Blog formats (which includes mastodon) always lend themselves to either screaming into the void or following influential people screaming into the void. Forums (which includes lemmy) have always offered an easier point of entry because there's a set topic to start out. Same goes for chat rooms, I think. Meanwhile I think blog formats get an outsized portion of media coverage because they feel familiar. They're formatted like a newspaper with journalists shouting into the void and op ed pieces being a slightly contextualized version of screaming into the void. Twitter has always been a smaller part of the internet than Facebook, YouTube, or any of the other big names really, but it gets an outsized piece of coverage because journalists like it