‘Flooding the zone’ and the politics of attention
Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2025 9:24 am‘Flooding the zone’ and the politics of attention
Justice Everywhere - Admin. - March 10, 2025
(QUOTE: "This is a guest post by Zsolt Kapelner (University of Oslo")".
EXCERPT: "Flooding the zone – irrespective of the ‘content of the flooding’ – destroys this key collective capacity for focused attention on the part of the democratic public, and consequently the possibility of meaningfully democratic politics itself.
This is why flooding the zone as a political strategy aimed at decapacitating public deliberation and opposition politicians through creating confusion and disorientation is not simply a dirty tactic, but an inherently antidemocratic one. This also highlights the crucial importance of managing collective attention for the healthy functioning of democracy. What threatens democracy today is not only fake news, disinformation, and polarization. It is also the destruction of our capacity for collective attention. To preserve democracy, we will have to find ways to defend and develop our shared ability to pay focused attention to what really matters."
[ https://justice-everywhere.org/category/democracy/ ]
Justice Everywhere - Admin. - March 10, 2025
(QUOTE: "This is a guest post by Zsolt Kapelner (University of Oslo")".
EXCERPT: "Flooding the zone – irrespective of the ‘content of the flooding’ – destroys this key collective capacity for focused attention on the part of the democratic public, and consequently the possibility of meaningfully democratic politics itself.
This is why flooding the zone as a political strategy aimed at decapacitating public deliberation and opposition politicians through creating confusion and disorientation is not simply a dirty tactic, but an inherently antidemocratic one. This also highlights the crucial importance of managing collective attention for the healthy functioning of democracy. What threatens democracy today is not only fake news, disinformation, and polarization. It is also the destruction of our capacity for collective attention. To preserve democracy, we will have to find ways to defend and develop our shared ability to pay focused attention to what really matters."
[ https://justice-everywhere.org/category/democracy/ ]