Spotted this story today : Cameron trialling government app http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20240874
I thought that the interesting part is that the PM appears to be using live social data to guage opinion as they ngs happen. Presumably then also that will influence decisions (otherwise, why bother).
You have to wonder how many accounts you'd need to post from to influence that. With the number of people i see having stuff posted to their fb & twitter without knowing about it, it isnt hard.
The mistake is to tell people where the data comes from. As soon as you know that, it can be manipulated.
"The New lobbiest"