In the last few days, the words swine and flu have been two of the busiest buzz words on the internet.  Public interest in the unfolding swine flu epidemic has sent so many people turning to the internet for information that one analyst of internet usage likens the activity to the feeding frenzy of bees in a hive.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) saw a 442% increase in internet traffic last week.  Traffic is expected to increase as this week continues.

Google is the biggest search engine on the web but it is not the only one.  A random search for ‘swine flu’ late Tuesday afternoon, on Google alone, generated 5.4 million hits.  Wikipedia and many other information-based websites are seeing a similar increase in online traffic.

It’s this frenzied use of the internet that reminds Susannah Fox of feeding bees.  Fox, associate director of the Internet & America Life Project at the Pew Research Center, compares the internet to a hive of information, where everyone comes to dip into the hive, share their finds with contacts via email and on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter before putting it to use out there in the real world.

Ariana Huffington and other internet pundits suggest the traditional broadcast media is sensationalizing the situation using doomsday scenarios unnecessarily.  After being warned to prepare for the worst outcome, Y2K came and went without a hitch, bird flu hasn’t yet gotten off the ground, and global tuberculosis (TB) just didn’t happen after a TB-patient flew around the world.  Some members of the media fear consequences similar to those of the boy who cried wolf.

Robert Thompson says we’d have really big problems on hand if there were as many swine flu patients as there are people covering the story.  Thompson, Syracuse University in New York’s professor of media and popular culture, would prefer to see a little more balance in the way the media is covering the story.

Media analyst Andrew Tyndall says there’s not a lot of journalism going on right now because public health officials are turning with increased frequency to major news channels, TV stations, newspapers, and other traditional media forms to spread the word of the flu.  Public service announcements urging people to wash hands often and to cover faces when sneezing or coughing are filling up every spare broadcast moment.

Mainstream media seems to be where most Americans are getting the latest scoop but they’re then turning to the internet to spread the word and to learn more, according to Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins.  Hitwise tracks and analyzes internet usage.