There is an increasingly interesting power struggle between the national press – wrongly labelled in past times as "the mass media" – and its democratic digital replacement, "the media of the masses".

Although newspapers are still able to set the news agenda, they now have to come to terms with the fact that people have platforms that enable them to not only answer back but also switch the agenda.

So it was yesterday when the Mail on Sunday was confronted by widespread anger across social media, notably Twitter, over its two-page article about food banks. The paper's "special investigation", headlined "No ID, no checks … and vouchers for sob stories: the truth behind those shock food bank claims", suggested that claims about the scale of Britain's welfare problems had been exaggerated.

Three MoS reporters, Simon Murphy, Sanchez Manning and Ross Slater, revealed that Britain's biggest food bank provider, the Trussell Trust, had failed to run proper checks on people claiming food parcels. It was therefore being abused by "scroungers". One of the trio, Slater, reported how he got three days of food simply by telling staff at a Citizens Advice bureau, without providing any proof, that he was unemployed.

The report also claimed that many food parcel claimants were asylum seekers, and cast doubt on the trust's claims that almost 1 million people would use one of its food banks this year, up 163% on the previous year.

Reaction against the MoS's anti-food bank message was swift. The Twittersphere hummed with anger as people argued that the article discredited the mission of food banks to help the poor. One tweet said: "No, no Daily Mail [sic]. The scandal isn't that food bank volunteers didn't check your cretins' ID. The scandal is that food banks exist at all."

(Many commenters, incidentally, including the trust itself, named the Daily Mail rather than the Mail on Sunday as the culprit. They are separate entities with different editors).

Several people also put their money where their mouths were by making donations to the Trussell Trust. Before the article was published there had been about 250 public donations to the trust's JustGiving page since late January. In less than a day that jumped to more than 2,800 worth more than £30,000, according to a BuzzFeed report. A number of donors cited the MoS article as the reason for making a contribution.

While the paper took the brunt of the Twitter attacks, the reporters also suffered considerable flak: "Hi @murphy_simon your piece about food banks is the cruellest most disgusting piece of journalism iv ever read even by mos standards congrats."

Journalism graduate Nicole Froio was incensed by Slater's role, writing in her blog: "This report is essentially a non-story. Man pretends to be in need of food, food bank questions him about his unemployment, food bank gives him £40 worth of food to feed his family. So food banks are basically doing their job – what Slater is 'proving' is that there is a minority of people who might take advantage of this system. Which we already know."

I note that Murphy did not take to his Twitter account to respond, nor did Manning. But Slater, in the wake of the furore, returned his food parcel, tweeting: "All food returned to saint Philip church Notts at 0930 plus small donation". His gesture merely earned him, and the paper, yet more expletive-laden abuse.

I tried to reach Slater, a northern-based MoS correspondent, to ask him about his reaction to the Twitter reaction. Was he humbled by it? Does he regret his reporting? No luck at the time of writing. What strikes me, as it must have done him, is the way in which the intention behind the article – to belittle the food bank initiative – was turned on its head by the social media backlash.

But it is important to place "the Twittersphere" in context. By its nature it is not an homogenous entity. It is entirely plausible to imagine that a MoS spread advocating food banks would have generated a huge rightwing reaction on Twitter. That factor alone makes it unlikely that this kind of Twitter storm will result in a change of behaviour by the press.

Reporters in popular papers who are subject to personal attacks may dislike them, but they will argue that they are not wholly responsible for what they write. Editors dictate the agenda.

That said, the MoS editor, Geordie Greig, has a good record on helping the poor. In his previous post as editor of the London Evening Standard he was responsible for the award-winning "Dispossessed" campaign.

I understand he regarded the food bank investigation as a legitimate inquiry to ensure the system was working as it should, and regards the backlash as a relatively minor one.

He is not amused, however, that his paper is widely viewed as being no different from the Daily Mail.