Fox News and Twitter Join Forces for Republican Debate At the next Republican presidential primary debate on Monday night, Fox News will be measuring viewers" reactions to each answer on Twitter, the social Web site that acts as an online water cooler during big television events. Twitter users who are watching the debate will be encouraged to react using the hashtags #answer and #dodge - giving their assessment of whether the candidates are dodging or actually answering questions - and the results will be displayed in metered form on FoxNews.com. Afterward, when TV commentators are analyzing what happened at the debate, "we're going to try to pull some of this data into those conversations," said Jeff Misenti, the vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital. Fox News and Twitter tested the meters during an earlier debate in December. "Fox was game to experiment with us on something that hadn't been done before - real-time measurement of audience reaction over Twitter," said Adam Sharp, the manager of government and political partnerships for Twitter in Washington. He added that Twitter executives had already been impressed by the Twitter use of Bret Baier, the Fox anchor who will be moderating the debate. The partnership between Fox News and Twitter is the latest in a wave of online extensions to the 2012 presidential debates. CNN used a Twitter hashtag to highlight debate reactions on its Web site last year; NBC News teamed up with Facebook for a debate; and ABC News promoted a way to see campaign "spin" in real time. Twitter is calling this the first "Twitter election." Televised debates are chances for it and other companies to show off their audience bases, and for TV networks like Fox to experiment with new technology. Mr. Misenti cautioned that "one of the traps that we can all fall into right now is using technology to be cute." As long as that's avoided, he said, the data gathered from a site like Twitter can add value to both TV and Web news coverage.