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by m_mueller 3021 days ago
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.
2 comments

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