[Clubber]

>At the same time, people can get hyped up about what they read in internet tabloids or are told through the media, and politicians will be forced to respond to that.

This is spot on. That gives a heck of a lot of power to news organizations. That's scary when thinking of the quality and journalistic integrity of many, if not most news organizations. People react much more strongly to what they read/watch/listen to on the news. If the news can get them hyped up on a topic (opioid crises is the latest) then the politicians react, typically just enough to get the news off their back. We're left with ham-fisted solutions that make the problem worse. x30 years.

[m_mueller]

I‘d say it gives a heck of a lot of power to influential Twitter users, the press just seems to react to them nowadays.

[jrs95]

Yes, social media definitely plays a huge role here. At the same time, the average person has next to no power at all. They have virtually no influence on mass opinion, little chances of having any influence on it, and even if they could, mass opinion typically doesn't have much influence on public policy unless its of the 'Manufactured Consent' variety. Perhaps we should be talking less about Russian Twitter bots 'hacking' our democracy and more about the fact that our democracy was barely working long before the 2016 election.

[Clubber]

Yes, it doesn't help that most of the news is incredibly lazy and very easy to manipulate.