Foreword
It is not exaggeration to say that the Internet has changed the way people in the United States get information about any number of topics, from politics and public affairs to health and diet information. But change happens slowly, and it takes time for practitioners and researchers to understand how to fully utilize the potential of a new medium. For instance, early television news was really little more than radio news with a camera aimed at the talking head. It was some time before television news began to truly take advantage of the visual nature of the television medium, and in many ways television news continues to this day to develop with the use of crawling text and modified news formats. Newspapers, too, have adapted their form and content in response to the competition from television news. Whether these changes are for the better or worse is a topic for another time and place, but the change itself is undeniable.
Recent survey research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that, among those with Internet access (currently over 70% of the U.S. adult population), more than half of individuals helping to care for someone with a major illness considered information found online to be their most important source of information.