85 research outputs found
Twitter reciprocal reply networks exhibit assortativity with respect to happiness
The advent of social media has provided an extraordinary, if imperfect, 'big
data' window into the form and evolution of social networks. Based on nearly 40
million message pairs posted to Twitter between September 2008 and February
2009, we construct and examine the revealed social network structure and
dynamics over the time scales of days, weeks, and months. At the level of user
behavior, we employ our recently developed hedonometric analysis methods to
investigate patterns of sentiment expression. We find users' average happiness
scores to be positively and significantly correlated with those of users one,
two, and three links away. We strengthen our analysis by proposing and using a
null model to test the effect of network topology on the assortativity of
happiness. We also find evidence that more well connected users write happier
status updates, with a transition occurring around Dunbar's number. More
generally, our work provides evidence of a social sub-network structure within
Twitter and raises several methodological points of interest with regard to
social network reconstructions.Comment: 22 pages, 21 figures, 5 tables, In press at the Journal of
Computational Scienc
Temporal patterns of happiness and information in a global social network: Hedonometrics and Twitter
Individual happiness is a fundamental societal metric. Normally measured
through self-report, happiness has often been indirectly characterized and
overshadowed by more readily quantifiable economic indicators such as gross
domestic product. Here, we examine expressions made on the online, global
microblog and social networking service Twitter, uncovering and explaining
temporal variations in happiness and information levels over timescales ranging
from hours to years. Our data set comprises over 46 billion words contained in
nearly 4.6 billion expressions posted over a 33 month span by over 63 million
unique users. In measuring happiness, we use a real-time, remote-sensing,
non-invasive, text-based approach---a kind of hedonometer. In building our
metric, made available with this paper, we conducted a survey to obtain
happiness evaluations of over 10,000 individual words, representing a tenfold
size improvement over similar existing word sets. Rather than being ad hoc, our
word list is chosen solely by frequency of usage and we show how a highly
robust metric can be constructed and defended.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables. Supplementary Information: 1 table,
52 figure
On the long and short nulls, modes and interpulse emission of radio pulsar B1944+17
We present a single pulse study of pulsar B1944+17, whose non-random nulls
dominate nearly 70% of its pulses and usually occur at mode boundaries. When
not in the null state, this pulsar displays four bright modes of emission,
three of which exhibit drifting subpulses. B1944+17 displays a weak interpulse
whose position relative to the main pulse we find to be frequency independent.
Its emission is nearly 100% polarized, its polarization-angle traverse is very
shallow and opposite in direction to that of the main pulse, and it nulls
approximately two-thirds of the time. Geometric modeling indicates that this
pulsar is a nearly aligned rotator whose alpha value is hardly 2 degrees--i.e.,
its magnetic axis is so closely aligned with its rotation axis that its
sightline orbit remains within its conal beam. The star's nulls appear to be of
two distinct types: those with lengths less than about 8 rotation periods
appear to be pseudonulls--that is, produced by "empty" sightline traverses
through the conal beam system; whereas the longer nulls appear to represent
actual cessations of the pulsar's emission engine
Positivity of the english language
Abstract Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant with respect to frequency of word use
Positivity of the English language
Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a
fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation.
People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the
central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural
language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively
biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of
the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More
deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four
large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant
with respect to frequency of word use.Comment: Manuscript: 9 pages, 3 tables, 5 figures; Supplementary Information:
12 pages, 3 tables, 8 figure
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