Today’s media system is not a top-down environment, but a “web 2.0” world where each of us can create the content and tell our own story. The key to cultivating this space, is to take our digital destiny into our own hands, by working together in communities across the country to help build a digital media system where democracy, fairness, creative opportunity and social justice are key measures for success.

The U.S. media system is undergoing a profound transformation as the Internet and other digital media reshape communications, commerce, community, and political power. Billions have been invested to build and define a system where the majority of global citizens will always be connected to interactive communications networks--via computers, cell phones, and other new devices. But will this world of broadband video, instant messaging, social networks, and video games give us a media system where the public interest is paramount?

In a way that traditional media was never able to, the powerful forces of interactive media can help our country address critical social issues such as:

• Economic opportunity for the poor and working middle class
• New approaches to solve the environmental crisis
• Divisions within the education and health care systems

   

If news, cultural and civic-oriented content came directly from the public—and not just a few private interests—then more accountability and responsibility would follow. By embracing Web 2.0 concepts and tools – starting with socially conscious social networks (SCSN) – greater democracy will be able to flourish under a brighter media future.

Protecting Privacy, Promoting Consumer Rights and Ensuring Corporate Accountability

Perhaps the most powerful - but largely invisible - force shaping our digital media reality is the role of interactive advertising and marketing. Much of our online experience, from websites to search engines to social networks, is being shaped to better serve advertisers. Increasingly, individuals are being electronically "shadowed" online, our actions and behaviors observed, collected, and analyzed so that we can be "micro-targeted." Now a $20 billion a year industry [2007 estimates] in the U.S., with expected dramatic growth to $80 billion or more by 2011, the goal of interactive marketing is to use the awesome power of new media to deeply engage you in what is being sold: whether it's a car, a vacation, a politician or a belief. An explosion of digital technologies, such as behavioral targeting and retargeting, "immersive" rich media, and virtual reality, are being utilized to drive the market goals of the largest brand advertisers and many others.

A major infrastructure has emerged to expand and promote the interests of this sector, including online advertising networks, digital marketing specialists, and trade lobbying groups.

The role which online marketing and advertising plays in shaping our new media world, including at the global level, will help determine what kind of society we will create.

Without net neutrality, the power to discriminate would be given to those who provide internet services (Verizon, AT&T,and Comcast among others). They would have gatekeeper status – the ability to dictate the speeds at which users can access any site on the Internet. While open access remains the broader ideal for openness, interconnectivity, and ensuring a level playing field in a competitive online marketplace, net neutrality is a specific legislative means to achieve that goal. Blogs, websites dedicated to controversial issues, nonprofit websites, or small businesses whose competitors have deeper pockets are all at risk of having their sites relegated to the slow lane.

The new media can be a boon to fostering healthy behaviors, including access to more information about drugs and lifestyle choices. But marketers also have the power to encourage the consumption of products and drugs that may be harmful to one's health. From investigating the online marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children and teens to analyzing the threats from digital marketing of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, CDD is working to promote global public health.

(More - Digitalads.org)