Twitter really shines at this kind of thing, much more effective even than the massive protest Facebook groups were because it can more quickly connect like minded people, even if they don't happen to already be friends.
Now when some news breaks that I'm skeptical about, or if I want to get a quick poll of the public mood, Twitter search is the first thing I turn to.
It's like a massive town square for the whole world.
The problem with using Twitter for polls is the sample (Twitter users) is very homogenous and very unrepresentative of the target population, that is unless your target population is Twitter users.
Now when some news breaks that I'm skeptical about, or if I want to get a quick poll of the public mood, Twitter search is the first thing I turn to.
It's like a massive town square for the whole world.