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19 Mar, 2014

Did you catch your bad mood from Facebook? – Hindustan Times

Can you “catch a mood” from spending time on social media? Researchers from the University of California, San Diego believe so. Their study, published in PLOS ONE, analysed over a billion anonymised status updates from more than 100 million Facebook users located in major US cities.

It took place over 1,180 days, between January 2009 and March 2012. The study found “positive posts beget positive posts,” while negative posts resulted in more negative posts. However, positive posts appear more “contagious.”

Researchers used automated text analysis through the software program Linguistic Inquiry Word Count to measure emotional content in Facebook posts. Names and words used in said posts were not viewed.

Read the rest: Did you catch your bad mood from Facebook? – Hindustan Times.