Swine flu chatter spread swiftly through blogs and social network sites like Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday while U.S. cable news networks' saturation coverage of the outbreak gave way to a major political story...

Much of the online buzz was propelled by social networking sites, said Susannah Fox, associate director at the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. "Social media create a hive of information, and we are the bees who are dipping into the hives and then going back into the real world with the information that we find," she said. "Some people are really into the hive ... spending a lot of time on Twitter, Facebook and using these social media."