Some years ago Octavio Paz wrote:

There is indeed a widening gap between the ever increasing wealth of detailed information and the ability to make adequate use of it, to digest and to integrate it into a larger context.

This leads to an interesting point worth noting in regard to images and perceptions. The sheer amount and the complex character of information might indirectly become a source of misperception; if the details are hard to follow, their interpretation becomes ambiguous. Most people tend to dismiss thorough analysis, if it becomes too difficult, lengthy, and wearisome. Whether they are unable or merely unwilling to cope with the unwieldy bulk of modern information, the consequences will be that they tend to relapse into their familiar views of other countries and into traditional patterns of explaining the attitudes of foreign nations. Moreover, today it seems necessary to distinguish between misperception and misunderstanding.