Following Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: A dissection of their tweets in the 2016 U.S. presidential election

• Published in: First Monday Vol. 28; no. 2; p. 1
• Main Authors: Akman, Varol, Yenimol, Mehmetali Semi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago Library 07.02.2023
• Subjects: Candidates; Clinton, Hillary Rodham; Political campaigns; Presidential elections; Social networks; Trump, Donald J; United States > US
• ISSN: 1396-0466; 1396-0466
• DOI: 10.5210/fm.v28i2.10154

In this work, the tweets of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign are studied and analyzed from a language-based perspective. The tweets are divided into two batches. The first is from the earliest announcement of candidacy until the last announcement of nomination of candidates. The second is between the end of the first interval and the inauguration of Trump. Readability statistics of tweets are computed and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) words — subject of much cramming by test takers — in the tweets are analyzed, as well as Ogden’s Simple English words. Some of the readability indexes exhibit minor differences, implying that Clinton’s tweets are more readable whereas the other readability indexes are proximate for the candidates. Clinton’s use of unique SAT words is found to be denser than Trump’s, indicating that employing such words less might be wiser for political campaigns. Simple English analysis does not tell of a noticeable difference. Syntactic Dependency Distance of tweets and Integrative Complexity of tweets were also analyzed but no significant difference for the two candidates was discerned.