Linguistics and Languages

The rising entropy of English in the attention economy

C. Pilgrim, W. Guo, et al.

Dive into groundbreaking research by Charlie Pilgrim, Weisi Guo, and Thomas T. Hills, revealing how the word entropy of American English has steadily increased since 1900! Discover fascinating variations across media types, with short-form media providing a richer landscape of information. This study combines ecological models and consumer behavior insights, explaining why shorter formats are becoming the go-to choice for media consumers.... show more

Abstract

We present evidence that the word entropy of American English has been rising steadily since around 1900. We also find differences in word entropy between media categories, with short-form media such as news and magazines having higher entropy than long-form media, and social media feeds having higher entropy still. To explain these results we develop an ecological model of the attention economy that combines ideas from Zipf's law and information foraging. In this model, media consumers maximize information utility rate taking into account the costs of information search, while media producers adapt to technologies that reduce search costs, driving them to generate higher entropy content in increasingly shorter formats.

Publisher

Communications Psychology

Published On

Aug 01, 2024

Authors

Charlie Pilgrim, Weisi Guo, Thomas T. Hills

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00117-1

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