Information Overload in Real-Time Mobile Web Applications: Student Viewpoint

Abstract

Context: The main goal of this research is to explore the views of post-graduate students in Kerman regarding information overload in real-time mobile web applications in order to provide better, more appropriate solutions for eliminating and controlling information overload. Methods: The views of post-graduate students regarding information overload in real-time mobile web applications were assessed by sending/receiving questionnaires to the emails of 330 post-graduate students from the Kerman government universities who were chosen using Morgan's table sampling technique. The reliability of research questionnaires were analyzed in the SPSS software using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, which was 0.908 for this research. Results: The findings showed that the students had positive views about influencing factors of information overload, moderate views about personal influencing factors in dealing with information overload, positive views about effective tools for controlling information overload, moderate views about personal influencing and environmental factors in eliminating information overload, positive views about solutions for mitigating information overload, and negative views about the effects of information overload on users (P = 0.01). This means that all the independent variables directly affect the viewpoints of graduate students. Conclusions: The research results show that irrelevant information for the user, the amount of monitoring and evaluation of individuals and management of discussion groups, wrong and incorrect information, and violation of privacy are the main factors responsible for information overload. Furthermore, training programs on user interaction with information are considered as personal and environmental influencing factors in eliminating information overload. Management of personal knowledge, referring the work to professionals, and filtering the information are considered as important solutions for mitigating information overload, and informational stress and anxiety, despair and hopelessness in retrieving relevant information, informational fatigue, expenditure loss, reduced ability to think deeply, and reduced use of mental skills are considered as the most important effects of information overload on users.