Emotional Weather Report

The Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam is attempting to track the Web's emotions, as revealed by the "mood" tags in LiveJournal. The day of the London attacks brought sharp spikes in sorrow, shock, and anxiety, noticeable dips in happiness and complacency, and, impressively, no great increase in the number of livejournalists describing themselves as "drunk."

Comments

Gary | July 9, 2005, 3:30pm | #

There was a mass decrease in high though.

Douglas Fletcher | July 9, 2005, 11:36pm | #

Sheesh, Psychohistory predicted this years ago...

cdunlea | July 10, 2005, 1:27am | #

I'm amazed at the ways people can con others into paying them good money for their "research."

Xmas | July 10, 2005, 8:18pm | #

Dude! Awesome.

I'm totally posting this in my journal.

Rick Barton | July 10, 2005, 11:38pm | #

I'm skeptical. What's the methodology used to determine mood levels?

Xmas | July 11, 2005, 8:15am | #

Rick,

It's a self-reported mood. There's a batch of pregenerated moods that Livejournal posters can select when they make a post.

Take a look at the "sleepy" chart.

SPD | July 11, 2005, 10:08am | #

My mood is "impressed with Jesse Walker" after seeing the Tom Waits reference in the header of this post.

drf | July 11, 2005, 11:00am | #

'and, impressively, no great increase in the number of livejournalists describing themselves as "drunk."'

that's because Warren hasn't been posting as much recently.