5.1. Information Technology

Information Technology, if on one hand has revolutionized the information production, its handling and dissemination; at the same time it is being seen as one of the worst polluters of information. The Internet is indeed a blessing in its own way and one can imagine how the recourse of life will suffer in its absence, especially in the present day world, where most of the routine activities, which previously otherwise were used to be handled manually by running from pillar to post are now being handled by technology in automated form by seating at one place. Information Technology is actually supplemented by its various subsystems in the course of information pollution, which include.

5.2. Mobile Phones

The growing trend towards flashing the instant messages on mobile phones by service providers of various business houses with the view to promote their products creates information pollution in its own way. It is always distracting and disturbing, when all of a sudden mobile phone of any third person starts ringing at important places, especially like libraries, classrooms or while being in the mid of a meeting, seminar, conference or an important lecture. Ling (2004) believes that “clashes with many social situations, particularly those governed by a heightened sense of normative expectations (p.125)”. Brette et al. (2006) in their study on mobile phones have opined that given the constructive use of mobile technology, it won’t be appropriate to suggest banning the use of mobile phones at sensitive places. Though preventing mobiles to ring at sensitive places will be well supported by people at large, but this sort of practice is not going to be the solution of the problem, as it may prove tempting instructors and institutions.

5.3. Books and Journals

Hundreds of journals are being published with common titles, mostly confusing, with heavy prices, which makes it difficult to the seeker of information to get a desired piece of information. These subscriptions instead of helping one to get the relevant piece of information, leads one to get lost in information clutter, which is mostly unorganized. Hundreds of research projects get daily bogged down due to the use of the polluted information, with the result, these huge heaps of information produced questions its own credibility and authority.

5.4. Information Explosion

The concept of information explosion may be new to people passively associated with the production and consumption of information, but not to the people actively engaged with production, handling, dissemination, organization and exploitation of information. An information explosion occurs when the emphasis is paid on a quantitative aspect of information production and quality aspect is overlooked, hence resulting in information pollution. Sustainable production and consumption of information is a key to proportionate growth and development. Producers of information should be equally concerned about its purposive consumption. Hybrid publishing has become the order of the day, as same information produced and reproduced in both electronic and print formats. Indeed important to protect the interest of both the type and kind of users, but definitely there is a need to look for a middle path.

Information explosion cannot be substituted for information pollution, information explosion simply means exponential growth of information, whereby consumers of a particular kind of information are not able to consume all the relevant information produced in their chosen field and the information produced may not necessarily be contaminated or polluted. The former is a quantitative aspect, while as the lateral is the quality aspect, so there is always need to regulate the two and the former cannot be compromised at the cost of lateral. Information pollution on the other hand can be referred to a situation, wherein people are supplied with contaminated, unreliable, unauthentic, irrelevant information. Information explosion is equally an outcome of duplication of information, reproducing the same information in different formats, multiplication of information and other similar activities, which are least desirable.

5.5. Unorganized Information

Proper and systematic organization of information is as important as the creation of information itself. Improper and unorganized information is nothing more than a heap of straw. The internet, if on one hand has helped us to overcome the barriers of space and time with its unblemished speed and delivery, on the other hand it has also become one of the largest sources of unstructured information, which as a result has converted it into one of the time consuming information data banks, and is gradually eclipsing the speed and delivery distinction it has. Need is to pay attention towards those institutions or organizations which are actively engaged in the organization of knowledge and information and Libraries and information centers being one of them.

5.6. Plagiarism

Plagiarism means differently to different people, but in every case it involves the intellectual theft, one or the other way. The definition of plagiarism given in the Collins Dictionary of English language reads as, plagiarism is the act of plagiarizing ideas, passages, etc., from another’s work and presenting them as one’s own without acknowledging the actual source, Hanks (1979). Fialkoff (1993), according to the Association of American Historians, “plagiarism is a misuse of the writings of another author, including limited borrowing without attribution of another’s distinctive and research findings”.

There are a good number of recorded instances when incidents of plagiarism came to the fore and ruined the careers of well know personalities of their respective fields. Be it Nina Totenberg, who in 1972 was alleged of copying content from Washington post for her article, which she had written for national observer or the Mike Barnicle, who in 1998 faced suspension for using jokes of George Carlin without attribution. An incident of plagiarism was also reported against Ambrose by the daily standard for his book, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany, with Thomas Childers book, Wings of Morning and other books by Doubleday and Simon & Schuster. The Forbes.com went ahead with its investigation and observed that the Wild Blue reflected a pattern, which was found similar through Ambrose’s doctoral thesis from 1963. Goodwin was next to follow the suit for plagiarizing the content from Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times by Lynne McTaggart’s (Doubleday, 1983) in her book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (Simon & Schuster, 1987). In the subsequent editions the footnotes and acknowledgements were added from McTaggart’s book. All this resulted her to resign from Harvard’s board of overseas, from the Pulitzer Prize board along with cancellation of various speaking invitations.

Plagiarism is an information pollution of its own kind, though people may dub it only to steeling of others work or intellectual theft without acknowledging the others work, but the fact is reproducing others information by labeling it own, leads to confusion to seeker of information as what to rely on and the authoritative source of information thereof.

6.1. Ecologically

Though, by and large it may appear that information pollution only affects human beings actively only, but the fact is this pollution has an ambit of its own kind, which encompasses the whole of the ecology and environment in which we all dwell. Needless to say that our research findings, our activities, our all other day to day activities have direct bearing with the environment, we dwell in, thereby information pollution affects our ecology and environment in a passive way.

6.2. Decision Making

Information overload has a profound impact on the decision making ability of a person says Buchanan and Kock (2001). The author quoted the popular press term “Information Fatigue Syndrome” which is comprehended as hampering the decision making ability of a person. Allen and Griffeth (1997) in their study pointed out that traditionally the decision making ability of people used to be hampered for the want of required information for decision making, while in the present day world the decision making ability is hampered due to information overload, as what to believe and what not. Availability and supply of abundance information on any given topic hampers the decision making ability of a person for varied reasons. Information overload or excessive information always creates doubts about the authenticity and reliability of information, as which piece of information is more authentic and thereof to make use of. Decision making ability of individual recedes hence, becomes difficult to arrive at a conclusion on any give problem. Decision making ability of individuals, institutions and for that matter even of organizations gets hampered due to supply of polluted information.

6.3. Health

Eastin (2001) in his study about the credibility of online health information raised concerns about the vast amount of health information available and accessible to masses via internet is not always authored by medical professionals. The author in his study laid emphasis on the greater need to ascertain the credibility of information available. The author conducted a study with 125 subjects to assess the health related website on six different assignments and found, that message credibility is more related with source expertise. To have a strong and robust health sector in a country, need is to work on areas, whereby all the health related information generated or collected from different quarters is put to the litmus test, before applying the same for the cure of the masses. Health care professionals advocate the hymn, ‘prevention is better than cure’ but the fact remains, both are the faces of the same coin and none of them can be neglected on each other’s behest. Supplying contaminated information or without checking the authenticity and credibility of information can always downplay with the health of the masses.

7.1. Information Literacy(IL)

Postman (1992, 61) stated that “we are driven to fill our lives with the quest to access Information”, and the human creativity is immensely influenced by information. Information Literacy proves very handy in overcoming information pollution issues, where individual perceptions of people come into play to judge the authenticity and reliability of information they are being provided or supplied with. Information literacy plays a very vital role while retrieving information from the web, especially when the authenticity and reliability of information available on the web is being questioned. Braun (1997) in in his study invited the attention of seeker of information towards the aspects that information literacy is not only about being able to locate relevant information, but also encompasses the ability of an individual to interpret, evaluate, and apply the retrieved relevant information.

Need is to introduce information literacy as a part of the curriculum from the very beginning of formal schooling. The more we pay attention towards the use of authentic and authoritative information, the more it will lead us to produce refined and pure information, with emphasis on sustainable information production and its consumption with minimal information pollution.

Information Literacy also Leads to: 

Information literacy apart from increasing the decision making ability of the person helps in prioritizing the need and use of information.

7.2. Censorship

Censorship is the age old tool, which has proved instrumental in regulating the behaviour of people who believe in getting more involved with publishing provocative and anti social content. Censorship has helped to play a constructive role in the dissemination of authentic and reliable information published through conventional means. Contrary to this fact, in the absence of censorship of content published on various websites, blogs and social networking sites goes irrepressible. Deibert (2008) in his article, the geopolitics of internet control raises the issue of information flow across boarder in the light of the sovereignty of a state. The author argues that over a period of time, the role of the Internet has changed considerably, when it was rated as a medium of free flow of information and more of freedom of expression. Today the Internet has become an area of concern, especially in the absence of censorship and others. The author highlights the sensitive areas like national security, cultural sensitivity & social values which appear to be getting eroded by the free flow of unregulated information on the Web. Absence of censorship, on content published on the Internet has not just boosted the information pollution, but has also invited the dangers of inciting social unrest. Pandita (2013) correlated need and importance & prevalence of censorship to the time of Adam and Eve, when they were prohibited from eating the forbidden fruit in Eden Garden. The author further believes that censoring content which is sacrilegious, communal, derogatory, or provocative in one or the other form and which can easily stimulate social unrest by no means should be rated as a curb on freedom of expression.

7.3. Framing and Enforcing Laws

Although people are very much conscious of laws and regulations and the law-fearing people always try to abide by all such regulations, which are there to ensure public welfare and betterment. People have got every right to not to be disturbed unnecessarily. Schellekens and Prins (2006) undertook a study on the role of law in regulating the authentic information on the web, given the increasing difficulty in ascertaining the reliability of available information. The authors further argue that social norms towards regulation or self-regulation of content disseminated on the web has yet to come fully into force and wherever these norms exist to some extent, they are not away from their own limitations. The authors are of the view that self-regulation can be easily taken as a stepping stone towards promoting social norms in this regard. As is known, information does not mean only the written content; it can be a voice call, video call, photograph, cryptographic writing, or even any other kind of physical arrangement. To regulate information production and its communication behaviour, there is always need to put in place regulations, which if not adhered to, should be enforced to avoid information pollution or its contamination.

7.4. Information Ethics

Floridi (2002) in his article discussed about information ethics and how these ethics can actually be brought into practice to bridge the digital divide. The author has emphasized on the formulation of universal common ethical standards to fight information entropy, which can be in the form of destruction, corruption, pollution and depletion of information. The author further pleads that the ethical use of ICT is imperative for the sustainable development of an equitable information society. The author has correlated the need of ethics to be extended from the biosphere to the info-sphere. Information ethics can be applied at any level of information systems, which ranges from its creation, collection, dissemination, exploitation and many more, which allow free and fair use of information. Information ethics is something which can only be handled by self regulatory mechanism. Information Literacy can play an important part in evolving information ethics among producers and consumers of information. People can be sensitized about information ethics in the areas of Verbal Communication, Handling and use of Information Technology, Avoiding Plagiarism, Copyright Violation, Intellectual Property Rights, Censorship, Information Hacking, to various other information abuses.

7.5. Other Proposed Solutions

Jakob Nielsen (2004) in his ten step solution to cleaning information pollution, both at personal and professional level advocated of having self-restraint in checking emails. The author suggests don’t reply all emails, don’t use Instant Messaging, write very brief and to the point, keep customers informed through web portals, avoid reply to least important quires etc. Orman (1984) finds information pollution in the form of information overload, which is irrelevant, unsolicited, redundant and low-value, as such affects human activities in more serious and detrimental way. Orman apart from advocating of having a conscious approach towards writing precisely and clearly is also of the view that at the organizational level, we should pay emphasis on the time and stress management among the personnel of an organization, as all these measures will help in tackling the information pollution to a great deal. Bray (2008) advocates of replacing technologies which frequently trouble, with lesser troubling technologies as a measure in curbing information pollution. The author suggested the need for examining the information science artifacts. The author is of the view that internet empowerment is accompanied with ‘information pollution’ and ‘information overload’ hamper the quality of decision making ability of an individual. The researcher points towards cognitive studies which have shown humans have a limit towards information consumption to which one can show conscious focus and once reached to its limit the situation is termed as information consumption saturation level and the whole process he termed can lead to decision paralysis.