Hagar, Nick, and Aaron Shaw. "Concentration without cumulative advantage: the distribution of news source attention in online communities." Journal of Communication 72.6 (2022): 675-686.

This study explores the dynamics of attention concentration and fragmentation in online news consumption, particularly through social media platforms like Reddit. It contrasts two models of attention dynamics: cumulative advantage, where popularity snowballs over time, and stochasticity, where changes in popularity are random. Analysis of a large dataset from Reddit reveals that while attention is highly concentrated among a few news sources, the expected stable patterns of popularity from cumulative advantage are absent. Instead, the fluctuating popularity aligns more with a stochastic model, indicating that social media may disrupt the traditional accumulation of attention, suggesting a need for new ways to organize and distribute information for a more equitable attention market.