By Luis Zaffirini

Luis Zaffirini

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, a substantially larger number of pro-life members of the House of Representatives than pro-abortion members have turned to social media outlets--sometimes called "new media"-- to broadcast a message that might otherwise be ignored by traditional media. (See http://www.nrlc.org/NewsToday/ProLifersTwitter.html.) Pro-life news and information stands to make incredible gains from the ever-increasing freedom of the news market being created by the Internet and mobile, pervasive computing.

In a moment I will offer some idea how to avoid the clutter found in an information-saturated society in order that you can get your pro-life message transmitted (and received) efficiently. First, some background.

In the not-so-distant past publishing your ideas required access to an expensive means of publication which were then processed by editorial boards. Today the "price" of publishing has dropped so sharply that literally in a matter of seconds you can publish from the comfort of your own chair and have it reach a worldwide audience.

Consider how technology has broadened markets for information and its consumption. Cable television became more widespread after its deregulation in the 1970s. Not long after, C-SPAN came on the air broadcasting government proceedings and making them widely available for the first time to a new audience.

When CNN first broadcast in June of 1980, it was considered on the cutting edge, calling itself "the future of television news." Consider what the Internet has done for the production of news items and how we now live not just in a time of 24-hour news but of incessant and instantaneous news.

So while the Internet has allowed pro-life voices to be amplified, it would seem that the message may still be obscured by the sheer volume of messages available. That is why the future of news consumption involves a lot of personal responsibility for determining what exactly we want to pay attention to and sharing what we produce with like-minded pro-life people. It is our responsibility to share good information and news, especially if you happen to be in the habit of blogging.

There is a variety of news searches and web-based news aggregators to help you, if you are simply looking for ways to hone in on the pro-life information that you might not get by just surfing the web. Google News allows you to search for specific words in news stories. Topsy.com searches public Twitter feeds, although Twitter.com/search will give you results from its own website as well.

Anyone heard of Kiffets.com? It was developed by Xerox PARC who ought to be famous for developing the first personal computer but that instead is famous for not capitalizing on it. Kiffets is a web-based news aggregator which allows users to find and share news and information and collect them into "channels."

Other users can then select which channels most appeal to them, and choose to read only news from those channels. As the Kiffets promotional video suggests, "the news that should be delivered should be the news that matters.'

Indeed, we all have interests which are very often not reflected in the news published by mainstream media. As pro-lifers we want to be able to find news that matters to us, and then share that quality information we have [or have produced] in an easily accessible manner.

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