America¿s moods mapped using Twitter

(FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - A Twitter mood map developed by a computer scientist reveals the emotional state of hundreds of millions of Americans throughout the day.

Researchers at Northeastern and Harvard have found that these Tweets suggest the West Coast is happier than the East Coast. In addition, the country seems happiest on Sundays and saddest on Thursdays.

The early morning and late evening appear to be the happiest times throughout the day, with the period from about noon to 3 p.m. EST being the least happy. Looking at weekly trends, weekends are unsurprisingly happier times than weekdays, with the peak of happiness occurring on Sunday morning and the pits coming on Thursday night.

About 300 million Tweets were analyzed and each one was awarded a mood score based on the number of positive or negative words it contained. The researchers used a system called Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW), which assigns a positive or negative emotional value to words.

A calculation of scores hour by hour created a timed series of mood maps.