Critical Ignoring: A Strategy for Information Overload

"How many Trump administration executive orders, policy announcements, or social media blasts have you heard about this week? Can you even begin to name them all? U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have been said to engage in a strategy called "flooding the zone" -releasing a great deal of information with the goal of distracting the media and the public. (Almost certainly, they are not the only politicians to do this. For example, Boris Johnson's London mayoral campaigns were said to use the "dead cat strategy," shocking the public with an announcement to distract them from news they preferred they not see.)"

"The U.S. political application of this term, which was borrowed from the name of a tactic used in American football, can be traced to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who said, "All we have to do is flood the zone...Every day we hit [the media] with three things. They'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang.""

"Flooding the zone might work as a political strategy, but it takes a psychological toll on media consumers. For example, polls show that 65% of U.S. adults have felt the need to reduce their media consumption because of information overload and ensuing feelings of fatigue. Moreover, experimental research has found that a habit of closely following political news is a chronic stressor, often leading to negative emotions ( Ford et al., 2023)."

Politicians sometimes deploy a "flooding the zone" strategy, releasing large volumes of information to distract media and audiences. High-frequency political messaging contributes to information overload and media fatigue, with 65% of U.S. adults reporting reduced media consumption. Chronic attention to political news functions as a stressor and often produces negative emotions. Information overload can weaken democratic processes by increasing the likelihood of sharing misinformation. Critical ignoring is an evidence-based approach that trains people to identify cues allowing them to ignore misleading, low-quality, or distracting posts instead of engaging with them.

Read at Psychology Today