I SAY THIS VERY THING IN MY FORTHCOMING BOOK ON SOCIAL MEDIA PRETTY MUCH: The Problem Isn’t Twitter. It’s That You Care About Twitter: Political leaders believe that the views they encounter online are representative of the “general public.” They’re not.

In my book, I remark: “One reason why social media has the impact it has is because the people who run big organizations grant it more power than it really possesses. Lots of journalists are on Twitter and write about it (after all, writing about what happens on Twitter doesn’t even require you to leave your office or make a phone call, and the quotes are already online, ready to cut and paste). With that coverage, what happens on social media seems important. And at every big organization, whether it’s a corporation, a government agency, or a university, there’s now some sort of social-media specialist. Almost always, the organization’s reaction is channeled through social media specialists, and social media specialists are the very last people who are going to tell their bosses that it’s safe to ignore social media. But, in fact, it usually is.”

Twitter sentiment is a styrofoam iceberg. You may think 9/10 of it is underwater, but actually, 9/10 of it is visible. (Bumped).