Media, information overload, and information science

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. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.