“Both the technology itself, and the way we choose to use the technology, makes it so that what ought to be a conversation is just a set of Post-it notes that are scattered,” Kerric Harvey, author of the Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, said of Twitter. “Not even on the refrigerator door, but on the ground.”
“She argues that what we do on Twitter around politics isn’t a conversation at all; it’s a loud mess. So, if Twitter is a bunch of Post-it notes thrown on the ground, we now have to consider which of those notes are even real.” (Sanders)
I disagree that this is the real question. If Twitter is a mess of statements no longer than 140-characters, the question is why do the brief statements affect people as much as it does? Referring of course to the examples centered around the short but catty Twitter feud between Hillary Clinton and Jeff Bush, as well as the fact that Trump was not allowed to use his own Twitter account after a number of embarrassing and petty responsive tweets. Why does a certain arrangement of a select amount of words even prove to be worth producing a reaction to these important people? Especially when compared to full articles written with the specific objective to provoke a reaction from the candidates to arise, or at least to introduce a talking point to develop into a conversation they think is worth to have.
Sanders mentions in his piece how Twitter is user-friendly and mostly used because it gives everyone a ‘voice’. However once each individual has their own voice, they usually side with others who express a similar opinion through their ‘voice’. Sanders brings up the topic of how social media has been more of a platform in this election than any other election, and therefore has been an important outlet for campaigning for the candidates. After consideration, it’s interesting to think about this being the cause behind the candidates’ reactions over Twitter, however Sanders could have gone into further depth about the theory.
samshep 
This is an interesting question, but how do you see Sanders offering any kind of answer to it? Is there something in Sanders’ piece that could help us begin to answer this question the way you’ve phrased it here?
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Developed further. How’s it look now?
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So your question is, “Why does a certain arrangement of a select amount of words even prove to be worth producing a reaction to these important people?”, but you see Sanders as addressing it by pointing out that “social media has been more of a platform in this election than any other”? Is that right? If so, I don’t see the how the latter serves as any kind of response to the former.
Perhaps you could reformulate this in terms of Carmody’s “three-step dance”: link, pull, response. Link to Sanders, pull a single relevant passage that makes a statement about which you have a question, and then write a short response that ends with a question.
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