Twitter can reveal our shared mood

In
the largest study of its kind, researchers from the University of Bristol have
analysed mood indicators in text from 800 million anonymous messages posted on
Twitter. These tweets were found to reflect strong patterns of positive and
negative moods over the 24-hour day.

Circadian
rhythms, widely referred to as the ‘body clock’, allows people’s bodies to
predict their needs over the dark and light periods of the day. Most of this circadian
activity is regulated by a small region in the hypothalamus of the brain called
the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is particularly sensitive to light changes
at dawn and dusk, and sends signals through nerves and hormones to every tissue
in the body.

The research team looked at the use
of words relating to positive and negative emotions, sadness, anger, and
fatigue in Twitter over the course of four years. The public expressions of
affect and fatigue were linked to the time they appeared on the social platform
to reveal changes within the 24-hours. Whilst previous studies have shown a
circadian variation for positive and negative emotions the current study was
able to differentiate specific aspects of anger, sadness, and fatigue.

Lead author and machine learning
researcher Dr Fabon Dzogang, in collaboration with neuroscientist
and current British Neuroscience Association President, Professor Stafford Lightman from Bristol Medical School: THS, and Nello Cristianini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence from the Departmentof Engineering Mathematics, have found distinct patterns of positive
emotions and sadness between the weekends and the weekdays, and evidence of
variation of these patterns across the seasons.

Dr Fabon Dzogang, research associate in the Department of Computer Science, said:

“Our research revealed strong circadian patterns
for both positive and negative moods. The profiles of anger and fatigue were
found remarkably stable across the seasons or between the weekdays/weekend. The
patterns that our research revealed for the positive emotions and sadness
showed more variability in response to these changing conditions, and higher
levels of interaction with the onset of sunlight exposure. These techniques
that we demonstrated on the social media provide valuable tools for the study
of our emotions, and for the understanding of their interaction within the
circadian rhythm.”

Stafford Lightman, Professor of
Medicine and co-author, added: “Since many mental health disorders are
affected by circadian rhythms, we hope that this study will encourage others to
use social media to help in our understanding of the brain and mental
health disorders.”

Paper

‘Circadian mood variations in Twitter content’ by Fabon Dzogang, Stafford Lightman and
Nello Cristianini in Brain and
Neuroscience Advances