Sentiment and Presentiment in Twitter: Do Trends in Collective Mood “Feel the Future”?

Abstract

Abstract Meta-analyses of experiments investigating human behavioral and physiological reactions to unpredictable future events suggest the existence of a poorly understood ability to “feel the future.” Is this effect reflected in sentiment metrics based on social media posts? To find out, analysis of 13 years of daily Twitter sentiment data in 10 languages was examined two weeks prior to events assessed as significantly negative and unpredictable, including acts of terrorism, mass shootings, unexpected deaths of celebrities, etc. Results of the analysis was statistically significant (p = 0.001), suggesting the existence of a form of collective presentiment.