Rosaline Dou
Lightbox
78.7 x 55.1 x 3.15 inches (200 x 140 x 8 cm)
2025
Appearing as a source board, An Incomplete Tracking of 174 is my attempt to trace the origins of the widely cited claim that “average Americans consume 174 newspapers’ worth of information daily.” Can we trust this number when it is presented to us? At the same time, can we even trust my own tracking if I was able to piece it together without any expertise?
With so much information accessible, we tend to believe what is right in front of us simply because it feels plausible. In this tacit agreement, we “buy” the statement without much resistance. What shocks me most is how no further study on media consumption capacity, or de facto technological capacity in this case, has been published since 2011 (from data collected in 2008). This number continues to circulate, day after day, to this day.