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This thesis reveals the potential pitfalls of relying on the Internet to communicate serious environmental issues. This exploratory research examines the consequences of aspects of the information society focusing on the effects of the Internet upon three reactions to climate communication: public understanding, perception of risk and support for climate change mitigation. It examines the implications of the rise of the information society on young people’s (18-25 year olds) consumption of media and climate science information. The information society literature emerged before the Internet, but predicted the increasing access to information that has arisen in the past two decades and its significant impacts on society and communication. An analytical framework is developed focusing on the sharing of information and the consequences of both misleading information and competition for the user’s attention. To explore the impact of the Internet upon public perception of risks posed by and their understanding of climate change, this research uses a mixed methodological approach. The qualitative approach of focus groups has been selected to establish how young people use the Internet and whether they share and actively engage with climate change information online. A quantitative approach of the experimental method has critically examined the impact of junk information (climate sceptic material) and information overload (competition for users’ attention) on reactions to climate science. The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis was the key finding that the lack of engagement with climate science online poses a more serious issue than the risk of climate sceptic information being virally shared. Simply having the information accessible is not enough when there is so much competition for users’ attention and the ease with which they can filter out climate change information.

There has been an increasing demand for commercial organisations to foster real-time interaction with customers, because harnessing customer competencies has been shown to be a major contributor towards various benefits, such as growth, innovation and competition. This may drive organisations to embrace the development of multimodal interaction and complement Electronic Customer Knowledge Management Systems (E-CKMS) with metaphors of audio-visual nature. Although the implementation of E-CKMS encounters several challenges, such as lack of trust and information overload, few empirical studies were devoted to assess the role of audio-visual metaphors, and investigate whether these technologies can be put into practice. Therefore, this thesis describes a comparative evaluation study carried out to examine the implication of incorporating multimodal metaphors into E-CKMS interfaces on not only usability of E-CKMS, but also the user's trust, knowledge and acceptance. An experimental E-CKMS platform was implemented with three different modes of interaction: Visual-only E-CKMS (VCKMS) with text and graphics, Multimodal E-CKMS (MCKMS) with speech, earcons and auditory icons and Avatar-enhanced multimodal E-CKMS (ACKMS). The three platforms were evaluated by three independent groups of twenty participants each (total=60) who carried out eight common tasks of increasing complexity and design based on three different styles. Another dependent group of forty-eight participants (n=48) was instructed to interact with the systems under similar usability conditions by performing six common tasks of two styles, and fill a questionnaire devised to measure the aspects of user acceptance. The results therein revealed that ACKMS was more usable and acceptable than both MCKMS and VCKMS, whereas MCKMS was more usable than VCKMS, but less acceptable. Inferential Statistics indicated that these results were statistically significant.

This research is based on real issues that have been recognised within the global organisation, Rolls-Royce. The first aim concerned an issue that many companies face, the difficulty that employees face in locating the knowledge and information they require, especially in larger organisations. The developed solution of an Information Map proved to be a success in providing people within the Submarines business with the location of' Configuration Management information. The concept of the Information Map is one that can be adopted by any business as the stages in the tools development have been well documented within Chapters Four, Five and Six. Analysis of the success of the Information Map led to the derivation of 10 lessons learned. These were then verified in a second case study of an intranet development. The second aim of the research was to create a Knowledge Management framework that could be adapted by companies looking to invest in Knowledge Management and provide them with a guide to use. This framework was built from the lessons learned from the Information Map and from other best practice derived from available literature and within Rolls-Royce. The work conducted within the Support business tries to fill in gaps in current research by offering companies a new approach to Knowledge Management, which was based upon the way that industries work today. The creation of the Knowledge Management framework simplifies the work conducted and offers practitioners an easy, high-level approach to the adoption of Knowledge Management by grouping the process into ten steps. This is presented in a fashion that is easy to follow and ultimately offers a guide to make the best use of the resources and budget available to Knowledge Management practitioners. Overall the research addresses the 'real' issues faced by Knowledge Management practitioners. The main contributions to the Knowledge Management domain are the Information Map, action research approach, implementation of Knowledge Management tools for the users needs and a Framework as a guide for industry.

Information-seekers use a variety of information stores including electronic systems and the physical world experience of their community. Within electronic systems, information-seekers often report feelings of being lost and suffering from information overload. However, in the physical world they tend not to report the same negative feelings. This work draws on existing research including Collaborative Filtering, Recommender Systems and Social Navigation and reports on a new observational study of information-seeking behaviours. From the combined findings of the research and the observational study, a set of design considerations for the creation of a new electronic interface is proposed. Two new interfaces, the second built from the recommendations of the first, and a supporting methodology are created using the proposed design considerations. The second interface, the Collaborative Index, is shown to allow physical world behaviours to be used in the electronic world and it is argued that this has resulted in an alternative and preferred access route to information. This preferred route is a product of information-seekers' interactions 'within the machine' and maintains the integrity of the source information and navigational structures. The methodology used to support the Collaborative Index provides information managers with an understanding of the information-seekers' needs and an insight into their behaviours. It is argued that the combination of the Collaborative Index and its supporting methodology has provided the capability for information-seekers and information managers to 'enter into the machine', producing benefits for both groups.

This research investigates information overload of construction project managers. The aim is to identify its occurrence pattern and influencing factors. First, a conceptual definition of information overload is developed, using time as the criterion to describe information load. Information overload for a project manager is taken as occurring when the demands on information processing time exceed the supply of time. Second, the variation of information load throughout the project is structured using the interaction of a project manager with project members through the stages of a project. These two elements are combined in a matrix format where values for information overload are ascribed to cells representing the interaction with each member during each stage of the project. Six key project members, and four project stages are defined. To allow the subjective quantification of information overload, five practical situations of real-life information overload are described, of which one must be chosen for each of the 24 stage-member cells. To test the model and allow investigation of the influencing factors of information overload, data were collected using a questionnaire survey of 140 project managers. Respondents were asked to select the relevant situation for each cell in the matrix. The resulting matrices had a weighting system applied and a mean calculated for each circumstance to create an Information Load Point (ILP). ILPs are presented in the Information Load Matrix (ILM). The relationships between the information overload pattern and its key influencing factors are investigated by applying significance tests (three-factor mixed analysis of variance and ordinal logistic regression) comparing the ILMs of each class of each attribute. This is done by testing a number of hypotheses which seek the effect of selected key factors (organization type, project manager's experience, original profession, project size, complexity, contract type, and quality of information) on information overload. The results suggest that information overload patterns vary in different project stages and with project members. Project manager attributes (organization type, experience and original profession) are found to affect the information overload pattern. On the other hand, project and information attributes are generally found not to affect the pattern. These results suggest that, while organizations adapt themselves to manage information loads resulting from the projects with which they are involved, the main influencing factors of information overload are dependent on the skills and abilities of the individual project manager. This implies that the focus of further research on information management strategies should be more on the personal rather than the organizational attributes. Therefore, equipping project managers with improved procedural and technical skills and technology to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of their use of time should be the priority for the management of information overload, not the deliberate adaptation of project organizations.

The research examines the relationship between cyber addiction (excessive use of the Internet, CA), information overload (IO), and assesses their impact on workplace productivity. A multi-methods approach is used employing the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and a quantitative survey design to assess and test the stated hypothesis. The study used random sampling methods targeting 150 respondents from different information technology departments of various organizations. The study hypothesizes that CA and IO have a reciprocal association, which adversely affects workplace productivity and employee performance. From the findings, IAT scores increase with an associated possibility of reporting burnout, fatigue, and other components associated with CA and IO. Also, CA and IO were significantly correlated, as evaluated by the chi-square test, although the same approach did not yield significant associations between CA and perceived internet dependence. Other findings CA components, such as social media use, significantly associated with task postponement and burnout. As well, CA affected IO with substantial impacts on workplace productivity. The paper highlights managerial aspects that organizations should consider in optimizing the output of their staff. Recommendations include wellness programs, altering the leadership and management styles, and sensitizing the employees on the adverse effects caused by the two variables.

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of history doctoral candidates at Liefrig University with technology and information overload. The theory guiding this study was Sweller’s cognitive load theory, as it explains the characteristics of the information received using technology and the effect of exposure to varying levels of data. The study advances the understanding of the influence of technology on online students and their experiences with information overload. The participants consisted of history doctoral candidates completing their studies through a private online higher education institution in a Southeastern state. The three data collection methods involved journal prompts, individual interviews, and focus groups. The data analysis required bracketing, horizonalization, and textual descriptions that address the essence of the participants’ lived experiences with the phenomenon. The findings of this study revealed these online history doctoral candidates experienced constant technology interaction and preferred a structured course design. Two additional themes related to information overload and experiences with information overload were also evident based on the data collected, triangulated, and analyzed all three methods.

Agri-food systems are facing increasing pressure to transition toward more sustainable alternatives, which are information-intensive and may require different forms of knowledge. Therefore, optimal and sustainable land-use decision-making requires effective information provision. However, digital technologies and the information age have changed the ways in which farmers interact with information. This necessitates different approaches and raises questions regarding how and why farmers gather information and whom they trust. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the role of information in land-use decision-making from the perspective of farmers in New Zealand. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews with commercial pastoral farmers and a focus group with emerging young farmers were conducted. The results evidence that information is important for decision-making and that gathering processes are personal and contextual. The farmer participants sourced information from a variety of sources across digital and physical formats. Traditional institutions (i.e., industry groups) were recognised; however, digital and informal sources (i.e., the internet and interpersonal networks) were the most utilised. The farmer participants engaged as researchers and information curators online and within networks, to share learnings in communities of practice. The young farmer participants particularly interacted digitally, following farmer influencers and utilising artificial intelligence (AI). Audio formats were acknowledged as useful, and information about consumers was important, signalling market orientation. Combining formal and informal elements, the farmer participants valued how catchment groups are community-led and outcomes-focused. Additionally, knowledge brokering through intermediaries at the catchment level assisted with information exchanges. The most trusted sources of information were other high-achieving farmers and interpersonal networks; however, there were mixed experiences with peers. Validation of information occurred through a triangulation and cross-referencing process. Attempts to determine what is trustworthy were challenging due to misinformation and information overload, which hindered effective decision-making. Farmers largely felt that strategic land-use information was challenging to source, especially in relation to regional contexts. Overall, the results signal the need to combine the best of informal and formal sources and that farmers should be recognised as co-creators of information. This research contributes to the literature on information and farmer decision-making in the information age. Potential actions that emerge from the findings include improving digital literacy, hybrid approaches to information provision, adopting listening rather than telling approaches, and supporting intermediaries. These insights could be of interest to inform effective approaches to information provision. Future research into digital literacy, the perspectives of information providers, and the influence of evolving sources (i.e., AI) would be useful. Additionally, the implications of misinformation and information disorders on trust and decision-making should be considered. It is concluded that as technologies evolve, an ongoing conceptualisation of information and farmer habits will be required.

This dissertation analyzes how increased mainstream awareness of climate change and other complex environmental phenomena transforms some of the basic tools we use to understand the world, including notions of agency, evidence, and causality. More specifically, this project highlights numerous contemporary literary and cultural narratives that formally and thematically depict impromptu systems of action and comprehension developed by humans confronting the unique forms of information overload that result from damaged and rapidly changing environments. Following critics like Ulrich Beck, Rob Nixon, and Stacy Alaimo, I suggest our current era of ecological instability and destructive environmental practices dictate what I refer to as epistemological insecurity—a condition in which a subject’s growing awareness of systems degradation coincides with an onslaught of incomprehensibly vast, ever-expanding information about the system itself, rendering the individual subject incapable of making the kinds of risk assessments necessary to effectively navigate their environment. Over four chapters covering works of literature and television from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, including Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl, and several recent works of science fiction, I explore the ad hoc epistemic systems humans generate when entangled in material and informational ecosystems. My overarching argument is that as the formidability of unstable material environments becomes increasingly prevalent, it is necessary to consider how our stories, relationships, and the production of knowledge itself are transformed by the often incomprehensible nature of the sprawling social and ecological interconnections that structure our lives. Seeking models for such stories, relationships, and epistemic strategies, my dissertation casts a wide, interdisciplinary net that includes climate prognosticators, energy and information infrastructures, encyclopedias, cybernetics, geopolitics, geoengineering proposals, and conspiracy theories to engage with an array of diverse approaches to epistemological breakdown amidst destabilized environments.

This dissertation comprises three essays on environmental economics. The first chapter studies the influence of media, both traditional TV news and emerging internet news, on U.S. foreign disaster aid. The Office of U.S. Foreign Disasters responds to an average of 65 disasters every year, spending 2.8 billion dollars. Due to the high stakes, it is essential that relief expenditure is determined by need rather than other factors. The results show a weak crowding out effect in TV news coverage of disasters and other breaking news. However, contrary to a previous study, OFDA relief during 2000-2019 is affected by the severity of the disasters but not by the attention they receive online or in TV news or the intensity of other contemporaneous breaking news. In the second chapter, I study rational inattention in an overwhelming information environment, one of the main explanations for the existence of the energy efficiency gap. I conducted an incentivized laboratory experiment simulating a car purchase decision using complex fuel efficiency information. I evaluated the effectiveness of the EPA’s information provision effort and used an inventive-compatible mechanism to elicit subjects’ true willingness to pay for fuel economy labels, a fuel cost calculator and knowledge of their financially optimal car. When presented with the fuel economy information in basic text format, around half of the subjects chose suboptimal options. Fuel economy labels do not improve subjects’ decisions, but the fuel cost calculator significantly reduces their misoptimization by 62%. The third chapter, coauthored with Dr. Garth Heutel, studies the incidence of pollution taxes and their impact on unemployment in an analytical general equilibrium efficiency wage model. We find closed-form solutions for the effect of a pollution tax on unemployment, factor prices, and output prices, and we identify and isolate different channels through which these general equilibrium effects arise. An effect arising from the efficiency wage specification depends on the form of the workers' effort function. Numerical simulations further illustrate our results and show that this efficiency wage effect can fully offset the sources-side incidence results found in models that omit it.

Information overload and algorithmic systemisation have come to characterise our everyday experience. While this state of hyperconnectivity facilitates communication and instant retrieval of knowledge, our networked systems overwork and overwhelm us as users. In particular, the total integration of the Internet into lived experience has had undesirable effects on our workplaces, attention spans, decision-making and emotions. Workplace employees are expected to be contactable and productive at any time; the novelty produced by information feeds rewards inattention; algorithms choose songs, meals and romantic partners for us; and lifestyle performances on social media provoke a fear of missing out. This is to say that our hyperconnected reality places us in a forever switched-on world where the lines between work and play have become obscured. According to theorist Sianne Ngai, the state of being constantly ‘on’ in this way manifests culturally in what she calls the ‘zany aesthetic’. This thesis uses an experimental arts based research methodology that relies on drawing, animation, and installation to uniquely reflect how our world has been shaped by this kind of stressful hyper-connectivity. In particular, this thesis explores the meaning of ‘zaniness’ as a symptom of this kind of contemporary information overload. By exploring the zany in visual terms, this thesis aims to reveal new qualities of this aesthetic category by reflecting on the exhibited creative outcomes produced over the course of this project. Ngai, in her Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (2012), claims that zaniness appears across film, television, video games, poetry, literature and art as a reflection of how we perform our labour in late capitalism. Specifically, Ngai suggests the non-stop action of characters like Lucy Ricardo of television’s I Love Lucy or Looney Tunes’s Wile E. Coyote offers a way of seeing the aesthetic in the 24/7 world of production and consumption. However, unlike Ngai, the present research project does not examine the zany aesthetic in regard to how we sell our labour. Neither does it explicitly examine a performance or character-driven art. Instead, this project examines the zany aesthetic as it appears in visual art contending with information overload and systematic methods. To understand the zaniness in systems, this thesis examines art history’s first reaction to information in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. Art historian Eve Meltzer, in Systems We Have Loved (2013), claims that conceptual art reacted enthusiastically to the figures of information and systems. Specifically, Meltzer claims that conceptual art mimicked the systems in structuralism, information technology and institutions to create an impersonal and rational art. This thesis examines how conceptual art pictured information systems and diagrams to create a form of anti-expression. In this research project, I compare the diagrams and systems popularised by conceptual art to the busier, messier and zanier outcomes created by contemporary artists responding to the information overload in our time. I argue that unlike conceptual art before it, contemporary art has an emotional investment in information and systems. This thesis examines zaniness as one such emotional, aesthetic and expressive reaction to the present-day information overload and systematic convolution. The creative outcomes discussed in this thesis explore Ngai’s zany aesthetic category and the legacies of conceptual art to reveal the zany characteristics of the algorithmic world. These outcomes include three exhibitions from an installation about conspiracy theories, an animated story about a sentient artificial intelligence and an exhibition of drawings of fantasy worlds determined by rolling a 100-sided die. While these exhibitions take up a different medium, by virtue of their differences they each point to a unique way of seeing the zaniness activated by a world with too much information.

This research focuses on the observed frustration in conducting online research and lack of thought continuity in graduate design students. While studies show that people’s deeper concentration abilities have weakened in recent years, there are also indications that short term memory loss, feelings of being overwhelmed, and stress can result from exposure to large amounts of information beyond what we can manage. All of these problems interlock, reducing the quality of daily human experiences and levels of satisfaction as well as actual performances on tasks. In this case study, five in-depth observations and interviews were conducted to learn how design graduate students perform academic research online. Contextual inquiry was the core method for collecting data about what distracts students and gives them a feeling of being informationally overloaded during their online endeavors. An analysis of students’ individual research patterns led to the conclusion that it is inevitable for people to get side-tracked from time to time while performing online research. Two potential solutions were identified: 1) Provide assistance in informing where users are while helping them to navigate back easily, and 2) Provide an effective documentation platform that integrates with the research process while helping to promote thought continuity by eliminating some of the break-down behaviors.

In recent years, securities law scholars have either renewed an old attack on mandatory issuer disclosure or questioned the effectiveness of securities disclosure in the context of modern financial instruments. Some scholars argue that mandatory disclosure rules prove ineffective because investors suffer from “information overload.” Others claim that securities disclosure cannot describe adequately the complexity of modern firms and finance. These academic criticisms of mandatory securities disclosure provide some of the intellectual underpinnings for recent efforts to roll back some mandatory securities disclosure rules, such as the SEC’s Disclosure Effectiveness initiative. This Article questions these critiques of securities disclosure, including their empirical foundations and their validity given the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. It describes how disclosure must grapple with three types of complexity: contractual complexity, which describes the intricate contractual terms or structural features that financial instruments may have; derivative complexity, which describes how certain securities derive their value from other assets or multiple layers of assets; and systemic complexity, which describes how the value and risks of any security may depend not only on underlying assets, but also on changes elsewhere in financial markets. This Article then investigates whether other SEC initiatives to use technology to improve securities disclosure (such as the XBRL rules and loan-level data tagging in securitizations) and more ambitious proposals (such as moving towards real time and interactive disclosure) can help investors navigate these three types of complexity without “overloading” them. The Article concludes that improving more “old-fashioned” disclosure on the purposes for certain securities issuances, the due diligence performed by issuers and intermediaries, and the incentives of those parties might have a far more profound effect on the understanding of investors and the disciplining of issuers and intermediaries than either rollbacks of disclosure regulations or hi-tech disclosure solutions.

Research suggests that interruptions during a cognitive task can affect the quality and timeliness of decision-making in knowledge-intensive work environments. Moreover, information overload can lead to lower-quality and slower decision-making. This research introduces and tests “emphasis framing” as an operational tactic to help mitigate the effects of information overload and interruptions on the quality and timeliness of decision-making in knowledge-intensive work environments. A series of three experiments was conducted with the following participants: students, crowd sourcing participants, and emergency department physicians. In our studies with students and crowdsourcing participants, while our results were interesting, we were unable to attain statistically significant results. But the results of these experiments did illustrate that studying the complex cognitive tasks associated with knowledge work is nontrivial and highlighted the unique challenges introduced by the knowledge workers themselves and needs to be further explored. Additionally, the experiment with the crowdsourcing participants illustrated some of the challenges with conducting behavioral, knowledge-intensive experiments on crowdsourcing sites and highlighted that further research is needed to determine if that platform is appropriate for these types of experiments. We did attain statistically significant results on our experiment with emergency department physicians. We measured the effect of emphasis framing on two operational performance metrics when under information overload: (1) the quality (accuracy) of the physician’s clinical evaluation, and (2) the efficiency (timeliness) of his/her clinical decision-making. Our results showed that emphasis framing helped mitigate the effects of information overload and increased the quality of clinical decision-making. Contrary to what we expected, we found that decision-making took longer with the emphasis frame. While we had hypothesized that it would enable the participant to navigate the EHR more quickly, it appears that that perhaps there is actually a quality and timeliness tradeoff such that faster decision-making actually impedes the careful consideration given to high-quality decision making.

The widespread use of e-commerce and mobile technology has transformed how people conduct business. The rapid development of mobile technology has further diversified digital products available to consumers. The mobile economy based on smart devices is growing rapidly. As a result, a consumer who tries to adopt a mobile app typically faces many choices of competing products and many sources of related product information. Among those sources, online reviews play a major role in users' information seeking procedure prior to their adoption behavior. Due to the cognitive limitation of adopters, they often face the issue of information overload. In order to cope with such issue, adopters typically utilize both online reviews and the overall star rating of a mobile app to reduce their uncertainty before adoption. In individual's adoption decision-making process, adopter characteristics, product characteristics, and social characteristics also influence adoption behavior. Previous research on technology adoption has focused primarily on user acceptance of a single technology. However, in mobile app adoption, the adoption procedure is not monolithic, but rather, is a more complex procedure of acquiring product information and purchasing. During the procedure, a number of factors influence users' adoption behavior. This dissertation presents a new approach to investigate adoption behavior on mobile apps. I conduct my study in three dimensions: review characteristics, social characteristics, and adopter characteristics. Specifically, I ground my research in the theory of reasoned action, the theory of planned behavior, and the innovation diffusion theory. In addition, I adapt informational cascades theory and information overload theory to my research context. The three dimensions are presented in three essays. Each essay focuses on one of the three dimensions that influence a user's mobile app adoption process. Findings from this dissertation provide significant insights for developers and management in the mobile app economy.

The primary goal of the current study is to develop a more advanced model of information-seeking behaviors. For achieving this goal, it paid attention to two social phenomena characterizing contemporary society: informationalization and globalization. First, focusing on these two influential phenomena, this study investigated how individual-level factors—information overload, information ambiguity, and goal orientations—affected information-seeking behaviors among employees in a multinational corporation. Next, in addition to these individual predictors of information-seeking behaviors, this study explored the effects of two team-level factors—team task interdependence and team tenure—on the relationships between the main predictors and information-seeking behaviors. Last, paying more attention to the multicultural context, this study investigated how these employees in a multinational corporation seek task and feedback information from two culturally different sources: American direct advisors and Korean expatriates. In order to more thoroughly investigate the roles of the cultural backgrounds of information sources, this study explored how American employees perceived the cultural backgrounds of the two culturally different sources and how such perceptions influenced those employees’ information-seeking behaviors.

This dissertation studies the response among early modern and postmodern audiences to the experience of information overload, and suggests that the most appealing response to living in a communications network that appears both systematic and random is to use a rhetoric of struggle that is ambiguous in the same way. >The reasons for this appeal are twofold: firstly, the rhetoric of struggle is a way to cope with the difficulty of situating oneself within a system of circulating information that operates according to its own arbitrary rules. Mimicking that arbitrariness is a way of finding aesthetic synchronicity between how one's environment articulates itself and how one articulates within it. Secondly, this rhetoric stores the potential for an activism of the object: a method of resistance against any impulse toward order, homogony, totality in a fallen world that, from the early modern perspective, is not worthy of seeing its contradictions resolved. While this resistance is not always positive, it is always clarifying, and while postmoderns may not see the world through a theological prism to the extent that did the early moderns, we share the same desire for resolution, and the same evil genius to counter it.

This dissertation describes the credibility judgment process using social psychological theories of dual-processing, which state that information processing outcomes are the result of an interaction “between a fast, associative information- processing mode based on low-effort heuristics, and a slow, rule-based information processing mode based on high-effort systematic reasoning” (Chaiken & Trope, 1999, p. ix). Further, this interaction is illustrated by describing credibility judgments as a choice between examining easily identified peripheral cues (the messenger) and content (the message), leading to different evaluations in different settings. The focus here is on the domain of the Web, where ambiguous authorship, peer- produced content, and the lack of gatekeepers create an environment where credibility judgments are a necessary routine in triaging information. It reviews the relevant literature on existing credibility frameworks and the component factors that affect credibility judgments. The online encyclopedia (instantiated as Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica) is then proposed as a canonical form to examine the credibility judgment process. The two main claims advanced here are (1) that information sources are composed of both message (the content) and messenger (the way the message is delivered), and that the messenger impacts perceived credibility; and (2) that perceived credibility is tempered by information need (individual engagement). These claims were framed by the models proposed by Wathen & Burkell (2002) and Chaiken (1980) to forward a composite dual process theory of credibility judgments, which was tested by two experimental studies. The independent variables of interest were: media format (print or electronic); reputation of source (Wikipedia or Britannica); and the participant’s individual involvement in the research task (high or low). The results of these studies encourage a more nuanced understanding of the credibility judgment process by framing it as a dual-process model, and showing that certain mediating variables can affect the relative use of low-effort evaluation and high- effort reasoning when forming a perception of credibility. Finally, the results support the importance of messenger effects on perceived credibility, implying that credibility judgments, especially in the online environment, and especially in cases of low individual engagement, are based on peripheral cues rather than an informed evaluation of content.

The emergence of email as a viable and inexpensive communication channel has led to its increased presence in the daily lives of professionals. Email has become a ubiquitous tool in a faster paced and more globally connected world. Besides simple notes, professionals now use email to communicate tasks, important personal and organizational announcements, meeting requests, and share documents. As the importance of email has grown, professionals have made the email client a work nerve center. The vast increase in the volume of email and the use of the email client as a multifunctional tool now threatens the productivity gains it once created. Business professionals suffer from email overload which is accompanied by stress and organizational breakdowns. As a result, many organizations have created email free holidays and professionals have declared email bankruptcy. In this thesis the research on email overload is reviewed, analyzed, and extended through a study of email overload in academia. Using surveys and interviews of faculty at a large university, the researcher found that email overload was present in academia. The study also identified participants’ behaviors in performing email triage, managing email and email overload, and the effects of email overload. The researcher was also able to discover characteristics of cyclical email volumes amongst faculty which may have a direct impact on determining methods of email organization and the occurrence of email overload. Additionally, the study identified that faculty have extended their email client ever further by using it as a task and project manager, information manager, workload barometer, and headline aggregator.

In this dissertation, I propose that there are multiple factors, such as the education process and the consumption environment, which work to simultaneously create an opposition framework. People are constantly exposed to rival products, which are positioned to be opposites even when they are often extremely similar in chemical content and physical appearance. Thus, the implications of the recency-frequency model of activation (Higgins, Bargh and Lombardi 1985) would be that these proximal factors could, in some sense, prime dichotomous thinking. Dichotomous or oppositional thinking, as it is defined in this dissertation, pertains to the flattening of dimensions present in a choice set such that the items can be graphically depicted at two ends of one dimension (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). I will first explore the impact of a dichotomous mindset on making a decision and then expand to the realm of opposition in choice set structures.