Slashdot Mirror
Are Internet News Sites Ready for Major World News?
An anonymous reader asks: "Heading says it all really - are Internet news websites ready for the next big world event? news.bbc.co.uk already switches format under heavy load (not sure if this is automatic or not) and i'm sure some other sites do the same. But should a major world event take place in the coming months/years, the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service. How will / can it cope?"
How many people have internet access, but no access to TV, radio, or other broadcast recievers? For major news stories boardcast medium will always be the main method of disseminating information to the masses, client-server systems aren't really designed for this purpose.
It was Larry Niven who predicted the idea of "flash crowds". Of course, he was envisioning physical crowds via teleportation, but the basic idea still holds. It's only going to get worse as more and more people use the net.
Look at it this way: in a primative society, a clan or village would usually have a storyteller or sage who gathered the news of the world in story form and re-told as appropriate. We should not be supprised that it takes millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people to be the story-tellers to 6 billion (that's a US billion).
If the Internet had a higher percentage of useful sites for news (not just talking jpeg-heads, but innovative ways of conveying the STORIES that the news represents), then no one of them would be loaded down and the backbones would be the only bottleneck. Notice that so many of us flocked to Slashdot when the towers fell? Wonder why? Because Slashdot, for good or ill, is our community's storyteller, and we instinctively come here to understand how our community is reacting.
"Information wants to be paid"
But should a major world event take place in the coming months/years, the Internet is going to be the primary news source for many millions of people, particularly those without access to a quality television news service.
Please be advised that your set needs adjusting... It's pretty clear from the evidence (and from a phenomenological point of view if you observe your own reactions) that the experience of watching a major event on television as it unfolds barely qualifies as useful information, due in part to the nature of the medium, but largely due to the nature of media filters and techniques. When you see something like 9/11 going on, it's much closer to entertainment, unfortunately, than providing one with reconnaisance leading to rational behaviour. The drama of the moment helps you develop powerful emotions in relation to the event, but what kind of info do you really get?
When it comes to war, TV obscures. For instance, see this study on media and the gulf war. [Remember that? Oh wait, it's still happening.] A salient quote:
In other words, you'd actually be better off combing through usenet than sucking on the immediacy of the glass teat.
Qualifier: I've worked in media-democracy-oriented film/video for years, I'm involved and devoted to the medium!
Damn those pesky terrorists