The link between hot weather and aggressive crime iswell established.
But can the same be said for online aggression, such as angry tweets?
And is online anger a predictor of assaults?
Our studyjust publishedsuggests the answer is a clear no.
We found angry tweet counts actually increased in cooler weather.
And as daily maximum temperatures rose, angry tweet counts decreased.
This is the first study to compare patterns of assault and social media anger with temperature.
Givenanger spreadsthrough online communities faster than any other emotion, the findings have broad implications especially under climate change.
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A caricature of US President Donald Trump, whos been known to fire off an angry tweet.
Some 4.7 million Australians, or 19%, use Twitter.
This widespread social media use provides researchers with valuable opportunities to gather information.
Our study involved 74.2 million English-language Twitter posts or tweets from 2015 to 2017 in New South Wales.
Of the ten coldest days, the average angry tweet count was higher at 3,354 per day.
So why the opposite patterns?
We propose two possible explanations.
First,hotandcoldweather triggers a physiological response in humans.
In some people, this in turn affects physical aggression levels.
Hot weather means more socializing, and potentially less time for tweeting.
This includes more time outdoors, increased socializing, and drinking alcohol.
Those same factors time outdoors and more socializing may reduce the opportunity or motivation to tweet.
However, this theoryisnt well supported.
The relationship is more likely due to the vastly different demographics of Twitter users and assault offenders.
Assault offendersare most likely to be young men from low socio-economic backgrounds.
Our study did not consider why these two groups differ in response to temperature.
Twitter users are more likely to be middle-aged.
But we also uncovered other interesting trends.
This supports research that found anonline mood slump on weekdays.
We determined thatmajor news eventscorrelated with the ten days where the angry tweet count was highest.
These events included:
Days with high angry tweet counts correlated with major news events.
For example, Twitter is a preferred medium forpoliticians,academics, andjournalists.
These users may express different emotions, or less emotion, in their posts than other social media users.
However, the influence of temperature on social media anger has broad implications.
Of all the emotions,anger spreadsthrough online communities the fastest.
So temperature changes and corresponding social media anger can affect the wider population.
We hope our research helps health and justice services develop more targeted measures based on temperature.
And with climate change likely to affectassault ratesandmood, more research in this field is needed.
