Critical Ignoring: A Strategy for Information Overload

Politicians sometimes “flood the zone,” releasing an overwhelming amount of information to distract from important news. Research shows this tactic can create chronic stress and negative emotions. One evidence-based strategy to push back is called critical ignoring, looking for hints that there is misinformation (e.g., absence of sources, unsubstantiated accusations) and strategically moving on. This technique helps us avoid becoming overwhelmed and saves our cognitive resources for when we need them.

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How many Trump administration executive orders, policy announcements, or social media blasts have you heard about this week? Can you even begin to name them all? U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have been said to engage in a strategy called “flooding the zone”—releasing a great deal of information with the goal of distracting the media and the public. (Almost certainly, they are not the only politicians to do this. For example, Boris Johnson’s London mayoral campaigns were said to use the “dead cat strategy,” shocking the public with an announcement to distract them from news they preferred they not see.)

The U.S. political application of this term, which was borrowed from the name of a tactic used in American football, can be traced to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who said, “All we have to do is flood the zone...Every day we hit [the media] with three things. They'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang.” Flooding the zone might work as a political strategy, but it takes a psychological toll on media consumers. For example, polls show that 65% of U.S. adults have felt the need to reduce their media consumption because of information overload and ensuing feelings of fatigue. Moreover, experimental research has found that a habit of closely following political news is a chronic stressor, often leading to negative emotions (Ford et al., 2023).

Information Overload as a Democratic Threat

But information overload doesn’t just undermine our psychological well-being; it can also undermine democracy. In a recent article, “Critical ignoring when information abundance is detrimental to democracy,” psychology researchers Stephan Lewandowsky and Ralph Hertwig (2025) outlined why information overload harms democracy and provided a strategy on how we might fight back.

First, the authors share findings that information abundance causes misinformation because our ability to differentiate truth from falsehood decreases when we are overwhelmed and in a hurry. In fact, the research shows that overwhelmed people are more likely to share “things that are partially or completely untrue.” Why? Essentially, we’re more likely to share the splashy findings which are, in turn, more likely to be misinformation. As the researchers explain, this information abundance harms democracy via several mechanisms, ranging from “triggering misinformation cascades to generating coping strategies that result in reduced political accountability.”

Critical Ignoring

After outlining the problem, Lewandowsky and Hertwig offer an evidence-based solution that we, the general public, can use in these situations: critical ignoring. They point out that other techniques are generally too time-consuming to use during an information flood. For example, lateral reading requires you to seek other sources to ascertain the truth of a piece of information. Critical ignoring can happen quickly. They define critical ignoring as “a type of deliberate ignorance, which refers to the conscious choice to ignore information even when the costs of obtaining it are small or nonexistent.” So, as you scroll through the news on a social media feed, you can—and should—make choices about what to ignore.

The key word here is “critical,” which means not just ignoring everything. Instead, the idea is to look quickly for clues that suggest the types of information most likely to be misinformation (unintentional) or disinformation (intentional). (See our previous post for more on the differences between misinformation and disinformation.) Here are five clues that information is worth ignoring (Lewandowsky & Hertwig, 2025):

1. It includes polarizing content, such as words like “insane” or “threat.” Such posts are often not grounded in facts and are trying to evoke emotions.
2. It appeals to intuition or common sense, rather than including facts or evidence. (As an aid to all of us, the authors point to a table of belief-related words vs. words associated with facts.) Instead, pay attention to posts with evidence.
3. There are no sources, or they don’t seem to be credible. If in doubt, type your source into an interactive media bias fact chart like the one linked here. As the authors observe, the numerous sites that publish news credibility lists base their judgments on “journalistic indicators of quality.” Moreover, the different lists tend to agree with one another as well as with professional fact-checkers, an indication of some degree of objectivity. If you start getting a sense of what sources are credible, you’ll be able to ignore bad ones more quickly going forward.
4. Information that seems to be released as a distraction. If the information is unrelated to important ongoing news, it might be an example of flooding the zone.
5. It involves unsupported accusations, particularly of a political opponent. Just ignore these.
6. It promotes the threat of a bogeyman or a scapegoat, particularly a minoritized group such as immigrants or members of the LGBTQ community. Same: Ignore.

If you spot one or more of these six clues, consider just ignoring that information and moving on, as the researchers suggest, “in order to avoid falling into the trap of flooding-the-zone tactics and becoming overwhelmed by a flurry of moves and information.” Other experts suggest two additional tools to facilitate critical ignoring: set a timer to minimize your time reading news, and focus on a few carefully chosen news sources rather than exposing yourself to the vast unknown of most social media news feeds. And don’t forget to check out your local news.

But Don’t Ignore Everything

The idea of critical ignoring is to strategically decide not to consume certain content. But this is not meant to be in service of blissful ignorance of the world around us; rather, it’s meant to protect our cognitive resources for when it really matters. If information seems important, it’s time to fall back on other tactics, like the strategy of lateral reading that we mentioned earlier. As we recently wrote, it’s up to us to be our own fact-checkers and, when we uncover misinformation or disinformation, politely share our findings with others.

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In summary, critical ignoring is a tool that can help us to figure out when to move on, so that we can protect both our psychological well-being and democracy. But there are also times when it’s essential to fight back. Democracy requires that we are informed and engaged as citizens, which is more likely when we are not overwhelmed.