Anyone following the running story of President Trump’s executive order on immigration will have had quite the multimedia challenge. In fact, it seems to present a perfect example of the difficulties of communicating a clear message in the information age.

Citizens ping from cable news interview to official written statement to government website to presidential tweet to Facebook update to court judgment to online petition site to legal blog, and so forth. All of it is periodically digested and linked in the live-bloggy online churn that traditional media outlets now resort to for fast-developing stories.

The arguments for and against the president’s decision to restrict immigration from several predominantly Muslim nations have been conducted piecemeal, in all sorts of arenas. What, apart from giving the average interested reader a migraine and an ulcerated sense of rage and frustration, does multimedia fragmentation do to the way we consume information? And how should leaders trying to get a message across in this environment respond? Can the confusion be capitalised on in some way?