Knowing Unknowns in an Age of Information Overload

Abstract: The technological revolution of the Internet has digitized the social, economic, political, and cultural activities of billions of humans. While researchers have been paying due attention to concerns of misinformation and bias, these obscure a much less researched and equally insidious problem - that of uncritically consuming incomplete information. The problem of incomplete information consumption stems from the very nature of explicitly ranked information on digital platforms, where our limited mental capacities leave us with little choice but to consume the tip of a pre-ranked information iceberg. This study makes two chief contributions. First, we leverage the context of internet search to propose an innovative metric that quantifies information completeness. For a given search query, this refers to the extent of the information spectrum that is observed during web browsing. We then validate this metric using 6.5 trillion search results extracted from daily search trends across 48 nations for one year. Second, we find causal evidence that awareness of information completeness while browsing the Internet reduces resistance to factual information, hence paving the way towards an open-minded and tolerant mindset.