I wonder whether this could be a manufactured opinion to an extent?

I mean, we now know that online forums are subverted and socially engineered to keep 'bad opinions' down.

Add to that the still persisting mass media with known effects - and I slowly start to think of the internet as being very much part of the 'mass media', too.

For example, I noticed a lot of articles in newspapers being written by journalists that have agendas that diverge completely from the opinions of the people commenting on an article. The next step, I'd guess, is to 'properly' police these comments....