The cable television program Pop Up Video seems to serve as a textbook example of distraction in an age of information. Yet, distraction, at least as Walter Benjamin used the term, was never simply a matter of a deficit of attention, but always implied a scattering or dispersion, which Benjamin saw as constitutive of modern mass culture. Exploring this notion of distraction as dispersion in relation to Pop Up Video and other ‘meta-forms’, this article seeks to show how Benjamin’s idea of ‘reception in a state of distraction’ continues to provide insights into how information is disseminated and consumed in contemporary media and information culture.
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