How recession has affected the mood in the United Kingdom

Submitted by bill on Tue, 17/04/2012 - 02:00

In our latest paper ("Effects of the Recession on Public Mood in the UK", presented in MSND/SMANE at WWW'12), among other interesting results which are derived by performing mood analysis on Twitter content geolocated in the UK, we show that a steady increase in Anger and Fear was observed in the weeks predecing the UK riots (August, 2011).

Those two emotions have been steadily increasing after the announcement of budget cuts in October, 2010. The only "calming" period observed in the inferred mood time series occurred in early May, possibly due to the Royal Wedding.

An animation demonstrates some results of our paper. Mood of the Nation website shows live indications for the emotions of anger, fear, joy and sadness in several UK regions and is automatically updated on a daily basis.

More information about our work is available in this press release; our paper has also been featured by several mainstream or science media, including Mashable, New Scientist and BBC World News.