I don't know too much about this topic, but I read somewhere that simply following external events while not focussing on internal events is a form of mind control. It is usually media led whereby a news story receives blanket coverage that draws people in and it gains their attention, and then after some time the coverage will suddenly be dropped and replaced by some new event which becomes a new point of focus. Then a short while after an old news story has ended, people will have little interest in that event, even though their minds were focussed on it at the time it was being covered by the media.

Any behavioural psychologists on here care to chip in?