The Wee County has the most sweary Twitter users in Scotland.

A week-long study found that 7.33 per cent of tweets from Clackmannanshire contained swearing – more than anywhere else in Scotland and second only to Redcar and Cleveland across the UK.

Researchers from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London monitored all geo-located tweets sent from smartphones in the UK from 28 August to 4 September.

The study was conducted for an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Future Proofing which discussed whether civility can survive in an age of increasing globalised trade and technology.

More than 1.3 million tweets were analysed and using geo-location researchers were able to create a map of the UK corresponding to the most coarse language.

Redcar and Cleveland in North Yorkshire came out on top with 7.89 per cent of tweets containing swearing.

Next was Clackmannanshire with 7.33 per cent followed by East Ayrshire (7.24 per cent) and Falkirk (7.12 per cent).

More profane tweets were found in weekday mornings – when people were getting ready for work – at lunchtime and at the end of the working day.

Other spikes in swearing came on Saturday and Sunday afternoons during football matches.

The Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands contained the lowest percentage of profane tweets with just 0.81 per cent and 0.84 per cent, respectively.

They were followed by Oxford (1.38 per cent) and Westminster (1.40 per cent).

Dr Hannah Fry, one of the researchers behind the study who presented Future Proofing’s civility episode last Wednesday, said, “Twitter has a reputation for being really the home of angry, aggressive messages that people send each other, but I was a bit surprised that across the entire week, only 4.2 per cent of all tweets contained any kind of profanity.

“I think it says something a little more positive perhaps about how aggressive or civil we can be to one another.” She added, “Surveying the whole of the UK, it doesn’t appear as though there’s a clear distinction between rural and urban areas, and certainly nothing really to support this idea that people are much less civil to each other within cities.

“In fact, based on our study – which does contain only a week’s worth of data – most of the top ten are actually taken up by rural areas rather than urban.” Top 5 most profane areas (by local authority) Percentage of tweets containing swearing 1. Redcar and Cleveland 7.89 2. Clackmannanshire 7.33 3. East Ayrshire 7.24 4. Falkirk 7.12 5. Strabane 6.90 Top 5 least profane areas (by local authority) Percentage of tweets containing swearing 1. Orkney Islands 0.81 2. Shetland Islands 0.84 3. Oxford 1.38 4. Westminster 1.40 5. Kensington and Chelsea 1.47 PROVOST Tina Murphy said she was ‘horrified’ at the Wee County’s offensive honour.

The Tullibody councillor, who doesn’t tweet herself, said the use of foul language was indicative of the times we live in.

She said, “I am surprised or maybe horrified is a better word to use. Personally I think people should, in whatever way they are communicating, watch how they are speaking and presenting themselves. Sometimes I think people forget that Twitter is not a private conversation.” She added, “It’s not something I was brought up to do. I think it’s particularly the younger generation – though not all of them – but some find it hard to construct a sentence that doesn’t use certain words.”