Att begränsas och avgränsa sig : En studie om studenters attityder till internets dagliga informationsflöden

The aim of this thesis is to study how students perceive and handle internet’s continuous flow of information in everyday life, through news report, social media and targeted advertising. By examining the students attitudes and thoughts about the extent to which they find the information they meet relevant this study seeks to understand how they find what is relevant to them and how they limit the intake of information by different combinations of selection processes. For this purpose interviews were carried out with seven university students from different fields and levels. Three categories of theories about selection processes serves as a theoretical framework for the analysis and results. The categories are referred to as external, personalized and personal factors. The external factors include gatekeeping theory, news valuation and agenda theory and the personalized factors include theories about filter bubbles and echo chambers. The personal factors include strategies to avoid information overload such as filtering and withdrawing, it also includes satisficing as a stop rule for information seeking. The study shows that the three categories of selection processes are affected by emotional factors referred to as simplicity, interest and sensation. These drives the student to get more deeply informed. The students attitudes towards personalized information shows to be divided between if it should be more firmly adapted to each individual, or if that would increase the feeling of being monitored. In the students reflections regarding saved information emerges three feelings of negativity described as reluctance, lack of control and unease. Despite these feelings of negativity the phenomenon is accepted. Seeing that the alternative is disconnecting from modern society and life, acceptance shows to be the most reasonable alternative.