Distraction
Magicians can accomplish this by encouraging the audience to look elsewhere or by having an assistant do or say something to draw the audience's attention away.
Sleight of hand is often used in close-up magic, performed with the audience close to the magician, usually within three or four meters, possibly in physical contact. It often makes use of everyday items as props, such as cards and coins. The guiding principle of sleight-of-hand, articulated by legendary close-up magician Dai Vernon, is "be natural". A well-performed sleight looks like an ordinary, natural and completely innocent gesture, change in hand-position or body posture.
It is commonly believed that sleight of hand works because "the hand is quicker than the eye" but this is usually not the case. In addition to manual dexterity, sleight of hand depends on the use of psychology, timing, misdirection, and natural choreography in accomplishing a magical effect. Misdirection is perhaps the most important component of the art of sleight of hand. The magician choreographs his actions so that all spectators are likely to look where he or she wants them to. More importantly, they do not look where the performer does not wish them to look. Two types of misdirection are timing and movement. Timing is simple: by allowing a small amount of time to pass after an action, events are skewed in the viewer's mind. Movement is a little more complicated. A phrase often used is "A larger action covers a smaller action". Care must be taken however to not make the larger action so big that it becomes suspicious.

By media: Propagandizing techniques of distraction are used in media manipulation. The idea is to encourage the public to focus on a topic or idea that the compliance professional feels is supportive of their cause. By focusing attention, a particular ideology can be made to seem the only reasonable choice. Oftentimes, media competition is the driving force for media bias, manipulation, and distraction. If a media company can find an audience with a united ideology, it then develops a loyal consumer base, as its consumers will be happy with the way media is presented. A so-called "conservative" media outlet would not hire a "liberal" reporter, as they would run the risk of alienating its viewership.
Distraction is also important in studies of media multitasking, or the simultaneous use of multiple media at once. This behavior has emerged as increasingly common since the 1990s, especially among younger media users. Studies show that while humans are predisposed to the desire to multitask, most people struggle to have legitimate productivity while multitasking. Instead of giving a task full attention, the split attention that multitasking necessitates can cause one task to be a distraction to another. On the other hand, some studies show that multitasking has the potential for a high-risk high-reward situation, leading to the idea that success can arise from multitasking if one is good at the activity.
Advertisers often seek to distract people and divert their attention to advertising content. This has been characterized as attention theft.

References: 

External links: 
Distraction: A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free, by Damon Young
Jackson, Maggie (2008) Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age Review in Metapsychology by Elisabeth Herschbach, Ph.D. Archived 2014-03-05 at the Wayback Machine
Half-heard phone conversations reduce cognitive performance