Managing the Overload: YouTube in the Attention Economy A Master Thesis on how YouTube’s Interface and its Affordances Manage User Attention and Create Flow

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Managing the Overload: YouTube in the Attention Economy

A Master Thesis on how YouTube’s Interface and its Affordances Manage User Attention and Create Flow

Annemijn Albers Universiteit van Amsterdam

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Chapter 1: Introduction

During the time it takes to read this sentence, approximately forty hours of content is being uploaded on YouTube 1_{. Never has there been as much content, nor has it been this easy to} access. Information is overabundant and extremely available to gather and spread. Iskold and MacManus called the explosion of information a ‘double-edged sword’ (“The Attention Economy: An Overview” n. pag). On the one hand, people benefit from the overload of information available to them, on the other hand, it overwhelms them. There is so much to choose from, not just in terms of content, but also in what platform to watch this content from. Comparing the media landscape to a half a century ago, watching content currently involves many more choices than it used to. Watching television used to mean sitting down and turning on a device. Now, it could be On Demand, Netflix, a platform created by a channel, or YouTube. The audience has so much more to choose from, and because they have so many options their choice is now worth more.

This is one of the characteristics of our economy that is shaped by attention.

This thesis seeks to study how this new economy driven by attention influences current platforms. The platform I will examine for this purpose YouTube. Every day people watch over a billion hours of videos (YouTube for Press). This platform is exemplary for our current economy. Since its start in 2005, the platform underwent regular updates and design changes to serve its audience best. In this thesis, I will look at the platform as it is today and analyze how it manages user attention. The most important strategy, called flow, to manage attention is to retain it once it is seized. Since the early years of television channels and platforms have strived to accomplish this flow. I will analyze how YouTube creates flow on the platform. YouTube is a user-generated platform. So, it does not control the actual content that is shown on the interface. The only thing it actually controls is the interface supporting the content. Therefore I will analyze the interface of YouTube and examine how it manages audience attention and create flow. Interface analysis will be conducted through its

affordances and use discursive interface analysis to determine the discourse of the interface. Platform affordances is a relatively new field. This study aims to contribute to the field by theoretically examining the implications of the term and by analyzing an actual interface through its different features as they are made available to the public. Combining the different aims of this research my research question will be the following:

How do YouTube's interface and its affordances manage user attention and create flow?

The next chapter will discuss the theoretical framework. First I will elaborate on the attention economy. This will be the context in which YouTube should be placed as a platform. I will use traditional television theory to find support for current theory on the attention economy and to provide historical context. I will also go into the idea of audience labor and how this relates to the attention economy. The second part of the theoretical framework will discuss the social changes the economy has caused. It will discuss the participatory culture and the new identity of the audience. The third part of the theoretical framework will discuss flow. Flow will be a key term for this research and to understand it well I will elaborate on its origin and use. This chapter will culminate in a definition of flow as it will be understood for the purpose of this research. The final part of the theoretical framework will elaborate on platform affordances. The concept of affordances originates in ecological psychology and has been adopted in many fields. It has been given a lot of meanings and different uses. This 1 According to Tubefilter.com, 720.000 hours of content is uploaded every day. Recalculating this will come to 8 hours per second.

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chapter will clarify how I will use affordances in this study.

The third chapter will discuss the method for this research. Here I will clarify what exactly will be part of my further analysis and also what will not be. Secondly, I will elaborate on discursive interface analysis, the methodology for the analysis.

The fourth chapter concerns the analysis of YouTube according to the theoretical framework. I will analyze two interfaces of YouTube: the Home screen and the Video Player screen. In this chapter, I will discuss how YouTube manages user attention and how the different affordances create flow on the platform.

The fifth chapter is the discussion and will critically reflect on my findings in the analysis.

The sixth and final chapter will conclude that YouTube’s interface and its affordances manage audience attention by directing their attention to the content in the Home screen. The Video player screen creates flow that keeps the users’ attention on the platform.

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Chapter 2: Theoretical framework

This theoretical framework will discuss the historical and current context YouTube exists in. YouTube is an example of a platform that succeeds in the current landscape where platforms struggle to get attention. First, I will discuss the broader economy in which YouTube is placed referred to as the attention economy. As the name suggests this economy is driven by attention. The current information and content overload have created a new monetary system in which the reception side of the economy decides the value, not the production side. This shift has had a great influence on existing platforms, like YouTube, as the following chapter will argue. New strategies are in order to seize the audiences' attention. Creating successful strategies to get attention in an economy where attention is the main scarcity, is difficult. To create a deeper understanding of what this shift means I will use older television theory. The medium television has gone through a transformation that in many aspects resembles the transformation our economy is going through now. Television started with one program on prime time and became the biggest medium in just a few decades since its start. The context of the attention economy is much broader and covers a global transition of cultural goods in the digital age. Yet history seems to repeat itself, and theory on how a single medium managed a sudden overload of content proves itself very helpful to create a broader understanding of the attention economy.

An attention economy is an economic approach for the current transition. The second paragraph of this theoretical framework will have a more social approach. Besides the production side of the industry, that creates content on hyper speed, the reception side is also responsible for the information overload. The audience has changed over the years and now participates in the production process, or produces on its own. A platform like YouTube relies on user-generated content and would not exist if the audience was not as actively contributing to the media landscape as they currently are. The entire platform is based on a participatory culture, because the audience creates the content that is shown on

YouTube2_{This study researches the YouTube interface. However, it is important to identify}

2 Recently YouTube started "YouTube original" a different channel within YouTube that produces original content. This new feature will be left out of this research. It is a very interesting development that would be great for further research but is not closely enough related to the YouTube interface, which is the subject of this research.

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the user of this interface. Therefore I will not only discuss the economic context YouTube should be placed in but the social conditions as well.

The third paragraph of the framework will discuss what succeeding in this economy actually means. If attention is the new currency, when can a platform call itself a success? Success in the attention economy means being able to capture attention, but more importantly to retain it. Defining success in the current environment again calls for historical context. Within the field of television, strategies have always worked towards creating flow. This concept originates from broadcasted television to describe an experience in which all parts of a sequence blend together to create a flow (Bignell 3). YouTube creates flow within the platform but over the last years creating flow has become increasingly complex.

After establishing what the platform strives for, the last paragraph will elaborate on the way a platform is able to communicate this goal. A platform interface mediates between the user and the platform. To analyze YouTube and the way it creates flow, this study will analyze the platform's affordances. This last paragraph of the theoretical framework will elaborate on the concept of affordances and its use for this study.

This theoretical framework aims to create a context in which YouTube as a digital platform can be placed. It will provide the needed theory and literature for the analysis and will, together with the analysis, aim to answer the question of how YouTube’s interface manages user attention and creates flow.

2.1. The Attention Economy

2.1.1. Eras of Media Supply

Approximately 720,000 hours of content is uploaded on YouTube every day. This means it would take someone a lifetime, 82,2 years to be exact, to watch the content that is uploaded on YouTube in just one single day (tubefilter n. pag). Only a few decades ago, seeing other cultures required expensive traveling, listening to music required pricy concert tickets, escaping to fiction required going to the movie theatre. Now, nearly every image, sound or story is available within a blink of an eye. And every day literally a lifetime of new content is added. Over the past decades, content has become much more easy to store and

simultaneously more easy to create. The production of cultural goods was, up until the coming of the digital age, very tightly connected to material goods (Citton 3). Think of a

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video store. These stores have limits to their amount of space, so choices must be made about the movies that should or should not be displayed in the limited storage space. Now, content is stored on servers and these limits start to vanish.

Yves Citton argues that the overabundance of content and the fact that it had become independent from material goods, has created a shift that has changed our entire economy:

“While the calculations of the classical economy of material goods are based on the scarcity of factors of production, the attention economy is based on the scarcity of the capacity for the reception of cultural goods.” (Citton 2)

There has been such a focus on growth on the capacity of the production and supply side, that the capacity of the demand side has been overlooked (Citton 2). Media consumers are

overwhelmed with the load of content because, besides the increasing amount of content, it has never been so easy to access, both in terms of usability and costs. The only thing consumers need to access an endless and, in the case of YouTube, free stream of content is buying a phone or tablet, which are getting cheaper as well.

The transition Citton applies to our whole economy has happened on a smaller scale at the end of the 20th_{century, namely with the medium television. Television started as an} exclusive medium with little content and, within a few decades, has become a mainstream medium. As one of many, John Ellis theorized on the transformation the medium has undergone. His theory of the multiple eras of broadcasted television resembles the transformation of current new media, like YouTube, are in or have undergone. He

distinguishes three eras of development: the age of scarcity, the age of availability and the age of plentiness (Ellis 39). In his opinion, the latter had not yet arrived when he wrote his book in 2000, but it certainly has arrived now, as the amount of content could easily be described as ‘plenty'.

The age of scarcity was characterized, as the name suggests, by a scarce supply of content in the television landscape. There were only a limited number of channels that aired shows at particular times during the day. Consumers watched the program that was offered to them at that time, or they did not watch at all. A choice between shows, channels or platforms did not yet exist. The medium caught on with the masses3_{and the number of channels grew.} 3 Ellis calls this era the introduction of television to the world (Ellis 40). In this era, television found

its place in the domestic space and into peoples' daily life. Television was part of a larger

development in domestic consumerism, in which social status and class were indicated by possessions in the household, or the lack of it (Ellis 40). Think of vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and washing

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The age of scarcity turned into an age of availability, in which "the huge public demand for television that had been kept in check in the era of scarcity was finally being met" (Ellis 61). Competition grew between channels and the audiences' preference became of increasing importance. Thus began a shift towards a media environment in which the audience is the deciding factor for the supply side, instead of the media producers. This era started the valorization of the audiences’ attention, that is now, as stated above, the main incentive of our economy.

The era that followed the age of availability was the era of plenty: "the era of plenty is conceived as being a time of almost infinite choice" (Ellis 169). Crucial in his description of this era is that he stated that the industry is responsible for the new overload of content: "the industry is rushing towards an emerging era of plenty whilst the majority of viewers are still coming to terms with the era of availability"(Ellis 162). The supply of content grew faster than the demand side was able to handle. This led to the emergence of a great number of networks, channels, and content, while simultaneously it became much easier to access all of it. The industry reacted to this in different ways. New technologies created possibilities for the audience to gain control over their viewing habits. Starting with the remote control that offered switching channels, later VCR and CVR to modify their viewing schedule.

People will always try to escape flow, Moe argues (776), so new technologies were developed to give the audience control over their viewing experience. For television that meant innovations like the remote control or VCR (Moe 776), to which the medium than responded with new strategies. This research tries to find how YouTube reacts to the age of plenty. In which not only the content is plenty, but also the media. There is an

overabundance, yet the platform still strives for the same thing it always did: retain attention and create flow.

Ellis aimed to bring structure to the rapid transition broadcasted television went through by dividing it in era’s that all had their own traits. Other scholars looked at a

particular use (Hartley), or technological innovation (Chamberlain), or looked at the medium as a whole. The reason Ellis is used to support the attention economy, which is the primary theory on which this research is built, is because similar to Citton, Ellis’ focus is on how the environment reacts to these changes. The age of availability was not a static phase in which television went through changes and that was that. The industry and the audience interact

machines. This time has been crucial for the use of television and the role it takes in peoples' lives. The medium might have changed completely, it has not yet lost its domestic character.

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with media and through this interaction, the one shapes the other. For example, YouTube changed its interface numerous times because the audience needs different features to stay satisfied. Offering different features creates new opportunities for the audience at which they again adjust their further needs and so on. The age of availability shaped the media landscape that then made the age of plentiness possible. Before elaborating how these changes inflict on the audience I will first further elaborate on the different aspects of the attention economy in the next section.

2.1.2. The Value of Attention

Because our attention has gained so much value, Citton places attention at the heart of capitalism, calling it our new currency (Citton 45). Since attention has value, people are able to valorize objects through giving, or not giving it their attention: "the simple fact of looking at an object represents a labour which increases the value of that object” (Citton 47). Netflix, for instance, makes hundreds of Netflix original series and movies, but only when enough people pay attention to one, can it becomes a success, just like a YouTube video lacks impact until it has enough views. This idea of the audience "working" by watching content is not invented by Citton but dates back to the 1950s to Smythe. Smythe reconsidered the role of the audience4_{. He argued that the audience is a commodity, something that is produced,} consumed and sold (Smythe On the Audience 231). Every individual member of an audience is part of a larger group. All these individuals together can be sold to advertisers as a

collective. These collectives are turned into a commodity, and “as commodities they are dealt with in markets by producers and buyers (the latter being advertisers)” (Smythe On the audience 234)5_{. Advertisers in this market pay for the number of people that will see their} ads. The easiest example is the millions of dollars advertisers spend annually on airtime during the American Super Bowl, which has a hundred million viewers on average. Price in 4 Besides his theory on audience commodity he also argued “the blind spot” in which he points out the lack of attention pointed to the audience market:

“The same blind spot afflicts communications scholars who take a more or less Marxist view of communications (…) Because they do not take account of how the mass media under monopoly capitalism produce audiences to market commodities, candidates, and issues to themselves, theory and practice regarding the production of ideology continues on a subjective, unrealistic, and essentially ahistorical basis. Why they continue to suffer this blind spot it is not my task to determine” (Smythe 2001 255). This critical note towards studying the relation between the audience and mass media does not fit within my research and would distract from the point I am working towards, yet it cannot be ignored, because this research could then be accused of having a blind spot itself.

5 Even though the audience forms a collective, the audience is by no means homogenous. Smythe categorizes the audience in this paragraph. This, however interesting, passage deviates from the point I am trying to make using Smythe.

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this market is not based on the certainty of the audience's close attention but on the power of large numbers, that come with a mass audience:

“Similarly with advertising, the assurance lies in the law of large numbers and the experience with audience probabilities which yields the basis for prediction on which the price of

audience power is based. So it matters not if some audience members withdraw their attention; that is expected and discounted in advance by the advertiser” (Smythe 235).

Smythe shows the unevenness of the system in which this audience commodity exists. He conceptualizes a hegemony in which the audience actually works for advertisers. In doing so, he lays the groundwork to answer the question people ask themselves regularly: "How is it possible that so many online services and platforms are free?". There are numerous articles and informative videos devoted to closely explaining how and why platforms like Google and Facebook offer free services, and the shortest answer remains: advertisers. As Citton put it: “if a product is free, the product is you!” (Citton 9). Smythe destroyed the myth of radio and television being “free”, as he asked himself what the actual product of these media was. Smythe determined that there are two products of mass media. First, there is the product that receives the content. Which should be understood very literally as the material product that makes receiving possible, so the TV or radio set itself, the antenna, even the repairman (Smythe The Consumer's Stake 109). In the present-day, these are smartphones and tablets. The second product is immaterial and could be described as ‘a promise': "In the second place there is that product known as station time, and sometimes as audience loyalty (measured by ratings) which stations sell to advertisers. What is sold is a program for the audience […], and the probability of developing audience loyalty to the advertiser. […]” (Smythe The Consumer's Stake 110, emphasis in original). Since this research is within the field of media studies I will not elaborately discuss YouTube's revenue model. It is important for my research to state that YouTube makes its money through advertisers because this means that their priority will always be to get many views as possible.

Later in his career Smythe elaborated on this concept and adds the crucial idea of audience ‘work': "because audience power is produced, sold, purchased and consumed, it commands a price and is a commodity. Like other “labor power” it involves “work”." (Smythe). Smythe defines work as “all non-sleeping time” and in this time, which is sold to advertisers, “workers (a) perform essential marketing functions for the producers of

consumers’ goods, and (b) work at the production and reproduction of labour power” (Smythe Communications: Blindspot 3). Smythe’s argument strongly coheres with Cittons’ on this point. Even though the audience is more active and has more power to define and

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shape its own media landscape, Smythe’s theory reminds us that the audience is still a product on a market that can be bought and sold, regardless of whether their behavior is labeled as attention or labor. Smythe expresses concern and objection towards the audience as a commodity and the role of advertisers. His emphasis is more on how advertisers exploit audiences and basically let them "work to market […] things to themselves" (Fuchs on Smythe 4). While Citton is much more positive and lets the audience have the dominant role and agency instead of the advertisers and producers. However, Citton does argue that the audience is able to valorize content by paying it their attention and thereby shaping the current economy. Citton speaks from a more modern perspective in which the audience more closely resembles a user of media and an active agent in the media landscape6_.

Smythe’s concept of audience labor will continue to play an important role for the next chapter on the participatory culture. The next section will continue on the attention economy. Now that foundation and characteristics of this economy are discussed I will elaborate on what its existence caused not on the production side, but on the reception side. 2.1.3. Choice Fatigue

It is arguable that we still live in an age of scarcity, yet the scarcity has shifted from the production side to the reception side: “the new scarcity is no longer to be situated on the side of material goods to be produced, but on the attention necessary to consume them.” (Citton 8). The time and attention that is required to actually focus on any of the content that is offered to us, has become the scarcity. Or as Citton puts it:

“(…) our cultural frustrations arise less and less frequently from a lack of resources, and increasingly from a lack of available time to read, listen or watch all the treasures hastily downloaded onto our hard drives or recklessly accumulated on our shelves.” (Citton 4)

In the previous section is discussed what this means for the industry. Because attention is scarce it has more value and people are able to valorize content through giving, or not giving, it attention. But what does the overabundance mean for the reception side itself? Citton does not specifically answer this question in his research. The theorized elaborately on what new function the reception side fulfills in the new economy but does not specifically go into their experience of this new economy. Therefore I will again resort to Ellis, who looked closely at

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the audience7_{. Ellis took away the illusion that a choice is always a luxury for the audience. If} content is not structured in a way that helps the audience choose the luxury of abundance becomes overabundance and the audience will experience choosing as a burden.

Ellis calls this feeling of having to choose between too many options “choice fatigue” (171). He describes choice fatigue as a feeling of being overwhelmed with content in a negative way: “the feeling that choices are simply too difficult; a nostalgia for pattern, habit and an era when choices seemed few" (Ellis 171). After a certain number of options, adding more options becomes an imposition, instead of providing the audience with a sense of freedom of choice. Choice fatigue is the feeling viewers have, sitting on the couch in front of the

television, that offers them dozens of channels, and still thinking "there is nothing good on TV", or, to take a more modern example, "I don't know what to watch on Netflix". These statements do not suggest that there are actually no good shows being aired on any channel or that Netflix does not offer anything you would enjoy, it shows that there is too much content and that this awareness makes it impossible to choose something.

Choice fatigue is the main obstacle in the attention economy and avoiding it has become a priority for media producers. Flow could be seen as the opposite of choice fatigue. Because where choice fatigue is characterized by a viewer that is constantly overwhelmed with content, flow is characterized as an experience in which the viewer unknowingly watches different content in a sequence. In the chapter on flow (2.3) I will delve into this contradiction.

2.1.4. The Circular Self-Reinforcing Dynamic

Citton adds a crucial principle to his theory of attention. He calls it "the circular self-reinforcing dynamic", which means that attention attracts attention (48). An easy way to explain the principle is through the popularity of expensive luxury products like clothing brands or expensive cars: people are willing to pay a lot of money for products that others before them have paid a lot of money for. The fact that others have deemed something valuable enough to spend a lot of money on is a trigger for people to do the same. In the case of attention, this works in a similar way: people want to pay attention to content others have already given their attention to. This principle shapes platforms like YouTube and is a 7 In comparison Ellis had more attention for the audience than Citton, however different scholars, like Stuart Hall, have argued that Ellis himself handled the audience as a passive group when they should be handled as active viewers with their own needs and demands. This debate is not relevant for my research but must be named to avoid putting Ellis on a pedestal.

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foundation on which, for example, YouTube's ‘trending' section is successfully based: videos in this section have over one hundred thousand views in under ten days. The idea that

attention attracts attention creates these extreme views: videos with a lot of views give the impression that they are worth watching, and therefore get more views. Whether the users like or dislike the video is secondary, because as Citton argues there is no bad publicity (50). This might be an older standard, but it is still proven to be true. Going unnoticed is more deadly to content than getting bad reviews. From bad reviews might blossom curiosity, while indifference offers no gains at all. This principle can be recognized throughout the YouTube interface, for example in the trending section, and the fact that every video is accompanied by the number of views. Yet the number of likes or dislikes are not necessarily shown.

2.1.5. Where Is The Audience?

Looking at Citton's attention economy, that in many ways depicts our current economy in a strikingly accurate manner, one very crucial aspect is missing from his description: the creators of attention, the audience, remains neglected. In his detailed work on the increasing importance of attention, he seems to overlook the ones producing it. With the increasing value of attention should come the increasing value of its producers. These producers have more agency8_{over their media landscape than ever before and are crucial in understanding} the world in which YouTube exists and excels. The audiences’ behavior shapes the modern media and defines platforms like YouTube. The next paragraph will elaborate on the kind of behavior that is described as participation.

8 Obviously there could easily be argued that this agency is an illusion because of the role of big data and information asymmetry it creates. In this research, I will not go further into this paradox but will use agency as a way to describe the numerous viewing options the audience has gained in the current media landscape.

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2.2. The Participatory Culture

This section discusses how the previously discussed transition to an attention economy caused changes for the receptive side of the media landscape. This is a much-debated issue. This chapter aims to clarify what kind of audience YouTube deals with and how their identity has changed by the different economy. The focus of this study lies with an analysis of

YouTube's interface and the way it manages attention through its affordances. This interface mediates between the platform and the user. Therefore it is crucial to identify the user, yet it is not directly relevant to provide a full overview of the scholarly debate around the current identity of the user. Therefore this chapter will only include theory that, in my opinion, will create a clear image of the user in the attention economy. The user as an agent in the attention economy is the image of the user that will be central to the analysis that follows in chapter five.

2.2.1 Identifying the Audience

What to call the audience has become more difficult over the years. The audience possesses more and more agency so the term ‘viewer' no longer suffices. However, this agency is not always used: a part of the audience uses YouTube similar to the way they use linear

television (Youtube for Press), so naming them "actors" or any other term that implicates that they are solely active does not cover their function. Thus grew the use of hybrid concepts and terms that combined existing audience features, like prosumer or viewser. The term produser is an older borrowed economic term, first used by Alvin Toffler when he described the upcoming production of goods and services for own consumption after the industrial age. Kotler describes Tofflers’ concept as the following:

"Toffler defines prosumers as people who produce some of the goods and services entering their own consumption. They can be found making their own clothes, cooking their own food, repairing their own cars, and hanging their own wallpaper. All of these services could be purchased in the marketplace. […] The essence of being a prosumer, on the other hand, is to prefer producing one's own goods and services. (Kotler 51)

This definition is not immediately applicable to media, because people do not only create media for their own use, but they want to exchange media reciprocally. YouTube users that upload videos on the site are not limited to solely watching their own content. Besides using the platform to upload their own content, they use it to stream content of others. So, the term

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prosumer within is used “to denote how users’ agency hovers between the bipolar categories of producer versus consumer, and of professional versus consumer”(Van Dijck 41-42). The term prosumer tries to combine the users that produce and upload videos with users that consume and stream videos because in the case of YouTube this could be the same user. The current technologies have made it easier for users to add own content. Besides that, the easier ways of communication on the platform, think of comments and likes, have made it possible for users to affect the production of others. Users can comment and (dis)like content and this influences the platform. Content that is broadly appreciated will influence the content of others. Think of the major popularity of vlogs. This genre started with a few videos in which people shared their daily routine and has become an established much-watched genre in the industry. Bruns theorized this phenomenon as a prosumer feedback loop. He argued that the role of the distributor, that used to mediate between the producer and consumer, has disappeared which has opened a direct dialogue between producer and consumer (Bruns 13-14). This should be interpreted in two ways. First, this could be interpreted very literal. An example of a very literal use of the feedback loop is the Dutch YouTube channel StukTV. The episodes are created through requests in the comments. Which means the audience decides what the next episode will be about. Secondly, this should be placed within a broader movement in which the user decides what type of content grows and what type of content slowly disappears. This related closely to how attention is able to valorize objects. Content on YouTube that gets a lot of attention through views, but also through comments and likes will be noticed and will often function as an inspiration for other users.

2.2.2 The You-ser

However combined terms like prosumer clarified some of the issues around the new agency of the audience and how to create strategies around them, these definitions of the audience remain limited. User agency, as van Dijck argues, is a lot more complex than these bipolar terms suggest "we need to account for the multifarious roles of users in a media environment where the boundaries between commerce, content, and information are currently being redrawn" (41-42). She invented a new the term, called ‘you-ser’, to rid herself from former meanings or connotations of any of the words that circle around in the field. A you-ser, first of all, is still a viewer. However, they are no longer passive because “their download activity automatically contributes to the site’s navigability and usability” (van Dijck 10). Every click provides the platform with insights that are used to improve the content they have to offer.

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Van Dijck describes the audience as a user but adds the characteristics of "browsers" and "evaluators" to their identity (van Dijck 10). As I stated before, the audience is able to valorize content through giving it their attention. This attention is translated through the interface in views, comments, and (dis)likes. These numbers draw the audiences' attention according to Citton’s notion of ‘attention attracts attention’. Choosing to watch one thing above another adds value to particular content and removes it from other content. The notion of “not contributing” has vanished, because not watching something influences the platform just as much as watching.

Secondly, van Dijck adds that while you-sers have the characteristics of consumers, they are more and more focused on communal modes rather than individualist modes of reception (10-11). For example, every YouTube clip can be easily shared, but also the act of liking or disliking content can be shared to others. Van Dijck gives the consumer the extra label of “sharers” and “community builders” (10). Also taking into account that a part of YouTube’s audience is actually contributing content, she adds the labels “creators” and “uploaders” (11) to the term you-sers.

Van Dijck’s theory expanded the range of characteristics of the audience. Besides viewing, consuming and creating, they can now browse, evaluate, share, build communities, and upload content. With every label added, the audience gained agency. It is important to note here though, that while their agency increased, simultaneously the audience's power over their agency decreased. Because not using their agency is as big of a choice as using it. Liking a video has always had an impact on a platform, but not liking a video might just have the same impact as liking it because it changes the value of the content.

In the analysis, I will analyze YouTube's interface and its affordances. This research aims to find out more about the way YouTube structures attention through its interface. I will

examine the interface and its affordances, and conclude what behavior is encouraged or repressed. In the coming chapters, I will not elaborate on the users' needs, agency or identity. They will, except in rare cases, be treated as relatively passive actors that follow the path of least resistance. The previous chapter established that pinning down the identity of the audience is a very complex matter, yet not relevant enough to this particular research to delve into too far. It has now been established that the audience is complex, diverse, hard to

amalgamate, and all too easy to divide into subcategories. Relevantly, the audience is not a passive customer, but has many ways to act as an agent in the attention economy.

The next chapter will discuss the concept of flow, its origin, and adaptation to the digital age.

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2.3. Flow

As described in the paragraph on choice fatigue (2.1.3.), audiences find it difficult to choose when too many options are presented to them. It has become a challenge in the attention economy, characterized by an overload of information, for platforms to find a balance

between avoiding choice fatigue and displaying, a wide offering of content. The relevance of the concept of flow, as originally part of traditional television theory, will now be studied, to gain increased insights on how attention can be seized and retained in the context of the attention economy. Because, as this chapter will argue, if choice fatigue is the pitfall of the attention economy, flow is what the industry strives for. First I will delve into the origin and meaning of the concept. Then I will elaborate on its adaptation to the digital era. The concept of flow has been widely influential. Its use across the field has seen many different

interpretations. Therefore this chapter will end with a section in which I will clarify how I will use it for the purpose of this study.

2.3.1. The Concept of Flow

Raymond Williams influenced television studies with his theory on television programming in 1975. He created a new mode of analysis in which he did not analyze separate programs, but the entire broadcast output. He argues that to analyze television, it is crucial to analyze the summary of all programs in a sequence or flow (Williams, 86). He compared

programming in non-mediated events, like theatre or sports matches, to programming in broadcasting. He argues that television brought multiple events together and in doing so changed the way people look at these events:

“The difference in broadcasting is not only that these events, or events resembling them, are available inside the home, by the operation of a switch. It is that the real program that is offered is a sequence or set of alternative sequences of these and other similar events, which are then available in a single dimension and in a single operation.” (Williams, 87)

People speak of ‘watching television’ in which they allude to a general experience rather than a specific show or match (89-90). Even though the flow consists of multiple programs, there are little end-points and there are no empty gaps in between programs causing an experience in which all parts of the sequence blend together (Bignell, 3). Williams explains this notion of

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flow through a description of a night of watching TV in Miami in which he watched a movie on crime in San Francisco. The movie cut to a commercial break, that showed advertisement, but also trailers of other movies that were shown on different channels that night, the film continued and after a while, this process repeated itself. To Williams, taking into account that it was 1975 and he was British (and thus came from a media landscape defined by public broadcasters), this sequence was difficult to make sense of. He explained:

“A crime in San Francisco began to operate in an extraordinary counterpoint not only with the deodorant and cereal commercials but with the romance in Paris and the eruption of a prehistoric monster who laid waste to New York” (92)

Williams concludes from this experience that broadcasters schedule and design programs with the purpose to seize attention in the early moments to thereafter promise the audience repeatedly there are exciting things to come, if you stay (Williams, 95).

Williams analyzed American and Britain flow on three levels: long-range, medium- range and short-range. The long-range analysis focuses on an evening’s viewing, in which he analyzed the selection of programs of five channels and the way the schedule is built and how this contributes to flow (Williams, 97-100). In the medium-range analysis Williams looks more closely at the “more evident flow” (97) through analyzing the structure of a newscast, describing it as “a flow of consumable reports and products, in which the elements of speed, variety and miscellaneity can be seen as organizing: the real bearers of value” (107). He argues that leaving out the connections or contrasts between sequences causes the fusion of multiple parts and hereby causes that all images seem blended together creating a feeling of flow (Williams, 101-113). Thirdly he looks even more closely at a newscast and its “actual succession of words and images”(97).

The way Williams took the sequence of an evening as an object for his analysis and not the individual programs was very influential. He laid the ground for analyzing strategies like, anchoring (starting the evening with a strong program), hammocking (putting a weak show in between to stronger ones) and blocking (filling an evening with one genre, for example sitcoms) (Adams et. al., 130-131). Even though the media landscape has changed considerably, the underlining ideas behind these strategies are still relevant in linear television but also in modern media and digital platforms. Williams’ theory on how to analyze television has proven itself very influential, but as television changed, his analysis on

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flow strategies became unfitting and outdated.

Over the past decades, the medium of television has changed and adjusted to the digital age. The television experience Williams based his theory does not exist anymore. Broadcasting television is being replaced by digitalized platforms that offer content. Williams concept of flow was based on broadcasting in the seventies and has become extremely outdated: "The ways in which the flow can be manipulated by each individual viewer are so numerous, the technical solutions so much better, that concentrating solely on broadcasters' program flow is inadequate and unsatisfactory" (Moe, 777). Digital television promised the viewer a different relationship with the medium in which they have more control and even freedom (Moe 775)9_. Technology hands the audience tools to escape advertisement and content they are not interested in. However, creating flow is not impossible, as this research argues, yet the strategies have changed tremendously. The industry had to come up with new strategies that take the new identity of the audience into account. The next paragraph will elaborate on this. 2.3.2. Flow in the Digital Age

Caldwell noted that digital media and traditional media practices have merged into new media strategies in which they complement and support each other (Caldwell, 130). He uses the example of homicide.com in which the storyline of the TV-series continues online. Caldwell took a second look at the old theory on television strategy, theorized by Williams among others, and adapted them so they fit into the modern, digitalized, media landscape. He hopes "to describe a growing and ubiquitous world of digital that employs traditional and modified "programming strategies" in the design of everything from interface and software design to merchandizing and branding campaigns" (Caldwell, 132). He calls these renewed strategies second-shift aesthetics and calls the traditional strategies on broadcasted television first-shift aesthetics. What distinguishes the second-shift aesthetics is the aim of the flow. Where the focus in traditional or first-shift aesthetics laid on creating flow through textual 9 A skeptical attitude towards the freedom of the audience is in order. Even though they have new ways to control their viewing experience the industry is rapidly innovating to create other

technologies to control the viewer: “viewers are still responding to options orchestrated by

programme makers. They may have an increasingly flexible menu to choose from but they are still not allowed in the kitchen” (Murdock as quoted in Moe, 779). The question of how much power the user actually has is difficult, maybe impossible, to answer and is beyond the point of this chapter or research.

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means, the focus now lays on creating an audience or user flow (Caldwell, 136). In other words, Caldwell examines the flow of the user experiences, which consists of more than one medium or platform, instead of focusing on how flow is incorporated in the actual content the user watches.

These new strategies consider that the audience will inevitably migrate to other brands or media. As Caldwell argues, “successful multimedia development, therefore, means being able to track, monitor, and predict -or at least respond quickly to- multidirectional user flows and migrations” (Caldwell, 136). He formulated three strategies of second shift

aesthetics called aggregation, tiering, and herding. Aggregation in its simplest definition is “a generic term to describe the Internet’s capacity to pull content from various sources and make it accessible at a dedicated site” (Vondereau, 720). Media corporations should try to master the “cumulative “aggregation” of audiences from across the fragmented demographic niches that compromise the proliferating, multichannel market” (Caldwell, 137). Aiming for a mass audience with a single program is not a realistic corporate goal anymore since the success of narrowcasting since the 1980s (Caldwell, 137). Tiering is a strategy in which a larger brand "tiers" multiple brands into its own. A good example is HBO, where multiple niche-networks are gathered under one larger network. Lastly, Herding means not preventing click-through's but designing patterns to redirect users back to the original site (Caldwell, 136). YouTube is a great example of a platform that uses herding. It protects its position as the top video platform by herding its audience from other sites, back to YouTube. Herding means not preventing click-through's but designing patterns to redirect users back to the original site (Caldwell, 136). YouTube is a subsidiary of Google. This means that if users search Google, they get a video recommendation. For example, if users google a news item, Google shows them a YouTube video recommendation before official news sites. Secondly, most videos incorporated in different platforms are hosted by YouTube. After the video ends, the player shows related videos. If users want to see similar content, they are redirected to YouTube. These strategies are based on the idea that the challenge is not to keep the audience

interested, but to create strategies in which the medium is prepared for that and uses it to its advantage.

2.3.3. Flow Within This Research

Before I can begin the next chapter, that will elaborate on the method of this research, it is important to clarify what concept of flow I will use, which aspects of YouTube will be

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discussed in my analysis, and more importantly which aspects will not. This research aims to analyze YouTube through its affordances and evaluate how the platform deals with the current economy and landscape. It seeks an answer to the question of how they capture and manage attention and create flow. To answer this question, I will analyze the interface and what it affords, to create a norm and discourse on the platform. Television flow strategies are focused on combinations of content and not specifically on the interface that offers them. Probably because the television that existed at the time had no particular interface except for the content that was shown. I will incorporate traditional flow principles and use the concepts and ideas that laid the groundwork for these strategies, even though my object of analysis is in some ways fundamentally different.

To give an example: ‘blocking' is a television strategy, used to create flow, in which a channel would fill up the evening with one genre, for example, sitcoms. Looking at YouTube, one could argue that YouTube uses this strategy as well. If videos on the Home screen

represent channels, choosing between them could be a digital equivalent of zapping. After choosing one video YouTube will continue to recommend its users videos within that genre. This is similar to blocking. However, YouTube uses a new modern version of blocking, the platform does not just match genres together and shows them as an option to the user, it matches users to content, then content to similar content and eventually creates a unique personalized genre that the viewer will watch, with every new video the genre is changed and made more specific for that user. Using this traditional flow strategy concludes that YouTube indeed uses blocking. Analyzing YouTube as a new form of television and new forms of flow is very interesting because the current number one digital video platform resembles television more than one would think.

However, this comparison excludes many important features YouTube offers. YouTube has not only used old television strategies but rediscovered the sense of flow altogether. Only using old strategies to analyze YouTube leaves out one crucial detail: why do users keep their attention on the platform. How does YouTube lead the user within their personalized content? How does YouTube's interface direct the users' attention and keeps them on the platform and within the flow of content? A part of this question can, of course, be answered examining the content, however, YouTube has no influence on its content. They never interfere with content on the platform, but only structure it. YouTube manages its interface and what this interface affords the users. Their features and interface design create the flow for the users that will eventually lead the users to the content. That is why this research analyzes attention management and flow through affordances and not through content. Still, flow is the key

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concept in this research. As argued above, there are multiple definitions of flow. I will focus on the principle of flow that is still closely related to Williams founding theory, in which flow is a sequence in which the overall experience transcends its individual particles. Leaving out the connections or contrasts between sequences causes the fusion of multiple parts and hereby causes that all images seem blended together creating a feeling of flow (Williams, 101-113). Flow seizes attention in the early moments and continuously promises the audience that there are exciting things to come, if you keep watching (Williams, 95). Using this

definition means that this research will focus on how YouTube's interface (1) creates a sequence, (2) how multiple particles of this sequence are blended together as one, and (3) how the attention is seized in the early moments, and (4) how YouTube promises that

exciting things will come. Creating flow is one of the strategies YouTube uses to manage the audiences' attention in a time where attention is scarce and information overabundant. To analyze how it creates flow is to analyze how YouTube manages attention.

Flow used to be measured through content. At least, that is how Williams and other scholars did it. They analyzed how the content created a sequence through flow, for instance, shows in combination with advertising, or certain use of language to keep the viewer

interested. Yet the crucial difference between television and YouTube is that YouTube is a user-generated platform. It does not control the content, but only the interface that offers it this content. This research argues that YouTube creates flow within the platform. Yet I cannot resort to older flow analysis because that analyzed flow through content analysis. YouTube does not control the content, but the interface. The interface directs the attention of the user and therefore it is the interface that creates flow. I will analyze the interface by looking at what it offers the user. Functions on the interface communicate between the platform and the user. Platforms can be analyzed through what they afford the user. The next chapter will discuss affordances and how they can be used in interface analysis.

2.4. Platform Affordances

The concept of affordances is used broadly and very diverse in different contexts and different fields. To pin down what it means I will first historically discuss the concept and show how it was adopted in platform studies. I will conclude the chapter with clarifying what use of the concept I will use.

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The concept of affordance was first introduced by Gibson in 1979 within the field of (ecological) psychology. Gibson studied the field of ecological psychology and focused on the phenomenology of perception, in other words: he studied how people and animals observe their surroundings. He invented the term affordance to refer to the relationship between animals, including humans, and their environment and the importance of perception in this relationship. Affordances are what the environment offers and provides the animal "either for good or ill" (Gibson 56). Objects or ‘surfaces' as Gibson calls them, in an

environment offer and allow opportunities for certain behavior: "the composition and lay-out of surfaces constitute what they afford. If so, to perceive them is to perceive what they afford" (Gibson 57). For example, a lizard understands a rock in terms of whether or not it offers shelter or shadow. Gibson used the concept of affordances to theorize how we see the world around us. He argues that we perceive our surroundings through the actions, or affordances, it allows. Through these affordances, we make sense of the world.

Affordances became important to psychological experiments that analyzed the specific use of objects. Warren, for example, researched the way people from different heights used high staircases and how their perception of their own height and the height of the stairs influenced the peoples' behavior (Warren 1984). Gibson's theory was highly influential in the fields of (ecological) psychology and sociology because the existing psychological theory at that point was constructed around the idea that an observer was stationary (Greeno 366). Gibson was the first to argue that this was an one-sided point of view because "a psychology of

perception that is only about stationary observation neglects some of the crucial

characteristics of what it claims to be about" (Greeno 366). Gibson hereby created a new dimension to the field because he argued that neither the environment nor the actor is static.

Besides Gibson’s concept of perception, he argues that “behavior affords behavior”(58). Other actors/other humans are surfaces as well, and therefore afford

something to their surroundings. These actors afford behavior to other actors. The behavior of others works contagious. To give a simple example, in case of fire, people look around them to see what way others are running, and will then run the same way. Gibson's concept of "behavior affords behavior" explains how people react to other peoples' behavior and often mimic it (Gibson 58).

Essentially, affordance theory is about the psychology of perception and how people understand the world around them, therefore it is not bound to ecological psychology but can be adopted in other fields that deal with perception, like interface and design studies. The next paragraph will discuss how the concept of affordance was adopted in design studies by

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Norman. This view on how affordances relate to design formed the foundation for studying user interfaces in terms of design.

2.4.2. Affordance and Design

The concept of affordances got another use within design studies because of Norman. Norman theorized the way design, which he used as an equivalent of Gibson’s surface here, is crucial in how we perceive an object. He connected the design of an object directly to the action of the one who perceives it. If an object is properly designed, it strongly suggests what it ideally affords. Good design is design that immediately shows what an object affords. Norman argues that good design mostly goes unnoticed, because the use of an object is so obvious and clear the observer could not imagine it otherwise. Bad design, however, confuses the observer and makes an object difficult to use (Norman xi). Norman described the concept of affordance in a less ecological way than Gibson: “an affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used." (Norman, 11, emphasis added). His idea about the relationship between the properties and capabilities is especially important because there is a difference between property and affordance. Affordance is not just the properties or features an object allows, it is based on the relationship between an object and the agent (Norman 11). The abilities of the agent influences the properties of the object:

"A chair affords ("is for") support and, therefore, affords sitting. Most chairs can also be carried by a single person (they afford lifting), but some can only be lifted by a strong person or by a team of people. If young or relatively weak people cannot lift a chair, then for these people, the chair does not have that affordance, it does not afford lifting. " (Norman 11)

So, even though an object offers multiple properties, the affordances can be different for every agent because it relies on the interaction between the environment and the agent. Norman’s theory differs from Gibson’s concept of affordances in this way. Gibson argues that the needs of the observer do not alter the affordances of an object (58). So, it does not matter whether the observer wants to sit on a chair, or is physically able to sit on a chair; a chair affords sitting no matter the observers’ needs. If an observer were to sit down at a table with a cup and a plate, Gibson’s theory allows for the observer to drink from the plate and eat from the cup. Because, essentially, these objects afford these actions and thus the observer can execute them. Norman argues that the way things look, their design, suggests its affordance and will lead the observer towards the fitting action. Norman argues that if an

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object is designed properly, an observer will never use the plate for drinking or the cup for eating, because they strongly suggest different behavior and therefore the observer will use it that way.

According to Norman, design is the deciding factor in whether an object has good usability or not. Great design shows the affordances of the object immediately, poor design creates confusion. If a chair is designed in a way that it does not clearly afford sitting, it could make the observer doubt whether they can or cannot sit down. Design controls how objects are perceived by observers, and therefore how objects are used. This is not limited to material objects, the same principle applies to platforms, like YouTube. YouTube has an interface that affords the user certain behavior. To make clear what the platform affords the platform uses design. The user perceives YouTube's affordances through the design of the interface and will then make sense of how to use the platform. For example, YouTube's incorporated a clear search bar in its design. The user understands that YouTube affords searching content, thus the user will use YouTube if they want to search for a video. The next chapter will discuss how the concept of affordances was adopted widely and how that affected its use.

2.4.4. Affordances In a Broader Understanding

Gibson's concepts on how we understand the world around us through perception, and how behavior works contagiously were important to different fields. Affordances were introduced to sociology by Hutchby, who uses affordances to study technologies and social life

(Hutchby, 444). He uses affordances to create a new understanding of technologies, in which they should be understood as "both shaped by and shaping of the practices humans" (Hutchby 444). Hutchby and Greeno took Gibson’s concept of affordances quite literally and applied it to their field of study. Other scholars, like Costall, were more critical towards the concept and created their own understanding of the term. Because the concept was used by scholars from different fields, in different ways, its meaning slowly changed. The concept was still used to describe the relationship between an object and an actor, but more characteristics were added or existing ones disappeared. Norman used Gibson's theory on affordances as a foundation for his theory on affordances in design, yet he added a lot of new aspects to the concept. Just like Gibson, Norman's transformed theory on affordances became greatly influential in different fields related to design studies but also human-computer interaction studies and platform studies. The popularity of the concept in different fields caused the concept of affordances and its meaning to become broad and its use divers, sometimes even arbitrary.

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This encourages scholars from different fields to create an outline of the meaning of the term (Chemero 2003; Jenkins 2008; McGrenere & Ho; 2000), which again were placed in different fields. Which made their clarification strongly opinionated. The concept of affordances has become a widely used term to describe a relationship between observer and object and good suggestive design, but in some cases to describe usability or function. The large and diverse understanding of affordances makes it difficult to create a definition of the term and I will not attempt to create one in this thesis. The next chapter will discuss how platforms, like

YouTube, can be thoroughly analyzed through affordances and design. This paragraph will make clear how this study uses affordances.

2.4.5. Platform Affordances

This chapter will discuss how affordances are related to digital platforms like YouTube. Using affordances to evaluate a platform will create a deeper understanding of its usability’s. As discussed in the previous chapter design is essential for affordances. Platforms are digital versions of surfaces and just like material surfaces are perceived by observers in terms of what they afford to them. Essentially platforms affordance is installed in the embedded software of the platform, however, users cannot understand or use these affordances. What these platforms actually afford the users becomes clear through the user interface. A user interface mediates between the platform's software and the user. The system behind platforms is too difficult for people to understand, so platforms are fully dependent on the design of their user interface to show what the platform affords. Buttons on the user interface display what the platform affords to the users. If these buttons are designed properly they translate difficult computer structures into clear and comprehensible affordances for the platform's users. This translation is fully dependent on design. In this sense design actually creates the platform affordances, because the user would never be able to perform the actions enabled by the software without the user interface that is structured by design. The interface can be understood through its features and what these features afford the user. Interfaces are basically numerations of different features, tied together through design. Features

incorporated in user interface mediate between the users and the software of the platform. These features should be examined thoroughly because they mean more than simply their function: "A feature is clearly not just a feature. The symbols and the connotations they carry matter. Pressing a button means something; it mediates and communicates, or (…) relates to different affordances" (Bucher and Helmond 2).

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Bucher and Helmond use the concept of affordance to further understand platforms and platform interfaces. Besides the practical meaning of a feature, so what a button specifically does, features have a broader meaning. It affords the users to communicate and express themselves (Bucher and Helmond 2-3). Design plays a crucial part in creating this deeper meaning. Bucher and Helmond used the example of the Twitter favorite/like button to explain the deeper meaning of a feature and its design. In 2015 Twitter changed its ‘favorite' button, which was the shape of a star, into a ‘like' button, the shape of a heart. What seemed to be a minor design change turned out to be very significant for Twitter users: "As the user reactions exemplify, Twitter buttons are endowed with different meanings, feelings,

imaginings and expectations" (Bucher and Helmond 3). Whether the users agreed or

disagreed with the alteration, they all stated that changing the shape and name of the button, changed the experience of the feature and even of the platform altogether. Features, like the favorite button, can translate users' opinions into something clear and easily comprehensible for the user itself and all other users10_{. In other words, the favorite button affords the user} something different than the like button. The favorite button afforded a more neutral comment than the like button.

In the analysis of this thesis, I will further elaborate on the affordances created by features on YouTube. YouTube has many features that afford the user multiple options, yet at the same time, there is a big part of their underlying structure that they keep hidden for their users. For example, they afford the users the feature of Autoplay, in which videos will start playing automatically after one has finished, yet they do not afford the user to actively control the algorithm that decides what video will be next. This is because the user interface does not have a feature that allows the user to do this. Whether YouTube’s software would allow users to alter their own playlist is not important, it is that what the user perceives that creates the affordances. The user perceives the design of the user interface, not the structure behind it. Features on platforms afford something to both users and the platform developers. Creating features that offer the users a way to express their opinion produces valuable information. The information can be used to develop the platform to the users' needs, as is the case for YouTube.

Perception is a key term in affordance theory, yet affordances can also be hidden (Gaver 80)11_{. This means the observer needs to conclude an affordance is there through} 10 Through this deeper understanding of platform features grew a new analysis method: discursive interface analysis. This will the method for the analysis and will be discussed in the next chapter. 11 Gaver also argues there are false affordances, these are not important to this research but worth mentioning: “If information suggests a nonexistent affordance, a false affordance exists upon which

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information: “hidden affordances must be inferred from other evidence, possibly through experimentation and other actions that make affordances visible. In the case of a graphical computer interface, for example, a hidden affordance could be revealed by the action of a mouse-over.” (Bucher and Helmond 7). This means that an affordance can be revealed only when someone’s attention is already focused on that part of the interface. For example, YouTube hides its ‘Watch later’ option until the mouse touches a video, so the affordance of saving the video is only offered to the user when its attention is at that particular clip. The use of hidden affordances on YouTube will be further discussed in the analysis chapter. The next paragraph will discuss how to study platform affordances.

2.4.6. Platform studies: Levels of Affordance

In platform affordance studies, two levels of affordances can be distinguished: high-level and low-level. The low-level affordances are design-oriented and “are typically located in the materiality of the medium, in specific features, buttons, screens, and platforms" (Bucher and Helmond 12). High-level affordances are, as the name suggests, on a higher level of

interpretation. These affordances do not describe the meaning a specific button but focus more on the affordance multiple features can create together: "higher-level affordances are conditioned by the properties of bits, which essentially introduce new opportunities for interaction and communication" (Bucher and Helmond on Boyd 13). For example, a low-level affordance could be the specific button that allows the user to share a video via

WhatsApp. High-level affordances are the numerous buttons that offer sharing possibilities, within the platform or via different platforms, and together create a more general affordance in which YouTube offers the user to easily share content with others in different ways.

2.4.7. Platform studies: Features and Attention

This study researches how YouTube's interface manages attention and creates flow. In this paragraph, I have clarified why affordances play a crucial part in platform analysis. Before continuing to the chapter on the method to this research it is important to connect affordances to attention. Affordances should be seen as the ‘translators' of the users' attention. The design of the platform shows the user what a platform offers the user. If this is a ‘good' design, it immediately shows the user what the platform offers them without confusion. On a low-level,

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this means that important features are more brightly colored or larger than other buttons, on a higher level this means that the features together show what behavior is generally

encouraged. The design choices seize and direct the users' attention across the screen to different affordances. The eventual click of the user translates their attention into a specific action.

These features "collect" attention and hereby create new information from it. For example in web design, developers use heat maps to see where the user places its mouse cursor the most. They can then conclude what features get the most attention. This information is then used to optimize a website. In this way, features function as a gateway to further understand user practices.

Managing the Overload: YouTube in the Attention Economy A Master Thesis on how YouTube’s Interface and its Affordances Manage User Attention and Create Flow

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Theoretical framework