Media, Information Overload, and Information Science

Abstract

Abstract. The Information Sword of Damocles hangs over e-literate people, in particular over knowledge workers, researchers, scholars, and students, and hinders their time management schemes. Our lives are replete with information of various kinds, of diverse importance, and of various degrees of relevance to our needs, and at the same time, we have less and less time and will to get acquainted with the incoming information and to follow it up. This paper argues that although media and ICT strengthen human's propensity to insane intake of information and reinforce bad habits leading to information overconsumption, it is possible to escape from the trap of information overload thanks to administering an information diet based on digital literacy. It further argues that new research should be undertaken within information science to address the challenges caused by the internet and the specificity of human perception exposed to the cognitive overload, untrustworthiness, and fuzziness.

Information overload: a concept analysis

“…These appear as symptoms of individuals experiencing IO at the cognitive level. Individuals subject to IO are unable to develop their knowledge (Jacobfeuerborn and Muraszkiewicz, 2013). They suffer from cognitive dissonance (Strother et al.…”

“…Ensuring the information environment can filter relevant from irrelevant information reduces the impact of the increasing amount of information (D'Asaro et al, 2013;Whelan and Teigland, 2011;Yang and Albers, 2013). When the user is exposed to items that are not relevant, this exacerbates the poor understanding of information (Jacobfeuerborn and Muraszkiewicz, 2013) and limits the learning as well. Finally, there has also been work looking at whether systems showing familiar information to all members of a collaborative environment favoured decision making fuelled by cognitive biases such as confirmation bias (Minas and Crosby, 2016).…”

“…These appear as symptoms of individuals experiencing IO at the cognitive level. Individuals subject to IO are unable to develop their knowledge (Jacobfeuerborn and Muraszkiewicz, 2013). They suffer from cognitive dissonance (Strother et al, 2012b), burnout and lack of concentration (Mustapar et al, 2016;Tran et al, 2019) They may start avoiding some sources or discontinuing their search for information (Wild et al, 2012).…”

“…It has been shown that both the growth of sources of information and increase in redundant information lead to IO (Chen et al. , 2011; Jacobfeuerborn and Muraszkiewicz, 2013; Shrivastav and Hiltz, 2013).…”

“…In online information platforms such as social media, as the number of users increases, there is an increase in information due to the volume of messages exchanged (Chen et al, 2011) and a rise in sources of information, which makes it more challenging to control information quality (Fu et al, 2020;Rodriguez et al, 2014). It has been shown that both the growth of sources of information and increase in redundant information lead to IO (Chen et al, 2011;Jacobfeuerborn and Muraszkiewicz, 2013;Shrivastav and Hiltz, 2013).…”