Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They
AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e
BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German
Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who
By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an
Edition:
U.S.
Africa
Arabic
Argentina
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Latin America
Mexico
Russia
Spain
United Kingdom
Home
Business
Business Home
Economy
Technology
Media
Small Business
Green Business
Legal
Deals
Earnings
Summits
Business Video
Markets
Markets Home
U.S. Markets
European Markets
Asian Markets
Global Market Data
Indices
M&A
Stocks
Bonds
Currencies
Commodities
Futures
Funds
peHUB
World
World Home
U.S.
Brazil
China
Euro Zone
Japan
Mexico
Russia
Afghan Journal
Africa Journal
India Insight
Global News Journal
Pakistan: Now or Never?
World Video
Politics
Politics Home
Front Row Washington
Politics Video
Technology
Technology Home
MediaFile
Science
Tech Video
Opinion
Opinion Home
Chrystia Freeland
Felix Salmon
Jack Shafer
Breakingviews
George Chen
Bernd Debusmann
Gregg Easterbrook
Nader Mousavizadeh
James Saft
John Wasik
Christopher Whalen
Ian Bremmer
Mohamed El-Erian
Lawrence Summers
The Great Debate
Unstructured Finance
Newsmaker
MuniLand
Money
Money Home
Analyst Research
Global Investing
MuniLand
Reuters Money
Alerts
Watchlist
Portfolio
Stock Screener
Fund Screener
Personal Finance Video
Life & Culture
Health
Sports
Arts
Faithworld
Business Traveler
Left Field
Entertainment
Oddly Enough
Lifestyle Video
Pictures
Pictures Home
Reuters Photographers
Full Focus
Video
Article
Comments (0)
Follow Reuters
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
YouTube
Read
Ignore big money campaign to free Knox, prosecutor says
|
3:07pm EDT
Wasabi alarm, beetle sex win Ig Nobel spoof prizes
1:21pm EDT
Buffett backs Bank of America, buying more stocks
12:44pm EDT
Insight: America's rich losing tussle with taxman
12:51pm EDT
Bank of America to charge debit card use fee
29 Sep 2011
Discussed
63
Herman Cain wins Florida Republican straw poll
63
Business group appeals health law to Supreme Court
60
BofA to introduce $5 monthly debit card fee
Watched
Rihanna's "inappropriate" outfit halts music video
Tue, Sep 27 2011
Italy's Mount Etna erupts
Thu, Sep 29 2011
Japan airline apologises for plane flop
4:15am EDT
Twitter tells scientists how the world feels
Tweet
Share this
Email
Print
Related News
Facebook builds tighter integration with music, TV
Thu, Sep 22 2011
Twitter ramps up ad efforts, no rush for IPO
Thu, Sep 8 2011
Special Report: A pinch of doubt over salt
Thu, Sep 1 2011
Analysis & Opinion
More Whitney rebuttals
The “success†of workfare when jobs are scarce
Related Topics
Technology »
Media »
A Twitter page is displayed on a laptop computer in Los Angeles October 13, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON |
Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:00pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hate mornings, especially on Mondays? You may be surprised to know that much of the world doesn't share that grumpy feeling.
Twitter shows people are more cheerful in the morning, get gloomier as the day wears on and rebound in the evening, with a peak right before bedtime. They're also happier from December to late June, when days gradually lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere.
Using the micro-blogging site Twitter as a gauge of global sentiment, social scientists studied 509 million tweets from 2.4 million users in 84 countries between February 2008 and January 2010, according to research reported on Thursday in the journal Science.
Bad news, even if it happens to a complete stranger, brings Twitter users down, research by scientists from Cornell University suggests.
Twitter, the five-year-old site that lets users communicate 140-character posts, offers an unprecedented chance to study human behavior and social networks, the scientists said.
Those brief posts get down to the nitty-gritty, showing that Twitter users prefer bacon to sausage and Cheerios to Frosted Flakes, Cornell sociologist and co-author Michael Macy said in a telephone interview on Friday.
"Twitter offers an unprecedented opportunity for social and behavioral scientists to study social behavior and interaction in real time with high temporal granularity -- hour by hour, day by day, over the course of the year -- and to do this at population scale with millions of people all over the world," Macy said.
DON'T BLAME WORK
It may seem intuitive that most people's moods go downhill through the day, but Macy said previous studies have been inconclusive, possibly because they relied on unrepresentative samples, often college students.
The daily mood swing was the same on weekends as during the week, Macy said, "which suggests that it's not caused by work, because on the weekend most people are not working."
This rhythm was the same across the globe, he said, from India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand to Britain, Canada and the United States.
Going forward, Macy said his group will focus more on behavior and not just on feeling, and will "decompose" the mood into more specific emotions such as anxiety or depression, and even home in on such issues as references to body image.
To get a picture of the global mood, the scientists searched tweets for about 1,000 words that reliably indicate positive emotions -- "agree," "fantastic," "super" -- and negative ones, such as "afraid," "mad," and "panic."
The researchers considered up to 400 tweets from each person, and excluded those with fewer than 25 tweets.
The scientists noted a recent survey of U.S. Twitter users found they are 51 percent white, 24 percent African American and 17 percent Hispanic. People with college and advanced degrees and with higher household incomes show up in higher numbers. The researchers said this still makes their study more representative than earlier ones on college students.
In another study cited in Science, researchers at the University of Vermont created a timeline to track the last year in tweets, ending in early September 2011, showing the world's average happiness slid from last October.
The death of Osama bin Laden was the apparent low point, followed closely by the earthquake in Japan, the London riots in August, the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the death of Amy Winehouse.
Emotional highs, as tracked on Twitter, were the Christmas and New Year holidays, followed by Valentines Day, Thanksgiving and Easter. The wedding of Britain's Prince William to Kate Middleton was a bright spot, comparable to Easter and Father's Day.
(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Anthony Boadle)
Technology
Media
Tweet this
Link this
Share this
Digg this
Email
Reprints
We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/
Comments (0)
Be the first to comment on reuters.com.
Add yours using the box above.
Social Stream (What's this?)
Edition:
U.S.
Africa
Arabic
Argentina
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Latin America
Mexico
Russia
Spain
United Kingdom
Back to top
Reuters.com
Business
Markets
World
Politics
Technology
Opinion
Money
Pictures
Videos
Site Index
Legal
Bankruptcy Law
California Legal
New York Legal
Securities Law
Support & Contact
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Connect with Reuters
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
RSS
Podcast
Newsletters
Mobile
About
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Our Flagship financial information platform incorporating Reuters Insider
An ultra-low latency infrastructure for electronic trading and data distribution
A connected approach to governance, risk and compliance
Our next generation legal research platform
Our global tax workstation
Thomsonreuters.com
About Thomson Reuters
Investor Relations
Careers
Contact Us
Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.