For my, the most successful strategy I've found is to have a handful of academics and journalists that you trust and who cover a sufficient breadth of topics, and reading their articles/blogs/twitter feed. Then adding a few contrarians who I strongly disagree with just to challenge me a bit.

If you're not careful, you can fall into the same traps with social media as with mainstream media: 1. getting reporting from people who lack context on the issues, or 2. getting a distorted view of which issues are important.