Faculty Sponsor: Pavel Oleinikov
Jordan Crespin
Jordan Crespin is a rising junior (’28) from New York City. She is double majoring in Mathematics and Economics, with a minor in Data Analysis. At Wesleyan, Jordan plays on the varsity volleyball team, serves as a teaching assistant for Calculus and Introduction to Economics, and is a member of Women in Finance and the Wesleyan Investment Group. In her free time, she enjoys long runs, digital and darkroom photography, and logic puzzles. She is also a devoted New York sports fan—although cheering for New York teams often tests her patience.
Abstract: This study examines if user attention toward television episodes exhibits the same patterns of decay as the broader mass media phenomena of information “half-life” and issue-attention cycles, using IMDb data. User attention is measured through the number of new votes received by each episode per day while the attention half-life is defined as the amount of time required for daily voting activity to fall to half of its peak level. The study asks whether attention decays at a more rapid pace, and its “half-life” shortens, for episodes released later in a season, and whether these patterns vary across television genres. Daily vote increments are modeled using a negative binomial regression due to overdispersion, with predictors “sequential day”, the number of days since an episode’s release, to account for the decay in voting activity and “episode number” to model the decay in interest. Additionally, the analysis investigates whether earlier episodes experience an increase in voting activity immediately before a season finale becomes available, which may indicate binge-watching behavior among viewers who wait until most or all of a season has been released before watching and then rating its episodes. Television attention is intense but short-lived, usually falling to half within the first week regardless of an episode’s position or genre. Later episodes receive fewer daily votes and voting activity declines significantly post-release. The small attention half-lives observed across television episodes may reflect the issue-attention cycle and the rapid turnover of public interest in modern digital culture. These patterns may provide insight into the pace of modern media consumption and the potential “boredom effect,” in which repeated exposure contributes to increasingly short cycles of public attention.
JC-Poster