Literature Review
Watkin’s (2009) book about the impact of immigration to social networks on culture has offered great insights in as far as the use of digital media in the contemporary society is concerned. The author has used a detailed and comprehensive approach to clearly demonstrate how the emergence of digital technologies has changed lives. He maintains that by the first half of the first decade of the 21st century, new media technologies such as the internet had significantly replaced conventional platforms that had been in existence for several decades. Print media, for instance, was declining rapidly as digital media and citizen journalism skyrocketed. Television was also appearing like an outdated technology in the face of interactive, feature-packed and user-oriented media. According to Watkin (2009), many hoped that the digital revolution that characterized the onset of the 21st century was a passing cloud only to realize that it was a drastically developing reality that needed to be embraced by everyone. The author further notes that it is a revolution that has the capacity to reshape all aspects of our lives. In addition, the book details a survey that was done in 2004 by Carnegie Corporation. According to the findings of the survey, 44% of the participants (18-34 years) included in the study used an internet portal at least once in day whereas a mere 19% read newspapers. The report further indicated that newspaper readers were a diminishing species and the constantly evolving complex society was increasingly abandoning conventional sources of news. However, the survey has a major shortcoming since the respondents included 18- and 34-years-olds and as such it would be quite difficult to generalize the outcome of the investigation to other age groups.
