Studies I Wish I'd Thought Of: Tweets Reveal Mood of Nation

This morning's award for best headline summary of the scientific news release of the day goes to Britain's the Telegraph: "Twitter shows we get up happy but get grumpier as day wears on" .
The Telegraph gets bonus points for including a photo of a nubile young lady in bed waking up very happy. My morning paper, USA Today, brought this Cornell University study to my attention while I drank my coffee. USA Today presented the news with this headline: Twitter used to study happiness patterns - factual, succinct, but not riveting.

My own mini-scientific survey was to "Google" the phrase "Cornell Twitter study" to see who covered this news release and how did they headline it? The Cornell study was widely reported this morning. The abstract of the Twitter study can be found in the journal Science, released today.

Abstract: "We identified individual-level diurnal and seasonal mood rhythms in cultures across the globe, using data from millions of public Twitter messages. We found that individuals awaken in a good mood that deteriorates as the day progresses—which is consistent with the effects of sleep and circadian rhythm—and that seasonal change in baseline positive affect varies with change in day length. People are happier on weekends, but the morning peak in positive affect is delayed by 2 hours, which suggests that people awaken later on weekends."

The abstract sounds much more scientifically legitimate than the news coverage which dumbs down the topic considerably. My initial reaction was that this study was one of those dumb, "wow, ya think?" academic exercises, but because we can't read the whole article, it's hard to say. The library does get Science online through EBSCO, but not full text or in hard copy. In any case, the reports of this study got my attention, even though the study results seem obvious and here I am joining all the newspapers, tweeters, bloggers, emailers, Facebookers and so on passing this news on to you, but few of us will really read the whole report or understand its significance. I find that makes me feel that my head is full of tons of useless tidbits of information and that surely leads to a grumpy start to the day.

Why People Use Twitter

The Taxonomy of Tweeters: the 4 most commonly observed Subspecies of Tweeters as observed on http://twitter.com/

Homo Sapiens Twitteratus Narcissisti will tweet every little non-event in his day. eg: 'got up, drank coffee.' This Sub-species gave Twitter a bad name and led to much questioning of the worth of Twitter and often to questioning the worth of the entire species Homo Sapiens.

Although entertaining, Homo Sapiens Twitteratus Humoristi can be viewed as a non-essential, if persistant, variation in the evolution of the human species. Because dying is easy but humor is hard, we expect this subspecies to be on the threatened list for extinction, but those who do survive are quite hardy as they develop a thick skin and are not easily discouraged from tweeting.

Skipping to HST Lurker, these non-participants are followers, but not followed. Sadly, this gentle, quiet subspecies will not be as successful a genetic variation as Narcissisti despite the fact that many Homo Sapiens need to improve their listening skills.

HST Informationisti includes the variation Bibliotecaria which are regarded as the most valuable of all tweeters. If you look to your right on this blog, you will see a fine specimen of HSTI Bibliotecaria tweeting. http://twitter.com/bhplibrarian

There you have it. 'Til next time I, Rana Clamitans Bloggerati, venture out of the mud to explain it all to you.
- Fleur T. Frog

Hic vivit Ranas Fleur