Researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University are currently studying the characteristics and dynamics of Twitter. As part of that research, the team is looking at how mood varies in different parts of the U.S. throughout the day measured by tweets. Tweets were analyzed using Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) which provides a set of normative emotional ratings for a large number of words in the English language.
An analysis of the tweets has resulted in a YouTube video which attempts to show mood changes in different parts of the country over time through color changes on a map. The map is not a traditional one since the shape of geographic areas are not based on true land area, but on the number of tweets being measured which equalizes density.
A trend noted by researchers is that people tend to be happier on weekends than weekdays. Another shows that early morning and late evening seems to have the highest level of “happy tweets” while geographically the west coast shows happier tweets that tend to be three hours behind the east coast.
Read more at the Pulse of the Nation website.