Who uses digital media?

Digital media, otherwise known as emerging media or new media comprises various things: website, pod casts, social networks, video ads, RSS feeds, chat rooms, blue tooth, etc.

So who uses these features?  Actually the majority of Americans are in some way on the digital wagon.  If you check your email, if you blog, if you pay bills on-line, text, or even catch up with old friends via Facebook; you are part of the emerging media wave that has swept across our world.

There will never be a time when life goes back to the slow transaction of messages and communication of newspapers, telephone calls, magazines and television alone.  We, as a society have evolved into a fast paced lifestyle that demands immediate information and communication, literally available at our fingertips.  Mobile media has become entrenched in the everyday lives of Americans.

To some extent it brings the world a lot closer, but some would say that it depersonalized society in that it is no longer necessary or customary to physically talk with people or meet/visit with each other face to face (not via computer).

For marketers emerging media is a valuable way to reach large or small groups of people with very specific segmented messages.  They can make a connection or send a message anywhere and anytime without having to rely on a person to pick up a paper, or magazine, or turn on the television.  However, this new media era allows for anybody to be able to publish information that may or may not be from a credible source.  Anybody can me a marketer or journalist in the digital age.  Professional journalists, marketers, or even PR professionals are in competition with anybody who has a computer and the know-how to post information.  This can leave the average person responsible to determine who is sending the message and if it is a credible, truthful and reliable source.

The Berkman Center for Internet &Society at Harvard University explores the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment in a research entitled, Media Re:public: New and Information as Digital Media Come of Age.  The link to this paper is: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/mediarepublic/

The following is an advertisment for their organizaion, showing a different view about emerging media. They offer some interesting and possibly controversial opinions.

Digital media is here to stay, and even evolve constantly into other forms of communication that we could have preciously never imagined. So who used digital media, eventually all of us.