Editing Development communication (section)

==== Information overload and the wastage ratio ====
Fred Fedler (1989),<ref>{{cite book|last1=Neill|first1=S.D.|title=Dilemmas in the Study of Information: Exploring the Boundaries of Information Science|date=1992|publisher=. Greenwood Publishing Group.}}</ref> mentioned in the book, Dilemmas in the Study of Information: Exploring the Boundaries of Information Science, describes the impact of the Information age by referring to media's "vulnerability to hoaxes".  Fedler contends "journalists are vulnerable to information and will always be. Journalists cannot determine the truth to the stories they publish, nor check every details. They receive too many stories, and a single story may contain hundreds of details".  In the same vein, this is what majority of the specialists posits as the information explosion.

Now more than ever, information has exceeded in millions of gigabytes. Technology has brought people around the world to be confronted with so much information that utilization of this information has now become an issue.  Dr Paul Marsden<ref>{{cite web|last1=Marsden|first1=Paul|title=Fast Facts: Information Overload 2013|url=http://digitalintelligencetoday.com/fast-facts-information-overload-2013/|website=Digital Intelligence Today|access-date=25 April 2016|archive-date=19 October 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161019192651/http://digitalintelligencetoday.com/fast-facts-information-overload-2013/|url-status=dead}}</ref> of the Digital Intelligence Today defines [[information overload]] as "when the volume of potentially useful and relevant information available exceeds processing capacity and becomes a hindrance rather than a help" (Marsden, 2013).

Dr. Alexander Flor, in his article on the information wastage ratio,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Flor|first1=Alexander|title=Development Communication Praxis|date=2007|publisher=UP Open University}}</ref> argues that although information can be consumed anytime and seldom has expiration date;

"Research information is generated for a particular purpose, a specific user and a definite problem in mind. If such information is unavailable to the right person, at the right time and at the right place, then we conclude that the effort exerted to generate this amount of information has been wasted".

One approach that Flor has postulated to establish the underutilization is his information wastage ratio. The ratio takes into consideration the concepts of information generation (IG) and information utilization (IU) expressed as "wastage ratio that is equivalent to one minus the amount of information utilized divided by the quantity of information generated", thus:

:Wr = 1 – IU/IG

Flor's formula accounts for the information deficit especially, among the Third World countries, where information utilization is constrained by factors such as  "low literacy, limited media access and availability, low computer literacy, low levels of education and unsound communication policy".
The framework that Flor presented is best described as "the communication revolution contributes to the quantity of information generated thus, information explosion happens". Since the relationship of the two phenomena is reciprocal, "the quantity of information, the quality of information and the information overload determine the information wastage in an information society".
The outcome of this wastage ratio provides support for the initiation of communication policies to ensure full utilization of information in varied fields.