Twitter Provides Pulse of the Nation
A team of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University, studying the characteristics and dynamics of Twitter, released this report a couple of days ago. Over 300 million tweets were utilized to infer mood and user location, creating a rich, time lapsed mood map of the US.
A number of interesting trends can be observed in the data. First, overall daily variations can be seen (first graph), with the early morning and late evening having the highest level of happy tweets. Second, geographic variations can be observed (second graph), with the west coast showing happier tweets in a pattern that is consistently three hours behind the east coast.
I wonder how they characterized the thousands of #thankfulfor posts made over the past several months, many of which are sent to Twitter? We may need a follow up report!
Check out the video below - note that green corresponds to a positive mood and red is more negative. The Northeast in general needs a little work to catch up to the happy state of California. Florida seemed pretty happy as well - perhaps weather has something to do with the happiness level of our tweets. I know grey skies and slush certainly affect my mood.
Enjoy this fun study and may all your #thankfulfor posts and tweets be happy on this beautiful Friday!
Comments
Jen is part of the team behind Thankfulfor, the online gratitude journal community. You can learn more about her here and check out her own personal gratitude journal.Be a part of Thankfulfor and start your own journal today.
