It's not just the speed of communication, it's the scale of communication. Someone can light up thousands of bot accounts to push a particular message in minutes and reach millions of people in the next hour, subtly manipulating them based on mass amounts of data available to individually target people vulnerable to your specific campaign

Whereas in the days of newspapers, you had to get it in the newspaper. You had to get it printed, and that newspaper would only reach so many people in so much time due to the literal physical limitations of time and distance. Many of the people that would be reached may not be interested in or vulnerable to what you are trying to state.

The newspaper equivalent of today is a newspaper that is made as a special case for each person it's being delivered to, specifically tailored to take advantage of their political leanings, their fears, their ignorance, and so on and so forth.