Sure, we know our two gubernatorial candidates’ positions on the economy, health care and education. But how manageable are their tweets?
Get your mind out of the gutter ” we’re talking about their entries on Twitter. On the morning of Oct. 19, we randomly selected five full-sentence tweets apiece from the front pages of Jari Askins’ and Mary Fallin’s Twitter accounts. Removing all “@” replies, URLs and post-sentence hashtags, we entered the text into an online reading level calculator. This one was based on the Flesch-Kincaid test, which measures comprehension difficulty of English passages through a formula too complex to outline here, because we slept through Algebra I and Algebra II.
An example of Fallin’s tested tweets: “Great day for the Robbers Cave Fall Festival in #Wilburton! Enjoying visiting with folks here”
An example of Askins’ tested tweets: “Darn wish you stopped by our tailgate today – at home games we’re at Lindsey and Asp or the Cleveland Co. Dems office”
The results? Incredibly close: Askins’ tweets earned an average grade-level score of 9.6 to Fallin’s 9.2. In terms of reading ease, the opponents are closely matched as well, with Askins earning a 53.6 vs. Fallin’s 52.6.
Per the Flesch-Kincaid test, the higher the score on reading ease, the more easily understood by younger people. (A 60-to-70 score is deemed easily understandable by students age 13 to 15.)
So there you have it. Remember, when you go to the polls Tuesday … that taking Twitter into account is an absolutely stupid move. Educate yourself on their platforms. #kthx
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2010.