{"id":13908,"date":"2025-08-18T21:11:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T19:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.medienkonvergenz.ifp.uni-mainz.de\/?page_id=13908"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:03:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:03:30","slug":"diss-pascal-juergens","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.medienkonvergenz.ifp.uni-mainz.de\/en\/dissertations\/diss-pascal-juergens\/","title":{"rendered":"Algorithms, sharing and selectivity: the fragmentation of attention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/jgu-base-heading>\n\n\n\n

The explosion of content on the internet gives users access to a virtually unlimited variety of informative and entertaining material. At the same time, a wide variety of offerings \u2013 including non-media content \u2013 compete on convergent technical platforms. Taken together, these two developments result in users being inundated with information, forcing them to make selection decisions with ever-increasing frequency and scope. Numerous navigation aids \u2013 such as search engines, aggregation portals and social networking sites \u2013 offer their support by pre-selecting and sorting content. These functions are gratefully utilised, which grants the \u2018new intermediaries\u2019 a potentially significant influence over users\u2019 information behaviour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This doctoral thesis project investigated the influence of social recommendations, technical recommendation systems and aggregators of popular content on recipients\u2019 selection decisions. The aim was to map trends towards fragmentation in the digital media environment and to identify the key influencing factors. The theoretical framework combines research on fragmentation and diversity with the concept of selectivity. Empirically, the study relies on the analysis of digital behavioural data (non-reactive measurements). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project team members:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n