Information overload, conflicting messages and ‘free’ news

Back in the year 1255 the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais complained about “the multitude of books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory”. If he suffered from information overload, what about the poor EU citizen in 2013 – faced with the vast volumes of information generated by the EU?

by Bram Souffreau, Belgium

Europa.eu, the website of the European institutions, is one of the biggest collections of information on the Internet. Great, in principle. But abundance of information can be just as problematic as lack of information.

“The EU website struggles with information overload,” says Marco Incerti of the CEPS think-tank. “But all that information is necessary. Europe has many policy areas, languages and countries, and some visitors to the website, like journalists or researchers, want very detailed information.”

Mina Andreeva, spokesperson for Commissioner Viviane Reding, insists that Europa.eu has recently been redesigned to be more usable and that the amount of information has been cut down. “We design every subsite with a targeted approach. We try to keep in mind who the visitor will be and what they want.”

Marco Incerti points to the important responsibility of intermediaries, such as the media, trade unions and citizen organisations. “The website has indeed room for improvement, but journalists, activists and other public representatives should also dig into the site and channel the information to the general public.” 

Conflicting messages

A further problem is that, while European institutions try to communicate with one voice, the messages are not always that coherent. “Every institution has a different role,” says Incerti. “The Parliament is a place for debate and its members are thus more critical. The Commission, on the other hand, has to brief people on the decisions. That’s more technical, drier stuff.”

Parliament and Commission have their frictions. But the most capricious are the Council and the member states. Mina Andreeva regrets that government representatives sometimes use ‘Brussels’ in a blame game, and that they change their position once they are back in their home country.

News ‘on a plate’

To cope with the perceived communications deficit, since 2011 the European Commission has been ‘talking to citizens’ during the Citizens’ Dialogues in different cities. Europeans with questions can ask their question at one of the 500 local Europe Direct Contact Centres or via the Europe Direct Hotline.

Besides the website, the institutions are open to enquiries from the media. They provide lots of video footage. Overall, the Union provides the media with an enormous amount of hassle-free news. Meanwhile, investigative journalism is provided with limited resources. The risk, therefore, is that the media fail to fulfill their critical role of investigating and assessing what is really going on.