Pafos Live 12 February 2025
By Nikos Constantinou (*)
It is not clear whether re-elected U.S. President Donald Trump and his team have a deep understanding of the principles of psychology regarding cognitive mechanisms such as attention, or simply have an intuitive understanding of the workings and effects of media and social media. In any case, their strategy, for about 20 days, has been impressive (and strikingly troubling).
Through decades of research in cognitive psychology, we know that human attention is limited. At any given moment, we can consciously focus on a single subject or topic (in the notes two scientific articles from our own related work). This principle is also reflected in the way the Media and Social Media operate. In traditional media, a newspaper usually has a single front-page story, while in social networks, a central discussion usually develops around a single specific topic at a time. The tendency, then, is for public debate to focus on one dominant topic at a time.
Exploiting this fundamental cognitive weakness — limited attention span — Trump and his team have adopted a strategy of bombarding the public sphere with information. In a short time, they flooded the media and social media with a huge volume of disparate topics. To be more specific, consider examples such as: the proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the idea of annexing Canada as the 51st state, the debate on incorporating Greenland, the Panama Canal issue, the announcement to cancel birth citizenship, and the decision to dissolve USAID. These and dozens of other issues appear one after the other, creating a suffocating environment of information overload. As a result, too many focal points are created at once, making it impossible for public debate to focus in depth on any of them. The constant flow of new topics maintains this state of constant distraction.
When public debate is constantly bombarded with new information on a different topic each time, it becomes impossible to focus deeply on a particular issue, digest it, discuss it thoroughly and, if necessary, deconstruct it. The truth sinks and impression and image prevail.
The consequences of this strategy are multiple and worrying. First, it allows Trump to push his policies undisturbed, since he directs (like a magician) our attention elsewhere. Second, it creates a distorted image of an all-powerful leader by hiding the failures or legal reversals of his policies from public discourse (since he again directs our attention elsewhere). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, this strategy does not allow a coherent and effective one to emerge.
As a result, Democrats in America are dumbfounded, if not nonexistent. When our attention is constantly distracted, there is no place to develop a coherent and convincing alternative.
In this game of manipulating our attention, something much more important than mere political confrontation is at stake. At stake is the very possibility of meaningful public debate and, by extension, the health of democracy.
(*) Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences
CUT
