We wouldn?t be surprised if the now-ubiquitous advice, ?Don?t read the comments,? was likely first uttered soon after online readers were given the ability to leave notes at the end of blog posts, news stories, or whatever online content that they were watching or reading on the Internet (those four words of conventional wisdom even has its own dedicated Twitter feed.) Now, however, there is empirical evidence suggesting that reading the comments can actually affect the way that you understand the original story.
Office of Strategic Communication