Twitter As Mood Ring: How Tweets Can Be Used To Study Feelings Nationwide

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by Frances Martel | 7:32 pm, July 29th, 2010

» 5 comments

To all those naysayers who think Twitter is a waste of time: Northeastern University has conducted a fascinating study using the social networking tool to determine national mood. According to a report by Fox News, they have developed a computer program that can identify mood signal words in tweets and compile them such that one can perceive the mood across the country at any given time of day.

According to Dr. Keith Ablow of the Fox News Medical A-Team, the “mood map,” which shows the evolution of happiness across the country throughout the day, is based on code words that indicate mood, and can be used to “kind of eavesdrop on how America is feeling,” and, in the future, see the reaction of various nationwide news items on the mood of the nation.

The preliminary map shows that people are happier in the morning and their mood declines as the day wears on. Does that mean Americans are all morning people? Not exactly. Besides the obvious time zone issues, Dr. Ablow believes there is a possibility that people are in higher spirits while they are sending their messages, but that does not mean that is their overall mood in the morning. For more, our sister site Geekosystem has an extensive analysis of the study.

Check out the map and Fox News’ analysis of the study below:

fox news, Keith Ablow, moods, Northeastern University, twitter

errxn

Summary: Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered that pretty much every American Twitter user hates their fucking job.

They needed to study Twitter to figure that out?
Andrew Tyndall

Giving a hat tip to FNC amounts to a slap in the face to Richard Schlesinger, who already filed on the same story a week ago for CBS Evening News.
http://SailRabbits.com Magister

@Andrew: You’ve been around long enough to know that nobody on Mediaite watches the network broadcasts and if they did, it’d likely not be CBS. This is really no reflection of Frances because the blog has other priorities and I’m sure that if this was somebody else’s piece, they likely defend by saying how the model is dead.
http://SailRabbits.com Magister

PS) For the record: The comment that I made to another blog which prompted my email admonishment from Colby was when I joked that the site overplays Fox for the pageviews, while ignoring Katie Couric.
ifpff

The map makes it look like we’re all going down a drain. Probably because we’re on our blackberries and computers all day, telling a website how we’re feeling.

And does it factor in people who don’t use Twitter, like most people that DON’T live on either coast?