So, another day, another crappy analysis.
First, time in the top 50 tags is shorter in 2016 than 2013. Ok, but what increase in volume of tweets was there? How many more tags? If you have 1M tags vs 10M with a fixed top N (where N=50) and even though N is relatively small in comparison to the tool so we're talking real outliers, I think you'll find that absent any other differences time in the top 50 will decrease.
Second, why are we talking about "attention" with Twitter as our basis for comparison? The very nature of the platform is people saying shallow but catchy things who like the sound of their own voice finding an echo chamber to assert their personal identities by RTing said tweet. In what world was or is Twitter a forum for any kind of attention let alone debate?
Third, catchy phrases in books. Um... there is a long lead time between writing a book, having it published and getting it in the hands of people. Now you can get a tweet out to 100M people in several seconds.
Holding people accountable. Ok, good, something worth talking about. If we've learned nothing from the Trump presidency it's this: there's only so much outrage you can hold on to and every day there's another story about lying, some scandal, fanning the flames of racists who have never gotten over losing the ability to own people, etc and one story just drowns out the previous one. I'm honestly not sure how you deal with this problem but it's a big one.
As for seeking journalism with more background research and quality, it's been tried. People don't want it and, more importantly, they're not willing to pay for it. You also have media conglomerates who pose as "journalists" who are anything but. Like, oh I don't know, anything owned by a Murdoch.
The conclusion seems shallow. I'll just leave it at that.
I actually see this as a fundamental problem of human nature. Humans are inherently... tribal. We naturally stick to people like ourselves, culturally and even physically. That sense of belonging is a key part of social structure. Dan Carlin talks about this in his Hardcore History series on WWI (a 6 part series--30+ hours of content--called A Blueprint for Armageddon which is totally worth listening to) when he talks about the Armenian genocide. His point is that pretty much everyone is guilty of genocide in history. Not that that excuses it but we shouldn't make out that any particular example is an exception or something that we ourselves (or, rather, our ancestors) weren't guilty of.
What happened in Europe after the Renaissance was the idea formed of nation states. While this might've been loosely associated with some tribal identity, in time it transcended it and it resulted in a number of revolutions deposing an old order that was typically a monarchy: French, American, Russian to name 3.
Because this is what many of us grew up with I think we consider this normal but I question this assumption. It seems like it's more of an exception than the norm. Many say the US is increasingly polarized and there's a clash of cultures. While I won't disagree with that, maybe this is simply the people reverting to a more natural state of tribal loyalty. It seems like it's easy to fan these flames as many opportunists have and will.
So perhaps it's better to say that social media makes it easier for people to live in bubbles that affirm their own world views. And I think Twitter is largely irrelevant in all this.