Exploring the Inescapable Suffering Among Postgraduate Researchers: Information Overload Perceptions and Implications for Future Research

Introduction

Information today is dramatically produced in our contemporary information society, accelerated and empowered by the high advancement of internet technology. As the former Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt stated that “the amount of information being created every two days is equivalent to that created from the dawn of civilization until the year 2003” a. Information Overload is acknowledged explicitly as a problem in many international world-class academic conferences and assemblies. As the leading figure in information science, Maurice Line remarked: “ the scientists would be overwhelmed, that they would be no longer able to control the vast amounts of potentially relevant material that were flowing from the world’s presses, that science itself was under threat”(D Bawden & Robinson, 2020) .

Previous research conducted among postgraduate researchers revealed that information overload shows high possibilities to diminish the learning process. Too much information act as a distraction, therefore students face problem in selecting the exact information due to stress which influences students’ performance and even causes some students to stop or withdraw from university (Mariamdaran & Veloo, 2017). The problem of information overload is receiving more attention, while there are less deeper studies and empirical researches for this problem, especially among university students (binti Suhaimi & binti Hussin, 2017).

This study contributes to the expansion of knowledge in the field of information overload management and higher education development by addressing three important issues. First, this study introduces an illustrative theoretical review about IO causes, effects, and remedies, connected with synthesized information thematically analyzed from collected data. Second, this study provides useful practical and theoretical implications as a guideline for supervisors, doctoral students and researchers in the same field. As well for research institutions’ executive and managers about dealing with IO from a strategic level. Finally, by introducing the “implications and directions for further research”, this study is expected to open the doors for other researchers for more empirical research opportunities in the same filed in different context using different methods and research approaches.