Today, we can choose to stay up to date with relevant information and receive realtime news coverage at any given time of the day. With the advent of the Internet, and more recently smart phones, such as the Blackberry and the iPhone, we receive alerts to current events with a speed that was unimaginable 20 years ago.
For example, on Sunday, April 20th health officials in the US declared a public health emergency. There were 20 confirmed cases of swine flu in the US, and the extent of the severity of the new H1N1 strain was uncertain. Nonetheless, the topic peaked the interest of the media and within a few days, the swine flu scare hit the public by storm. I was amazed at how fast the news spread, but more importantly, I was astonished at how quickly the public responded.
I first learned about it that Sunday while I was browsing on Facebook. One of my friends who attends UC San Diego posted a link on her page, directing anyone who clicked on it to the New York Times online article titled, “U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu.” My first reaction after reading that title was undoubtedly fear. As I continued to read the article, however, I realized there wasn't enough information to prompt me to panic and book my flight home for fear of catching the swine flu from one of my roommates. Instead, I went back to my apartment to tell my friends about the news, but they, too, had read the article posted on Facebook.
The next day, swine flu became the hottest topic of conversation on campus. People showed their friends the article on their iPhones, Blackberries, or laptops in class or in the dining halls.
On Monday, April 27th, a middle school in California shut down because a teenager had potentially contracted the virus, but it was not confirmed. Several schools shut down soon after. Although these schools were taking precautionary steps, the CDC did not encourage these actions because the severity of this new strain was not confirmed. Clearly, the media was able, through the use of different distribution channels, to incite fear in the public effectively.
On May 5th, CNN.com posted an article stating “Swine flu [is] no worse than regular flu.” In retrospect, I wonder if these schools took too drastic of a measure to shut down when insufficient information was available. Although it is wonderfully convenient to receive news updates as soon as they occur via multiple platforms, perhaps having this option can distort the message to the point where the true message is blurred. If the news about the swine flu had progressed in a manner that was consistent with the findings of the severity, perhaps we would not have jumped to conclusions so quickly. I am not arguing that having multiple media forms is detrimental to society, rather I think it is imperative we reevaluate how these forms of communication will change or distort future messages of importance to the public.
For example, Alan Reiter, President of Wireless and Mobile Computing, a consulting firm, wrote an article in response to the swine flu hysteria titled “How the Internet Can Calm Swine Flu Hysteria.” In this article, he suggests we need to “use internet tools – graphics, mainstream news articles, blogs, twitter, and social networking sites-- to inject rationality into discussion.”1 Thus, instead of jumping to conclusions about the dangers of the swine flu, we should be using these tools to become better informed citizens. In order to put the implications of the swine flu in perspective, he suggests utilizing maps and and charts in news articles to contrast other phenomenons that are often overlooked but cause many deaths and illnesses, such as pollution. Instead of using the Internet to create unnecessary scares, we should be using it to “undo the incorrect and misleading information.”2
1http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id=176156
2http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id=176156
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