> Papers in the 1700s had just as much dominance in speech as social media does today. The important difference is that less than a billionth of what people co

> Papers in the 1700s had just as much dominance in speech as social media does today. The important difference is that less than a billionth of what people communicate was through those newspapers. Nowadays? Maybe half is the the internet and most of that is through the big players (e.g. Facebook).