People on Thursday turned to the Internet in droves, especially as they arrived at work, for information on the US-led attacks on Iraq, challenging news groups and government agencies to keep up.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, the Internet has taken on the role the corner barbershop once played in small-town America -- a place where people gather to discuss and debate issues.
While some have said it's too early to dub the war "the Internet war," mainstream media's Web sites have proved they're ready for prime time. New forums called Web logs, or blogs, have also emerged as alternative sources of information.
"As for people getting information and engaging in debate, Internet-type interactions are playing a key role," said Stephen Masiclat, associate professor at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications.
"The Internet is the primary forum where they can give feedback," he said.
Nielsen/NetRatings said many of the top news sites posted double-digit growth in traffic on Wednesday, compared with week-ago levels.
Iraq around the clock
Many Web sites rose to the challenge of meeting the increased demand, with only few reporting spotty disruptions. Some publishers like Gannett Co beefed up staffing at their Web sites to handle 24-hour updates.
Internet usage spiked two to three times higher than normal, according to officials at several major Web sites, as people responded to the beginning of the war after the US launched bombing raids on Baghdad late Wednesday night and Iraq responded with Scud missile attacks on positions in Kuwait.
"In times of crisis, they want that steady intravenous drip of information from news sites," said Mark Dery, director of digital journalism at New York University's Department of Journalism and Mass Communication.
A few news sites, including those for Qatar-based Arabic network al Jazeera, The Times of London and Israel's Jerusalem Post had performance problems earlier in the day, with some pages taking longer to download than normal, according to Keynote Systems. But as a whole, Keynote said most sites had prepared for the increase in traffic.
Day of the warblogs
In addition to news sites, blogs -- pithy, opinionated commentary in the form of Web logs filled with links to other Web sites -- have also attracted heavy traffic.
"One thing that is rocket hot is the rise of the warblogs," Dyer said. "We are really seeing the rise of the warblog as a corrective to the biases and errors of mainstream media and also as a platform for alternative voices that are being muzzled or not offered exposure in the mainstream."
A popular warblog among media junkies is "Back to Iraq" (http://www.back-to-iraq.com/) from independent journalist Christopher Allbritton, who offers daily insights and is trying to raise funds to be sent back to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
There is also a warblog portal (http://www.warblogs.cc), which aggregates blogs about the war, Dery said.
"This war is a ratcheting up of the significance of the Net and that significance came into play with the Trade Tower disasters because people had a lot on their minds," he added.
"They needed to vent and there was no room for that in the traditional media space," he added. "So the Web becomes a virtual commons where people can talk about anxieties, swap morsels of information and it's a many-to-many medium, unlike television."
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