Alan Mislove and his team of computer scientists at Northeastern University have spent way too much time on Twitter. Over the course of three years, they’ve read and analyzed 300 million tweets from users across the country, cataloged the locations they were coming from, and scored them according to mood — words like “diamond,” “love,” and “paradise” indicate happiness, whereas “funeral,” “rape,” and “suicide” are negative (#JustinBieber has thus far been deemed neutral). The resulting Twitter Mood Map, which is rather grandly titled “Pulse of a Nation,” indicates that the West Coast is happier than the East Coast and, across the country, happiness peaks on Sunday mornings and bottoms out Thursday evenings. Oh, no, that’s tonight! #keepittogether #don’tletthosewestcoastjerkswin
Twitter mood maps reveal emotional states of America [New Scientist]
Pulse of the Nation [Northeastern University]
