Fragmentation has a supply side. Elites and media set the menu before any citizen chooses from it — the conflicts staged, the agendas pushed, the cues that tell partisans where to stand. The macro question is whether that supply leads private attention or chases it.
Three projects work this level: the dissertation’s third paper asks whether manufactured elite conflict captures private attention, and for how long; the Congress project measures thirty years of how legislators frame technology; and the anti-Westernism work reads status-seeking in the speeches of leaders who supply their publics with an adversary. Below this level sit sorting & structures and selection & attention.