Nielsen Is At It Again....

I just finished reading Nielsen’s article on the study he conducted with low-literacy users. One of the more interesting parts of the study had to do with testing content with both high and low literacy users. Nielsen found that low literacy users had higher responses to content that was more simple than high literacy users had to this same content.

To political professionals, this poses an interesting dilemma particularly when developing a message. Nielsen’s study essentially says that separate of ideological leanings, different types of style and content have different appeal to different users based on literacy. Does this mean that we should be stripping down our messages on the net to appeal to everyone or should we craft messages to users with higher literacy? Are these users more likely to be affected by the message based on their higher literacy?

I am inclined to think that messages should be targeted to higher literacy users. As someone who has an interest in sociology, I know that people with higher literacy rates are more likely to have an education, have a higher level of income and generally have higher rates of political participation. While it sounds somewhat callous, messages should be targeted to those who are going to be moved by them rather than having a broad based message that may get lost of users with higher literacy. This is something that most campaigns already practice, but this study is another interesting reminder.