March 24, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – The sad story of Terri Schiavo has created a furor among those believing she has a right to peacefully die and those who believe she is being murdered by the state.
While normally this would not be web hosting news, the uproar caused by this situation has played itself out massively in online web blogs which points to the increasing way in which the internet is changing the way people live and communicate. The LA Times reported a survey in November by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 27% of Internet users, or about 32 million people, said they read blogs, up from 17% in February 2004. About 7%, or 8 million people, said they had created a blog.
Recently, the BBC was accused of leaking a Dr. Who episode to generate excitement for the show and now masses of Pro Life groups are blogging away on sites with names like, “Attempted Murder” and “Blogsforterri” in an attempt to force Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube to be re-inserted.
Just as the music recording industry is struggling with the changes the internet is bringing, the news media industry is also being changed by the new medium of communication and data/information transfer.
While the mainstream news media typically offers little in the way of varied opinion on any given topic in the ether of the online world any and all opinions are there to be found. The benefit of this in a situation like Terri’s is that it forces people to confront issues like the right to die, living wills, and under what circumstances we would wish to no longer be kept alive as well as giving those who feel the need to fight for Terri Schiavo’s life a platform to speak and to generate public pressure on the government.
It remains to be seen whether the corporate world will be able to fully capitalize on this latest change in the way people are communicating as Google has attempted to do in their purchase of Blogger.com or Apple is doing with the iPod or if they will fail and simply struggle against the inevitable like the RIAA.
