Perhaps it is exactly the attempts of the attention economy to control our habits that have given rise to the rebellion against it in the form of a desire for a different, more diverse, and less monotonous internet of the future. Those desires are manifested, I believe, also in the formation of many underground internet movements and local communities of practice, such as those presented by the open-source initiatives. And maybe what is missing is not only the transcendental normative principles of (Kantian) ethics but also more support for practical and immanent attempts as part of the struggle for a free internet and for the democratic use of new technologies.

A century after the vibrant in-depth theoretical debates on public opinion, we seem to be facing completely different problems, largely stemming from the development of digital communication technologies.

Mediatisation fails to distinguish between the form and content of communication; it does not make a proper distinction between public political communication and political activity; and it ignores the non-public parts of politics and deep inequalities, which influence the political process. Mediatisation generally bypasses these issues, in turn also ignoring the wider relations of power in capitalist society and how they change.

By exploring socialist Yugoslavia and political alternatives, we deconstruct today's 'universality', both in the scientific community and more broadly. In my research, I rely on the process of the epistemological decolonisation of knowledge.

Attention as attentiveness, as intentional and sustained thoughtful focus, is in fact antipodal to the fragmented presence of a gaze, which fuels the so-called attention economy. In other words, its dominant mechanism is precisely its antipode, its dysfunction: distraction.