Researchers from George Mason University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison set up a fake blog with a news item on a new (and also fake) technological product called nanosilver that had several benefits and several risks. They then created two versions of the news post, one with comments that ran the gamut from supportive to skeptical but were civil, and one where the comments ran the same gamut but contained rude outbursts, obscenities and attacks on other commenters.
Office of Strategic Communication