Twitter Analysis: Studying US Weekly Trends in Work Stress and Emotion
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We propose the use of Twitter analysis as an alternative source of data to document weekly trends in emotion and stress, and attempt to use the method to estimate the work recovery effect of weekends. On the basis of 2,102,176,189 Tweets, we apply Pennebaker's linguistic inquiry word count (LIWC) approach to measure daily Tweet content across 18 months, aggregated to the US national level of analysis. We derived a word count dictionary to assess work stress and applied p‐technique factor analysis to the daily word count data from 19 substantively different content areas covered by the LIWC dictionaries. Dynamic factor analysis revealed two latent factors in day‐level variation of Tweet content. These two factors are: (a) a negative emotion/stress/somatic factor, and (b) a positive emotion/food/friends/home/family/leisure factor, onto which elements of work, money, achievement, and health issues have strong negative loadings. The weekly trend analysis revealed a clear “Friday dip” for work stress and negative emotion expressed on Twitter. In contrast, positive emotion Tweets showed a “mid‐week dip” for Tuesday‐Wednesday‐Thursday and “weekend peak” for Friday through Sunday, whereas work/money/achievement/health problem Tweets showed a small “weekend dip” on Fridays through Sundays. Results partially support the Effort‐Recovery theory. Implications and limitations of the method are discussed.
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Several works on depression have emerged based on social networks: Twitter and Facebook.
“Several works on depression have emerged.They are based on social networks: Twitter [23,24] and Facebook [25,26].”
From Survey on AI-Based Multimodal Methods for Emotion Detection (2019) · cites this paper as [23]
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Survey on AI-Based Multimodal Methods for Emotion Detection
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- Authors
- Wang, W., Hernandez, I., Newman, D. A., He, J., & Bian, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Central Florida (US)
- Northwestern University (US)
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Wichita State University USA
- University of Florida (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wang, Wei
- Venue
- Applied Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-03-15
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 355-378
- ISSN
- 0269-994X (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0597
- OpenAlex
- W2352058509
- Cited by
- 120
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 14.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Locations
- Applied Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research (submittedVersion)
- Holmes Museum Of Anthropology (Wichita State University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Emotion and Mood Recognition
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Workplace Health and Well-being
- Keywords
- occupational stress, emotions, Twitter, social media, LIWC, Friday effect, positive emotions, negative emotions, somatic symptoms
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