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]

There was a mass decrease in high though.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Sheesh, Psychohistory predicted this years ago...

[cdunlea]

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

[Xmas]

Dude! Awesome.

I'm totally posting this in my journal.

[Rick Barton]

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

[Xmas]

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]

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

[drf]

'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.