Researchers in China have investigated what we mean by “information overload” in the context of a social media application, WeChat. Their findings have implications for those who use and run such services as well as other researchers in the field and psychosocial practitioners.
Writing in the International Journal of Mobile Communications, the team reports how the amount of information received and the length of content correlates with user perceptions of information overload as one might expect. However, the number of subscriptions within the service that a user has was not a significant factor in this perception. However, the perception of information overload was associated with negative emotions and an increased (but ongoing) intention to discontinue usage. Negative emotions and this urge to disconnect from the service was higher with a higher level of experience.
Information overload has been defined as the point at which users of any given service receive so much information in a short space of time that they no longer have the capacity to process all of that information satisfactorily and this leads to stress or anxiety and diminished decision-making ability for those people.
“Living in a [so-called] digital society, we are bombarded with information whether or not we actively seek it,” the team writes. “We are all affected by the increasing number of sources from which information emanates.” They add that “Recognising the antecedents and consequences of information overload can help us to prevent it or at least deal with it.”
Zhang, X., Ma, L., Zhang, G. and Wang, G-S. (2020) ‘An integrated model of the antecedents and consequences of perceived information overload using WeChat as an example’, Int. J. Mobile Communications, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp.19–40.