It is a tense day for the British public as they await news on what yesterday's inconclusive election results mean for the future of the government. And how do news outlets cope with this?

For newspapers, what to lead with in their print editions must have been a difficult choice. Clearly, by the time that the papers reached their readers, many of the latter would already be highly well informed on more up-to-date news from TV and Internet news sources. And with little clear idea of the outcome, offering firm analysis of the situation was difficult. Exit polls (after voting ended at 10pm) predicted a hung parliament with the Tories in the lead, and this is what most papers focused on. Once again, the Guardian helpfully provided screenshots of national papers' front covers.

Some papers, such as the Times, have produced multiple front pages throughout the day/night, with bold headlines such as "The X factor," "Election chaos" and "The cliffhanger." The Daily Express marked editions with "2am latest," "3am latest" and "4am latest," switching from "Brown is on the way out" to "Brown just can't go on" between 3 and 4am. Special late editions of the Sun at 6am and 9am pronounced Gordon Brown to be "Unelected, unwanted, untenable"

The Independent went for strongly visual front pages, one featuring 16 photos of polling stations and the candidates and accompanied by "Destination: Downing Street," and another with large headshots of all three candidates and the headline "Go hang! The message from Britain's voters," and yet more marked with the "2am latest" and "4am latest" stamps. The Guardian focused on "The tug of war for No 10" in its 3.30, 5 and 6am editions.

The Financial Times led with "Markets tumble on European debt fears," but did have a non-committal side article on "Cameron hoping for strong election victory."

Online, all national newspapers are aiming to supply visitors with the latest coverage and several offer interactive maps displaying results in all constituencies. Some are trying new ways to interact: he Guardian earlier invited readers to suggest figures for their "fantasy coalition government," and the Times' live election blog asks its visitors to vote on "Who should the Lib Dems get into bed with?"

The BBC, which has provided extensive coverage and is likely to be many people's first stop online, has seen five million visitors to its news website in twelve hours: "unprecedented levels of traffic," according to the site's editor Steve Herrmann. "Thousands of searches every minute" are taking place on the site's constituency result pages, he added.

On its live coverage page, which is updated automatically, the BBC has a live stream of TV coverage, a live blog with updates from multiple reporters and links to other articles, blogs and Twitter feeds, and continuously updated figures on numbers of seats won.