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The political debate in Wisconsin continues to heat up, and we're provided with another story which looks to stoke the flame. Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy (R), a newly appointed U.S Representative from Wisconsin's 7th district has caught the attention of the online world for a YouTube clip of a Polk County town hall meeting. Duffy was asked questions concerning his salary, and his answers have raised the eyebrows of many who have seen it. The story is of particular interest because after the clip was posted on YouTube, the Polk County GOP looked to take it down.

As social media manager for the University of Wisconsin-Madison (@UWMadison), I frequently try out new platforms to see if our students are using them and if they might become useful tools for my campus. For the past 18 months, I've channeled my inner mayor on Foursquare, a location-based social network.

"In their newest study, they show that independent of the content of an article about a new technological development, the tone of comments posted by other readers can make a significant difference in the way new readers feel about the article's subject. The less civil the accompanying comments, the more risk readers attributed to the research described in the news story. "The day of reading a story and then turning the page to read another is over," Scheufele says. "Now each story is surrounded by numbers of Facebook likes and tweets and comments that color the way readers interpret even truly unbiased information. This will produce more and more unintended effects on readers, and unless we understand what those are and even capitalize on them, they will just cause more and more problems." If even some the for-profit media world and advocacy organizations are approaching the digital landscape from a marketing perspective, Brossard and Scheufele argue, scientists need to turn to more empirical communications research and engage in active discussions across disciplines of how to most effectively reach large audiences."