Information Overload: Not Just One Step Forward and One Step Back

The increased access of infor­ma­tion has absolute­ly led to pub­lic enlight­en­ment, but it has also led to some pub­lic frus­tra­tion due to an over­dose of infor­ma­tion. The New­town shoot­ing and the death of Whit­ney Hous­ton sto­ries are the best exam­ples of this. These two inci­dents were blown up on social media before they were report­ed on the news.

Plat­forms like Twit­ter pro­vid­ed new infor­ma­tion almost every sec­ond but con­sumers were forced to pick and choose what was accu­rate. As Richard Alleyne said in his Wel­come to the infor­ma­tion age, “Every­day the aver­age per­son pro­duced six news­pa­pers of infor­ma­tion com­pared with just two and a half pages 24 years ago- near­ly a 200-fold increase.” This devel­op­ment of online jour­nal­ism is a step for­ward for con­sumers, but the uncer­tain­ty of reli­able details may be a step back.

Infor­ma­tion inac­cu­ra­cy is said to be one of the biggest set­backs of con­stant infor­ma­tion streams. This argu­ment, although valid, for­gets that tra­di­tion­al news out­lets such as news­pa­pers and tele­vi­sion sta­tions, have report­ed inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion over the years as well.  We as con­sumers are respon­si­ble for which sources we fol­low. For exam­ple, CNN’s twit­ter account rep­re­sents CNN. Con­sumers can still choose to fol­low reli­able out­lets on these new tech­nol­o­gy platforms.

The con­stant infor­ma­tion flow on web­sites is over­whelm­ing, don’t get me wrong. Choos­ing infor­ma­tion is like choos­ing friends. There are many peo­ple you can be friends with in the world, but you only choose a small amount. The way to avoid infor­ma­tion over­load is to fol­low or lis­ten to only the reli­able sources you trust. For exam­ple, if you are a sports fan, fol­low the beat writ­ers instead of ran­dom fans voic­ing their opin­ions on the internet.

Eddie Leonard