Surprised noone here has mentioned yet that Pope Francis was only the second pope ever with a social-media strategy (Pope Benedict was the first, in 2012 [0][1], and didn't get as much traction as Pope Francis).
"The Most Followed World Leaders on Social Media 2022" [2] ranked Pope Francis 3rd in 2022 with 53m followers, which is/was still low compared to singers, sports stars, celebrities and tech figures. It would obviously be crass and reductive to try to estimate the Pope's impact this way (and not, say, country visits, appointments, encyclicals, other official statements, reaction/criticism by other religous/political figures, administrative and legal actions, measures of popularity by specific groups, by factions, by country, by politics or religion), but as traditional media channels become less relevant, the Vatican will presumably have to move with the times, as in many other ways.
Maybe the better question (as Dick Cheney would have put it) is which voices do/don't determine the media narrative on Pope Francis' papacy?
As to your take (that he was wasn't that far out of line with Catholic doctrine, but often portrayed as more liberal and constantly taken out of context), that's the debate we're largely about to see happen.
[0]: "Pope Joins Twitter: Benedict XVI's Screenname Will Be @Pontifex" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4897631
[2]: https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/the-most-followed-world...