But the social media battles have shown that Sanders’s supporters also have become a major hurdle for the candidate in building a positive image with the black electorate.

It's a little ridiculous to explore things like Twitter trends of 'harassment' and expect them to reflect the real world. I say this for the same reason ideas about a candidate's popularity cannot be tied to their amount of likes/followers/retweets/etc.

Bots. There are so many bots on social media. Right now, everyone knows they're a great way to gain audiences and drive clicks towards affiliate marketing sites. Since Google's updates have made it harder for crap sites to get ranked high and fast, a lot of those marketers have migrated towards social media. They build legions of fake followers, use scripts to handle the account's day to day activity, and then drive traffic to their money page. Then they scale.

There are bundles of software that can help you make an unlimited amount of accounts. Why do we measure how much Twitter followers candidates gain after a debate? Are you seriously telling me they didn't just buy every single one? Plus, anyone can automate Addmefast and gain thousands of likes and followers in an hour. Go to BlackhatWorld's social media section and you'll see a tiny portion of the methods used by people all over the world to manipulate social media trends. And most of those methods are relatively cheap.

Now, I'm not suggesting that all of these Twitter attacks are fake. But I will say that a hefty advertising budget can definitely distort perceptions about any brand/candidate/phenomenon on social media. TV ads for the internet generation.