I found the following article from The Economist interesting.
The End of Mass Media: Coming Full Circle, http://www.economist.com/node/18904158
It describes the current emphasis on social media as not being new. We tend to think the connected have evolved for the better on account of the advances and innovative paradigms of web 2.0 technologies. If we stretch the time scale though, we’re actually not dragging society to a fresh citizen centric model. This “new” power to the people is actually returning us to a formerly prominent model.
Power to the people, just as we were hundreds of years ago.
The formal media establishments were the misnomer – perhaps we were just in the eye of the cyclone.
Here's your zombie apocalypse: @farman has an image of people walking, staring at phones, reminds me of this #anzca14 pic.twitter.com/Vhpx0sWCuO
— Emily van der Nagel (@emvdn) July 10, 2014