How University Students Experience Information Overload : A Study with a Phenomenographic Approach

With the volume and availability of information increasing as fast as technological development in society a phenomenon called information overload has emerged. The purpose of our thesis was to investigate how university students experience this increase in volume and ease in access to information. In our study we concentrated our focus on the student’s use of electronic resources. So as not to prejudice our study group our questions focused on different aspects of searching for information. To obtain essential data we interviewed six students and applied a phenomenographic approach in our analysis of the material. Two variations of a students experience emerged from our results, A information overload was positive or B the experience was not positive. The main conclusion of our study was that the phenomenon information overload can be experienced in two qualitative different ways. We hoped that our study could provide a deeper understanding for information overload and how we search for information