Since 2008, the duo has taken a random 10 percent of everything tweeted each day, seeking truths hidden in plain sight. As Dodds put it, “The word ‘Trump’ has been in the top 300 words all year this year, which he’s never done before. That’s more common than the word ‘God.’ ”But the Hedonometer, their flagship tool, seeks to quantify the world’s collective happiness — or lack thereof. “It just took on a different meaning.”)The Hedonometer then creates a weighted average of the day’s collective Twitter happiness or unhappiness, based on those words. All else being equal, Saturday is the week’s happiest day on Twitter, Tuesday the saddest.

Source: Washington Post December 31, 2020 11:03 UTC