Researchers Using Tweets to Gauge Mood of Nation
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Researchers from Northeastern and Harvard Universities are studying the nation's Twitter tweets, reports Slate.com. Taking samples from more than 300 million posts between September 2006 and August 2009, the researchers noted both mood, time of day and location.
The early results, in a colorful map of number of tweets and level of happiness, indicate that California appears to be a much happier place than New York--at least by tweeting standards. Perhaps not such a big surprise--A study late last year named New York state last in happiness.
Writes Slate's Steve Spillman:
"Now—what the hell is with New York (where I live)? The happiest we ever get is a weird shade of peach, which is not very happy at all. California, on the other hand, is nearly always green. California is even really happy at 5 a.m. PST! Nobody is actually happy that early! Way to confirm every sorry stereotype about how depressed the East Coast is in comparison with the West, Twitter.
"The states seem to all get bummed right after lunch and before the end of the workday, around 2 p.m. or so (which, because of the time difference, is at 5 p.m. EST for the West Coast). That’s totally the worst time of day, and people are probably just tweeting things like “Ugh, I hate this dayyyyyyy!”
(Photo credit: Matt Hamm; C.C. 2.0)
