Too Much Information . . . and Too Little Time to Absorb It

A quick quiz to test your knowledge of current events:

Who is Violeta Chamorro?

(a) Secretary of the Treasury

(b) Ivana Trump’s mother

(c) Recently elected president of Nicaragua

Define reunification:

(a) A new open-trade policy promoted by the Japanese

(b) A New Age religious movement headquartered in rural Oregon

(c) The policy of unifying East and West Germany

In both cases, the correct answer is C.

But if you selected incorrectly, don’t count yourself alone. In the current news climate--where each day seems to bring the fall of another regime or the advent of another political leader--some are saying: Stop the news whirl, I want to get off.

It’s a time of information overload and information anxiety.

“Information anxiety (reflects) the gap between what you think you should understand and what you actually can understand,” observes Richard Saul Wurman, author of the book “Information Anxiety,” in which he suggests that information consumers stop trying to keep up by cutting back and focusing on the information essential to their lives.

Everette Dennis, executive director of the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, observes: “The news is increasingly inaccessible to people because it’s complex, geographically diffuse, it cuts across cultures and the terminology is difficult. I think people are having terrible coping problems. . . . People who make the news decisions are making assumptions about the audience--about what they know and want to know--when in fact they’re also overwhelmed.”

Jeff Greenfield, media critic for ABC News, says, “Of course sometimes I feel overwhelmed. . . . Sometimes, when I’m sitting here going through seven newspapers and the computerized political hot line and all the magazines and books I’m supposed to keep up with, the idea of a real citizen with a real job also trying to keep up strikes me as mind-boggling.”

Almost everyone you talk to seems to be complaining about the same thing: Too much information, too little time.

“I feel like I’m drowning,” says Ghita Levine, an associate director of news and information at Johns Hopkins University.

Every morning, she attempts to follow the morning news shows. Then, during the day, she reads and scans the local and national newspapers and a variety of journals and magazines.

“Every night, I’m carrying home loads of things to read but I’m too exhausted,” she says. “I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.”

Herman and Estelle Brenner, both retirees who live in Guilford, Md., begin their day with the morning news programs, read the paper, watch the “McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” the local newscasts and finally go to bed with Ted Koppel and “Nightline.”

They complain about TV’s repetition and distortion of the events going on in the world.

“It’s a whole world in front of your eyes in a few seconds and it’s all the same superficial level, the same pictures and words,” Estelle Brenner says. “You never feel you learn anything in depth.”

TV is the primary source of news for many people but broadcast news has obvious limitations. It’s difficult to have information sink in when often it’s off the screen in 30 seconds. An image of South African black nationalist Nelson Mandela, for instance, may dissolve into one of deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

Media analyst Marshall McLuhan “years ago used to talk about information overload and everyone thought it would be a psychological problem,” Dennis says. “But I think so far people have coped by turning off. That’s the danger--the lack of demand for hard news and the kind of information that makes one truly informed.”

But if they are “turning off” the broadcasts, they’re still following some news. Besides the dramatic political events that have dominated the headlines of the last year, there has also been news of considerably less importance that has captured America’s attention. Actor Rob Lowe’s sex tapes. The defection of Nadia Comaneci and her married companion. Or the breakup of Donald and Ivana Trump, for instance.

“The fact that the Trumps could push Nelson Mandela off the front page is astonishing,” Dennis observes, “but people need news on a human scale and this is a soap opera.”

He believes that people followed the Berlin Wall story because it offered great visual imagery of the wall coming down and it was told on a human scale, but once reunification became a story about economics, viewers stopped watching.

As for the flood of entertainment-celebrity news, Dennis says, “In the massive repetitive diffusion of information, there’s often trivial information. There’s a competitive sense that once something’s hot, everyone has to pick up the story and do something quickly.”

Experts say one consequence of this information overload is fragmentation. While some people may turn off completely, others may shift their focus to one area--sports for instance--and away from others such as foreign and national news. Any advice for the anxious information consumer?

Don’t turn off completely, Dennis says. “What you don’t know can hurt you,” he says. “There’s a compelling reason to master information and news. Clearly there will be better job and financial opportunities. Other high stakes will be missed by people if they don’t master and connect information.”

Master information by becoming selective, he adds. Read only what you have to read.

Greenfield says he scans the papers to quickly decide if a story will tell him something he doesn’t already know. Others say they flip the dial.

And Brenner, who admits to being compulsive about keeping up, offers a bit of common-sense advice: Don’t watch everything you see.