Pixel Politics

Hello readers! It’s your Civic Pulse CFO and Co-Founder Athanasios Theodorou. After a trip to New York for the holidays, I decided to provide you with a real taste of American culture, politics and media, as well as health, busting or confirming myths, noticing new trends and acting as the first regional correspondent for the Pulse, at least in theory. Today, I will be writing about the subtle politics hidden behind digital posters in the subway, Times Square billboards and hotel TVs and speculating on how influential they can be for the average New Yorker. While in NYC, in-between flashing lights, fast-paced ads and screens everywhere, a very important question to ask yourself is: Who has my attention?

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new mayor, sure had mine when I walked into my hotel! Just as I walked through the front door, I could already see a TV playing Fox News, which was covering a policy brief between the then mayor-elect and hundreds of journalists. It was quite captivating: I’d just entered this cozy hotel while it was -3 degrees Celsius outside and one of America’s largest news channels was just waiting for me there. This was my first taste of life in New York, mind you, same as many other tourists who were just strolling in at that time.

Linking such an experience to a news channel and the politics of New York is truly priceless. It makes you curious about this first piece of information that you encounter, a memory that once made will forever live in your subconscious, instantly making you familiar with anything involving Mamdani and/or Fox News. I later experienced a similar effect in Times Square, where, among advertisements about videogames, fast food chains and tech companies, an ad about Ben Shapiro’s podcast just popped up, schedule and availability up front. Coming back to my hotel and reminiscing about the day I could just remember that, take the elevator up to my room and immediately tune in!

Just like that, Shapiro and Mamdani had essentially bought my attention. A deal was made with the hotel to broadcast Fox News 24/7. Another was made with a billboard company for the podcast. Attention has become a commodity for public faces, one that can create followers and devotees. And as we move away from physical sources of information and entertainment and towards digital ones, acquiring the commodity that is one’s attention has become much easier. Therefore, a simple question arises: where are you willing to give your attention? But also, do you actually have control of it?

Like myself, most teenagers like to dedicate their attention to studying or scrolling through funny videos on their phones. Let’s make the generalisation that everyone in the world who has access to the internet and that is of sound mind simply loves cute cat videos on TikTok and wants to dedicate all their attention to that. Well, TikTok will eventually show an ad and your attention, even for a split second, will be diverged from the adorable cat videos. What I experienced in the Big Apple is just that, but on a larger scale, a bombardment of stimuli aiming to steal my gaze.

Now, onto the political aspect of it. Politicians seek the attention of the electorate for a very simple reason, because they want to be seen, they want to create a following, and they want to be voted into power. We have seen many politicians create accounts in mainstream media, participate in ongoing trends and sponsor TV ads, dominating the screens that you encounter in your daily life yet not own was the logical next step. And there’s nowhere you can do that better than in the Cultural Capital of the World, New York City.

Due to the high influx of tourists, New York is the perfect city to present mainstream American media but also an opportunity to influence New Yorkers towards specific candidates. Now, obviously, Zohran Mamdani and the things that he talked about would not be interesting to me, a citizen of Athens, Greece, who lives hundreds of miles away. But they would surely be interesting to the townsfolks who were enjoying their dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. After all, political campaigns never end when there are more followers to be gained and businesses never fail when they adapt to new political circumstances. Projecting Mamdani is a win-win situation: more political support for the mayor, more curiosity, and clients, from Mamdani supporters towards the hotel, a never-ending cycle. 

Fortunately enough, this is not some kind of elaborate scheme, this is simply how politics work. It was simply very common and obvious in the Big Apple, so much so that I thought I had to talk about it. At its core, journalism is an art of observation and finding new opportunities to make an impact on how people perceive the world…just like what is happening in the billboards and screens of New York City! Every single pixel that you see is part of a bigger picture promoting, say your next pick for mayor, the next opinion that you are going to hear in a podcast and so much more!

But, what do I know? I have mentioned repeatedly in this article that we must be aware of what has our attention, each and every moment of the day, yet I am unaware of whether or not I have your attention. I am unaware of the competition that I am facing, maybe the next Instagram notification, your TV show waiting to play once the advertisement break is over, or, just maybe, I have your undivided attention. So, please ask yourself: did you have control over your interaction with this article? Or did I just influence you towards reading more from the Civic Pulse Journal, uploading new articles every month? I leave you with just this question.

Hello again readers! I believe that you can tell that this was a new, different kind of article. We would be really interested in knowing if you liked it! We have never really had a traditional regional correspondent, as our team’s size would not allow for that, but acting as one while on a trip has been really interesting! We of course hope that the article my efforts have produced has been interesting for you too. You can always submit your feedback in the official Civic Pulse email, info@civicpulsejournal.com, or contact me directly through thanos.theodorou.cfo@civicpulsejournal.com. I’d be happy to hear YOUR opinion!