Social and digital media have a proliferating effect on society. Some of those effects are devastating while others put more power into the hands of the average citizen by providing another source of information. As more and more people are empowered to use digital media as their source of information, there are both positive and negative effects on various industries, politics, and on education.

Earlier this week I discussed the new era in political elections. You will probably notice some increased attention to politics on my part as we move closer to the 2008 election year. We have a great resource in ElephantBiz author Bill Hobbs, who specializes both in political analysis and how it is affected by new media. This week he pointed readers to an interesting post about the weak online presence of the Republicans contrasted with a strong showing by Hillary Clinton.

The fashion industry took another step forward this week to embrace new media. Giorgio Armani presented his latest haute couture show live on the Internet and a couple authors were compelled to think about the democratization of fashion and society as a whole.

According to TheAlphaMarketer, print media continues to experience disruptions as a result of the Internet. This is evidenced by the jarring post by ThePublishingSpot about how many jobs were lost in the print industry over the last year. I am looking forward to what the future holds for writers and other would-be opinion leaders, even if the pruning process is painful.