re twitter - I think its that strange over compensation that parents seem to have got into. Anything a young person says has to be right and must be affirmed.
But I also think twitter is a sloppy journalists dream. ie they can sit back and wait until someone says something a bit nasty and they report it as twitter wars (I once looked up a reported twitter war and it was about 4 tweets).
But it is very much MSM picking out what it wants to amplify. It allows them to put into print things that they wouldn't normally be allowed to in terms of language and abuse.
Its a sort of vicious circle. The so called trolls are really just imitating the worst part of the tabloid press.
But none of this, as said above, justifies local councils, universities, the police or whoever acting as twitter was the peak of representative democracy.
As I have said many times (in fact quoting someone else) reporting twitter as news is about as representative as a journalist going to a sleazy bar and repeating what the drunks inside are saying, as though it was the ultimate in truth and polical analysis.