Nowhere has this point been better proven in recent times than through the ongoing Australian cricketing ball tampering scandal which is still hogging the headlines here despite the Commonwealth Games being just two days away.

It has not so much been the scale of the outrage which it has affected, which would have been big whatever era it had happened in, but the speed with which the narrative has evolved and exploded.

Without wanting to delve too deeply into every twist and turn, which we have already explored in detail, the last week began with an almost universal sense of disgust, with anyone daring to defend the Australian players swiftly shouted down. Steve Smith, the now-former captain at the centre of the scandal, then gave an emotional press conference alongside his father on his return to Sydney in which he broke down in tears when taking "full responsibility".

This prompted many of the same group of ex-pros and assembled experts who had been leading the lynch-mob over the previous week to suddenly change their tune and tell us that he "hadn't killed anyone" and that we had been too quick to judge and punish.

Fast forward another day and the narrative had switched back to Smith and others having conned everybody through "crocodile tears". We were then told they had deserved all the abuse after all.

I studied the history of the Vietnam War as part of my university degree and how there was a gradual change over the next 50 years from support for the United States' actions to revisionist criticism and opposition and then back to more cautious backing.

The same sort of drastic shifts in perspectives can now take place in a matter of days rather than years.

Two questions struck me when thinking about this.

Does social media help or hinder sports stars?

And how has it affected our world of sports administration?

It is generally thought that social media has made it easier for athletes to communicate directly with fans without having to involve those pesky journalists who twist everything they say. They can cultivate their own persona, make statements and endorse sponsors to enhance their commercial potential.

There are several problems here, though.

Direct access with fans can lead to negative as well as positive interactions. There are only so many times a football fan is prepared to accept a bland "we will learn from this and improve" message after a defeat and they have a habit of seeing through some of the public relations driven nonsense.  

There are some restrictions on personal abuse on Twitter, but not many, and Canadian short-track speed skater Kim Boutin received death threats after winning a bronze at February's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang following a South Korean disqualification. 

Social media persuades people to act in a much more aggressive way than they would dream of in person and you get messages which do not conform with an individual's usually polite personality.

There definitely also remains a place for more forensic journalism into the world of social media to cut through some of the clumsier public relations mis-truths. Chris Froome, for example, who described Le Monde’s report that his salbutamol drug test failure had been sent to the International Cycling Union Anti-Doping Tribunal as "fake news" over the weekend, before deleting his tweet soon after.

Another problem concerns the lack of context possible through the prism of 140 or 280 characters. Arsenal and Germany footballer Per Mertesacker gave one of the most honest interviews I have ever read with a sportsman to German magazine Der Spiegel last month in which he opened up about the pressures and stresses of the professional game.

"In the moments before a game starts, my stomach turns around as if I had to vomit," Mertesacker, who is retiring and switching to the coaching ranks after this season, conceded. "Then I have to choke so violently until my eyes water." He explained that he no longer enjoys playing for Arsenal and views time spent injured as the one opportunity to escape and recover mentally. 

In a wide-ranging interview stretching to almost 4,000 words, Mertesacker repeatedly insisted how privileged he also felt he was to have been a professional footballer but said he was seeking to explain some of the hidden pressures felt by many.

Unfortunately, much of the social media reaction and follow-up articles centered around how he would "rather sit in the stands" than play for Arsenal. There were a lot of supportive comments but many others lambasted him for supposedly being an ungrateful quitter.

British swimmer Lizzie Simmonds found herself embroiled in another wonderfully modern storm last month when tweeting an anecdote about how a lady in the next lane at a public pool had praised her and recommended her for a trial at a county club. When Simmonds told her she had in fact "been to a couple of Olympics", the lady replied: "Me too! What sports did you manage to get tickets for?"

Simmonds, predictably, then received 200 metres backstroke-worth of criticism for her supposed arrogance in presuming people should know who she was. "Oh yes how could the world not recognise @LizzieSimmonds1....oh wait, this is the first time I've heard of you," read one of the more hysterical responses.

Athletes are also far more likely to be caught and outed if they do something wrong and the medium of social media makes it far easier to highlight their transgressions and to whip-up a howling mob clamouring for a stronger punishment.

In the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for instance, Adam Pengilly went home early from Pyeongchang 2018 after his mysterious but disputed "physical contact" with a South Korean security guard generated a national frenzy against a supposedly racist and violent foreigner.

Camiel Eurlings also resigned as a member earlier this year after social media helped amplify allegations of domestic violence against a former girlfriend in 2015.

India's International Hockey Federation President Narinder Batra came a cropper after posting abusive messages on Facebook about Pakistan last year, although he has remained in his position.

Sporting bodies have harnessed the opportunities provided by social media in some ways, but less so in others.

Many have come up with innovative ways of showcasing their events and of giving us more insight into athletes and their respective sports. The "Olympics" Twitter handle, with its 6.24 million followers, also contains some brilliantly inspiring sporting montages and videos.

They haven't yet done as well, though, in working out how to prevent the trend of social media galvanising groups opposed to Olympic bids and helping them win referendums. Boston's failed bid for the 2024 Games was thwarted by a supremely effective "No Boston Olympics"-driven opposition lobby which out-maneuvered anything that the bid team and the United States Olympic Committee could muster.

Other referendum defeats can be explained by many factors but this is certainly one.

In many ways, this trend is not a sporting issue but a far wider one which has led to a flood of anti-establishment victories at political elections across the world.

We have noticed a surge in recent attempts from the IOC to argue and counter critical social media messages. I found this out to my cost as a post questioning Thomas Bach's visit to North Korea was swiftly criticised by IOC supporters, or those who wanted to be seen to support them publicly…

They are entitled to defend themselves, but it will take more to change perceptions of the organisation.

I too don't have a full answer for how to do this but all I can muster is that a good social media campaign is built around a message which is memorable and repetitive but also interesting.

Perhaps the two best IOC members on social media are St Lucia's Richard Peterkin and France's Tony Estanguet. Peterkin manages to be amusing, sarcastic and self-deprecating in subtly poking fun at some of the peculiarities of the Olympic world while defending its broader themes. The IOC administration do not seem to have yet realised that this actually makes the organisation seem more in touch and human than obdurately defending every single action come what may.

Estanguet was very good at ramming home the "Made for Sharing" philosophy and their infuriating yet effective "Gagnons Ensemble" hand gesture in post after post. I was with him during one promotional event in Marseille when he managed to persuade football legend Zinedine Zidane to display such a message.

Of course, social media support is not always an indication of wider backing and, as the IOC argue, it is the same 20 or 30 people - mainly journalists, ex-athletes and those involved in the anti-doping world - who lead online criticism of their stance on Russian doping. The views of the "silent majority" who exist beyond the world of Twitter are more important, although it could be argued that they too feel similarly...

To return to cricket, I solved one of those strange mysteries which has unconsciously plagued me since childhood last week. My grandmother, when alive, had always had this unexplained but pathological hatred of former England cricket captain Michael Atherton and would become visibly angry whenever his name was mentioned. I never understood why as he was from where she lived and always seemed the sort of intelligent, well-mannered person she would admire.

It transpires that she never forgave him for his role in a "dirt in the pocket" ball tampering incident in 1994 which led to him being fined but otherwise largely forgiven.

My gran, who never touched a computer or mobile phone in her life, had a long memory. People today largely have much shorter attention spans. Social media can rapidly enhance the scale of a scandal or criticism of an Olympic bid, but people will also swiftly move-on once a fresh source of outrage has appeared.

Social media is therefore both a blessing and a curse in the world of sport but no-one has quite yet worked out how to control it and best channel it to their advantage.