If you have ever sat down to watch a movie, but after 15 minutes of scrolling through Netflix, you still haven’t made a decision, you have probably come face to face with the paradox of choice.
The paradox of choice describes the idea that an ample amount of choice can lead to unresearched decision-making and stress. This paradox can be applied to nearly any situation we come in contact with in a first-world nation in the 21st century but is especially prevalent in media.
Whether it be television, social media, books, or news, we are overwhelmed by the amount of information being given to us. We have what seems like unlimited access to media all day, every day. Though this may seem like a marvel of technology, this endless amount of choice we are given may be more of a negative than we may think.
“These proposed effects of extensive assortments include a decrease in the motivation to choose, to commit to a choice, or to make any choice at all,” says the research paper “Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload” by researchers Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder, and Peter M. Todd.
Excessive choice can lead to an overload of information, which can then lead to panic in an individual. This panic can cause a person to avoid decision-making or let another person make the decision-making for them.
Numerous studies have been conducted to better illustrate this “overload of choice,” including one of the first major studies on the topic by Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper in 2000. The study gave one group of participants a choice of six different chocolates to choose from, while a second group had a choice of 30. By the end of the study, it was clear that the group with the choice of 30 was much less satisfied with the chocolates they chose compared to the first group. This can be translated to the overload of choices we see in media as well, as it can be seemingly impossible to choose where you receive your media from and what media you choose to consume.
There is also the fact that most media is controlled by only a handful of companies. This brings us to the illusion of choice. The illusion of choice is the idea that of the seemingly unlimited products you are being offered, you are making a decision on your own and with no outside influence, but you would be wrong.
Concentration of media ownership refers to the increasing amount of media being controlled by only a handful of companies, such as Disney, Comcast, or Warner Bros. Currently 90 percent of media is controlled by only six main companies.
The paradox of choice is harmful, but it must also be understood that it exists within the illusion of choice. So you may be choosing between five different news channels to watch, but if they are all owned by one parent company, you are likely choosing from one.
An example of this can be seen with Sinclair Broadcasting Group. Sinclair Broadcasting is a telecommunications company with a conservative political leaning. The company is the largest owner of local television stations in the country, with 173 stations in 81 broadcast markets that stretch from coast to coast and just about anywhere in between, at a time when local news outpaces national news outlets both in overall viewership and trust,” said a 2018 Chicago Tribune article.
Chances are that many people don’t know what Sinclair Broadcasting Group is, let alone that they own the local news channel that they may watch regularly. If your local news channel is owned by a conservative company, then the local news channel will likely reflect similar views, and thus the consumer may develop those views too.
It is important as a consumer to practice media literacy and do your own research. The first step you can take towards media literacy is researching who is giving you information because once you know who is providing that information, your ideas may change.