ABSTRACT
The phenomenal growth of the social Web 2.0 and user generated content (UGC), such as blogs and online social networks, is driven by tapping into the social nature of human interactions, making it possible for people to gain a wider audience for their opinions, become part of a virtual community, and collaborate remotely. At the same time, the unprecedented volume and velocity of incoming UGC has resulted in individuals starting to experience
information overload, perceived by users as “seeing a tiny subset of what was going on” [178]. In the context of Internet use, previous research on information overload has shown already that high levels of information can lead to ineffectiveness, as “a person cannot process all communication and informational inputs” [57].
