Experiencing an Info Glut? Taming Information Overload

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Shared* with permission from educator and author Tibor Koltay, a retired faculty member at Eszterházy Károly University, the following paper explains and explores challenges associated with information overload. This paper may be especially useful for cybersecurity, information governance, and eDiscovery leaders as they face decisions on competing opinions and recommendations on subjective and preferential topics from individuals who may have an awareness of information, a source of information, yet lack practical understanding and experience on the topics, relying on their roles to buttress the credibility of their recommendations rather than rigorous intellectual honesty.

Educational Paper by Tibor Koltay

Taming Information Overload

Coping Strategies: Article Extract

There are some common strategies when we are faced with information overload (IO). Overloaded people often avoid, forget, or destroy information and data. Deciding what to keep, is a question of establishing the credibility of their sources through critical assessment that should be coupled with making use of adequate filters to information. These processes also may lead to withdrawing from information by limiting the number of notifications received, unfollowing social media accounts, ignoring e-mails, or social media messages entirely or for a limited period. Satisficing, also termed bounded rationality, is also a way of making choices when we think that it is not feasible to compare the benefits of possible options thoroughly. In essence, satisficing is a way of efficiently getting something that is good enough for the purpose, although this solution may not be deemed necessarily optimal.

The Effect of Social Media: Article Extract

In order to avoid being overloaded, many people deal with information by unwittingly applying the principle of least effort. Acquiring information through social networking services (SNS) involves minimal physical, technical, and mental effort, especially if it fits someone’s prior beliefs. In consequence, people do not always invest their full mental capacities in the tasks of information acquisition and evaluation.

Read the Complete Paper – “Taming” Information Overload (PDF) – Mouseover to  Scroll

Read the original paper.

Reference: Koltay, T. “Taming” information overload. Academia Letters. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL272.

*Open Access – Distributed Under CC BY 4.0.

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Source: ComplexDiscovery