From shock jocks to TikTok – 25 years of cultural power
by Brook Turner · Australian Financial ReviewBrook Turner
Sep 25, 2026 – 5.00am
The most sobering moment of this year’s cultural power panel came late, in a brief reflection on our ever-briefer attention spans. “A second counts as a view on TikTok,” creative consultant Liana Rossi noted. “And in that second, the algorithm refines itself so that what it serves next will keep you scrolling. We all knew phones were super addictive, but we now know it’s like drug addiction. We’re insatiable. And if you ask people who scroll all day to name three things they saw, they often can’t.”
The measure of cultural power has always been the ability to drive the national conversation. But how is that even possible in the era of micro-messaging, when writing has become copywriting? As Rossi continued: “If something you make takes two minutes and people watch three seconds, how much of your message has got across? How much of a conversation can you have about politics or the arts or big issues?”
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