, in which
exchanges aren’t motivated by financial gain (e.g. Benkler, 2006; Jenkins et al., 2013; Lessig,
2008). People can and do share their own creations. More often, they pass along an existing piece
of content by sharing a link or ‘retweeting’. Almost always, social media platforms are the vehicles
that people use to share. Here again, the tone of most people who write about sharing is upbeat.
Whether the actions of ordinary users do much to alter the mix of voices being heard is doubtful.
Aside from user-generated content that unpredictably goes viral, powerful institutions and
celebrities still seem to dominate the public sphere (e.g. Hindman, 2009; Wu et al., 2011).
Social sciences often focus on ‘the purposeful, reasoning actor’ to explain social behaviour
(Giddens, 1987: 59). Now that digital technology seems to have freed agents from whatever
Webster 3

limited their media use, it’s not surprising that theorists and popular commentators alike look to
human agency to tell us what the future holds. It’s as if to say, ‘the users are in charge, so we just
have to figure out what they are going to do’. But this agent-centric way of thinking encourages a
one-sided and seriously flawed understanding of the digital media marketplace.
First, it’s wrong to assume that people operate in a media environment where they are the only
active agents. Media act on users, sometimes in ways people cannot detect. Those in the business
draw a distinction between pull media and push media. In the former, people find the media they
want; in the latter, media find the people. Those who assume agents are in charge often turn a blind
eye to push media. This is a serious oversight. Advertising and public service messages have long
found audiences, no matter what people have chosen to see, but digital media make those old push
media techniques seem quaint. Today, websites instantly recognize a person’s presence, auction
their attention to an advertiser and serve them a targeted advertisement – all in a fraction of a
second. This can happen anywhere, anytime. In fact, the media environment is full of ways to push
media; from programming linear television and radio, to deciding what is put on the covers and
home pages of publications, to engineering the ‘stickiness’ of websites.
Second, an agent-centric approach typically assumes that people will make well-informed, or
even ‘rational’, choices about what media to use, but that isn’t necessarily so. People often don’t
know all their options. They suffer from what economists call ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1991).
In a digital environment, user choices cannot be fully informed because there are too many things
to consider. Moreover, most media are ‘experience goods’ whose attributes cannot be fully known
prior to consumption (Caves, 2000). Users do their best to cope with this abundance by narrowing
their choices to small ‘repertoires’ (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012), using heuristics (Marewski
et al., 2009) and relying on recommender systems – a topic I discuss below. None of these methods
is fool proof, and they all affect the extent to which users act rationally.
Third, many of the most consequential forms of social behaviour emerge without users even
knowing what they’re a party to. The choices of individual television viewers create predictable
patterns of audience flow without any coordinated effort (Webster, 2006). Programmers attempt to
exploit these patterns when scheduling programmes. Digital networks are particularly susceptible
to mass behaviours that emerge from individual actions in unintended ways; these include herding
behaviours, information cascades, social contagions and power law distributions. These are
powerful forces that shape cultural consumption, but they are not well explained by focusing on
purposeful, reasoning actors. As Watts noted, ‘you could know everything about individuals in a
given population – their likes, dislikes, experiences, attitudes, beliefs, hopes, and dreams – and still
not be able to predict much about their collective behaviour’ (2011: 79). So while users are in a
position to do far more than ever before, they’re hardly in charge.

Big data is neutral

In recent years, we’ve become sensitized to the darker side of big data. Stories about governments
monitoring our private communication, hackers stealing our personal information and commercial
interests gathering our ‘digital exhaust’ are hard to miss. They all involve instances where our data
can be turned against us, and the public seems alert to these dangers, but that’s hardly the end of
how big data affect our digital lives. Ordinary citizens and many knowledgeable commentators
seem far less concerned with the applications of big data that appear to make the world a more
predictable, manageable place. Here, if it’s even given a thought, people are more likely to view
big data as a neutral tool that enhances their lives.
4 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies XX(X)

Indeed, the buzz around these apparently benign applications suggests big data will revolu-
tionize everything from forecasting the weather to predicting the media we’ll like. Many of these
claims make a common, if unspoken, assumption that big data is so vast and unadulterated that it
provides users with a powerful, distortion-free lens with which to see the world. The most exu-
berant proponents, such as Anderson (2008), have argued that scientists no longer need to trouble
themselves with theory because with enough data, we’ll simply know – a claim that has been
widely challenged. A steady stream of government papers, consultant reports and trade books echo
the same refrain, however, that big data has a wealth of valuable, unproblematic applications (e.g.
Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, 2013; McKinsey, 2011; Podesta, 2014).
One challenge in sorting through these claims is the tendency of authors to gloss over differences
between modelling and prediction in the physical and social worlds. They are very different. Big data
can certainly help predict the weather, and while the algorithms that crunch the data don’t always
agree, their forecasts don’t change the weather. Hurricanes are oblivious to our predictions, but the
algorithms that predict what movies we’ll like or what books we should read are different. Social
recommendations enter back into the world they observe and change it. They are wonderful
examples of what the great sociologist Robert Merton called ‘self-fulfilling prophesies’ (1948). Once
you realize that the operation of big data can alter digital media systems, the notion that they are
neutral tools goes out of the window, and it becomes important to assess their effects on the system.
The term ‘big data’ involves two interrelated sets of issues that are worth disentangling. The
first is about understanding the data itself. What does it really measure or represent? The second is
about how we handle the data to create rankings and recommendations.
Big datasets are, by definition, enormous. The sheer volume of the data and the velocity with
which it comes at us is awe inspiring. Big data can solve a number of analytical problems,
especially in a rapidly changing, highly fragmented media environment (Webster et al., 2014), but
it can also be riddled with problems (Boyd and Crawford, 2012). Among other things, data often
fails to adequately represent all relevant populations (Hargittai, 2015). Recent work on crowd-
sourced data has found that it under-represents rural areas and so provides a poor picture of those
areas (Johnson et al., 2016a; Johnson et al., 2016b). Additionally, much of the data collected by
digital media platforms captures behaviours (e.g. page views, downloads, time spent viewing,
purchases, etc.). These may or may not reveal other things, such as liking or engagement, but they
are routinely taken as evidence of people’s preferences (Webster, 2014). If the data that falls into
our laps doesn’t really measure what we need to measure, it’s difficult for any analytical technique
to compensate for its shortcomings. This can do more than introduce random error into the process.
It can introduce systematic biases, even before the data is massaged with algorithms.
The ways in which big data is reduced and turned into actionable recommendations are another
potential source of systematic bias. Two biases are widespread. First, most recommender systems
try to personalize their results. The algorithmic techniques vary, but personalization is the hallmark
of search engines, social media, online retailers and content providers. In fact, the prevalence of
these unseen filters caused Eli Pariser to warn against the rise of ‘filter bubbles’ (Pariser, 2011).
Second, recommender systems typically rank order results by popularity. This can encourage the
emergence of winner-take-all markets in which media offerings build a cumulative advantage over
competitors that has little to do with their quality (Salganik et al., 2006). Personalization and
popularity are the yin and yang of recommender systems. They can either divide or concentrate
public attention. The balance between these tendencies can vary. They are not in and of themselves
good or evil, but it’s naive to think that these applications of big data are somehow neutral in digital
media systems.
Webster 5

Users will opt to live in enclaves

One of the most widely anticipated consequences of digital media is that users will opt into
enclaves – indulging in preferred genres and avoiding whatever they find distasteful. Several
theories, including ‘selective exposure’, predict that users will deliberately choose a steady
diet of what they like. As we’ve seen, sometimes this expectation buttresses an argument that
digital media will encourage the growth of a more robust cultural democracy. At other times,
it is the opening salvo for claims that media use will devolve into ‘echo chambers’ of
ideologically agreeable news and entertainment, but neither scenario squares with the best
evidence on media use.
Anderson’s treatise on the long tail is illustrative of optimistic interpretations of enclaves. He
approvingly envisions of the growth of a ‘massively parallel’ culture composed of ‘millions of
microcultures’ and ‘tribal eddies’ (2006: 183). Others imagine vibrant communities of interest in
niches on the long tail (e.g. Benkler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006). Readers might easily imagine a world in
which fans and genre loyalists spend much of their time in these niches, but that expectation is not
well supported by analyses of audience behaviour. As a rule, the few people who consume
unpopular media or visit niche websites spend very little time with them (Elberse, 2008; Gentzkow
and Shapiro, 2011; Webster and Ksiazek, 2012). They, like most people, devote more attention to
popular offerings.
The pessimistic accounts are more abundant and varied. A great many commentators, especially
in the United States, warn of a growing ‘red media/blue media’ divide, in which partisans consume
a steady diet of likeminded media (e.g. Iyengar and Hahn, 2009; Jamieson and Cappella, 2009;
Levendusky, 2013; Stroud, 2011). Here again, analyses based on metered data indicate that par-
tisans are exposed to ideologically crosscutting outlets (Gentzkow and Shapiro, 2011; Prior, 2013;
Webster, 2014). Other writers worry less about ideology but fear that an abundance of enter-
tainment may allow people with no interest in news to avoid it altogether (Aalberg et al., 2013;
Ksiazek et al., 2010; Prior, 2007). Sadly, there is credible evidence that large minorities of the
population do a pretty good job of avoiding hard news. The consolation for myself and others is
that people are likely to encounter political ideas even if they don’t see ‘the news’ (Webster, 2014;
Williams and Delli Carpini, 2011).
All of the above casts doubt on the existence of what might be called ‘opt-in’ enclaves – that
people will knowingly self-select into narrowly circumscribed media environments and stay there.
A more sinister prospect is the problem of ‘opt-out’ enclaves. Thanks in large part to the operation
of unobtrusive, data-driven systems, digital media are quite likely to be filtering our encounters
with media in ways that are invisible to us. Most of the major web platforms we use, such as
Google and Facebook, employ algorithms to show us things we’re predisposed to like. This drive
toward personalization has raised concerns about the pernicious effects of filter bubbles and
‘reputation silos’ (Pariser, 2011; Turow, 2012). These may create enclaves that are hard to avoid,
but the evidence so far is mixed (e.g. Bakshy et al., 2015), and I remain hopeful that we can avoid
being captured within totally closed systems (Webster, 2014).

The marketplace of attention

These three myths have inadvertently promoted over-simplified models of media use and, by
extension, audience formation. They do this by privileging user-centric theories that assume a
passive media environment and turn a blind eye to the operation of data-driven systems. A more
6 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies XX(X)

Push

Market information
regimes

Utility Advertising
tastes linear flow
needs Preference Exposure editing
attitudes filtering
moods cascades

User information
regimes

Pull

Users Metrics Media

Figure 1. The marketplace of attention. Adapted from Webster (2014).

complete framework for understanding digital media use needs to reckon with the interaction of
three key components: the users, the media, and the metrics on which both increasingly depend.
These are featured in a model of digital media use that I call ‘the marketplace of attention’
(Webster, 2014). It is depicted in Figure 1 and described briefly below.
The model is the result of my work as an audience researcher over the last 40 years. Time and
again, I have seen good evidence of macro-level audience behaviour that was not well explained by
micro-level theories of individual media preferences. My first foray into reworking the relevant
theory addressed television programme choice (Webster and Wakshlag, 1983). The figure you see
is my latest effort. It has the virtue, I hope, of spanning all the media a user might encounter, and so
offers a way to think about crossmedia use.
Despite its title, the marketplace of attention is grounded less in economics than in sociology.
Specifically, I found that Giddens’ theory of structuration provided a useful framework for
understanding how people engage with media across platforms and how those behaviours might
scale up to form audiences (Giddens, 1984; Webster, 2011). Media users are seen as agents who
recursively draw upon structured media resources. As they do, they both reproduce and change the
media environment. They are also the authors of a good many unintended consequences.
Like most social scientists, I assume that users are reasoning, purposeful actors. Researchers in
various disciplines have identified a great many individual predispositions that can motivate media
use: utility, tastes, needs, attitudes and moods to name a few. These motives translate into pre-
ferences that guide media choices, but in a digital environment, some sort of recommender system
often mediates choice (e.g. Google, Netflix, Facebook, etc.). These systems constitute a relatively
new class of metrics that I call ‘user information regimes’ (Webster, 2010). The choices people
make in this way result in exposure to offerings in the media environment.
Exposure also results from many things that have little or nothing to do with the exercise
of individual preference, however. Most notably, advertising shapes what we see and hear
with considerable precision. Programmers and editors also exploit audience flows, page
Webster 7

placements steer our encounters with media and information regimes affect exposure by filtering
what we see and provide the means for information to cascade across the population. The phe-
nomenon of ‘going viral’ generally emerges as an unintended consequence of social networks
in operation.
To efficiently push things at users and monitor their success at doing so, the media rely on
‘market information regimes’ (Anand and Peterson, 2000). These provide the lens through which
media see the competitive environment, but that lens has systematic distortions, which affect the
actions of the media and thus shape the environment. Traditionally, independent third parties, such
as Nielsen or GfK, have provided these metrics. Today, they are joined by data from user infor-
mation regimes to provide an unprecedented level of surveillance.
In a similar vein, Thorson and Wells (2016) recently suggested that in a digital age, media
exposure results from a confluence of different ‘curated flows’. Those flows might reflect
personal preferences, but they can also be determined by journalists, advertisers, social net-
works and algorithms.
Conceiving of the digital media environment in this way helps identify the forces that shape our
use of digital media and invites a number of questions about the interaction of these components.
To understand crossmedia use, we need to begin by ridding ourselves of the notion that users are
solely responsible for their encounters. This is surprisingly hard for social scientists to do, so great
is our faith in the purposeful, reasoning actor, but digital media use is always embedded in dynamic
systems that enhance certain outcomes and hinder others.
In making sense of these encounters, my own inclination is to think about the role of structures –
both social and media structures – that can span large numbers of people. These have the potential
to scale-up and produce socially consequential patterns of audience behaviour. If those structures
have systematic biases, benign or otherwise, they could reshape the culture.
This leads me to one of the most far-reaching questions begged by the marketplace of attention
model. It is captured in the arrow that points back to user preferences. Where do our media pre-
ferences come from?
The user-centric approach adopted by most social scientists assumes that people’s preferences
for media are ‘exogenous’. That is, their appetites and predispositions arise from factors outside the
media environment. Economists begin with the assumption that programme type preferences exist
– without further explanation (e.g. Owen and Wildman, 1992). Sociologists argue that tastes are
wedded to our place in society (e.g. Bourdieu, 1984). Gratificationists look to the ‘social and
psychological origins’ of needs (Katz et al., 1974: 20). The possibility that media preferences are
‘endogenous’ – that they arise from within the system – is often unconsidered.
Of course, this oversight is less troublesome if you believe that users are in charge. If anything,
our choices would simply reinforce our predispositions. To the extent that media push things at us,
however, they have the potential to cultivate new preferences. This surely happens all the time. We
develop new interests or a fondness for new artists as a result of media encounters we haven’t
planned in advance.
These encounters almost never cause a sea change in our tastes or deeply held convictions, but
our tastes and convictions can and do change. Students of media would do well understand how
media preferences evolve over time. Which of the various curated flows that we encounter across
media serve as agents of change or agents of reinforcement? To what extent do the expert
judgments of editors and critics inform our interests and appetites? Do social networks lock us in
place or open our eyes to new and different things? Under what circumstances can any of these
mechanisms promote change? Even incremental changes over the long haul could add up,
8 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies XX(X)

nudging us down a path we might not otherwise have taken. Unravelling these dynamic rela-
tionships is one of the central questions before us. It goes to the heart of the media’s ability to
reshape the social world.
If preferences are truly exogenous, then the media will ultimately give us what we want. For
good or ill, it will be a reflection of who we are and what we desire. If preferences are endogenous,
then the media will give us what they want – and we’ll become creatures of the media environment
upon which we depend, but to understand these processes and their implications for the public
sphere and popular culture, we need to dispense with the myths of digital media.

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Turow J (2012) The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Watts DJ (2011) Everything is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails us: New York: Random House.
Webster JG (2006) Audience flow past and present: Television inheritance effects reconsidered. Journal of
Broadcasting & Electronic Media 50(2): 323–337. DOI: 10.1207/s15506878jobem5002_9.
Webster JG (2010) User information regimes: How social media shape patterns of consumption. North-
western University Law Review 104(2): 593–612.
Webster JG (2011) The duality of media: A structurational theory of public attention. Communication Theory
21(1): 43–66. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01375.x.
Webster JG (2014) The Marketplace of Attention: How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
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digital media. Journal of Communication 62(1): 39–56. DOI: doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01616.x.
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4th ed. New York: Routledge.
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430–446.
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Information Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Author biography
James G. Webster is a Professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. He studies
media use and audience measurement, and won the Denis McQuail Award for his contribution to commu-
nication theory.