What does twitter tell us about our social unconscious? Studies are just beginning to scratch the surface of the meaning behind the cacophony of noise we humans put online, but what might be the meaning behind this collective activity?
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What does social networking tell us about ourselves, what can psychology do to help us understand social networking?
Curated by
Aaron Balick
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Discover 60 of the freshest stats and facts on social media strategy, including Twitter integration for easy sharing! Delete the scoop?
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Are people genuinely more aggressive, rude and unpleasant online, and if so, why? And what can we do to counter that, and make the internet a more tolerant place? Delete the scoop?
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Twitter, Facebook, Google… we know the internet is driving us to distraction. But could sitting at your computer actually calm you down? Oliver Burkeman investigates the slow web movement 
luiy's curator insight,
May 11, 7:34 AM
In March, I spent a week trying to live as faithfully as possible in accordance with the philosophy of calming (or conscious or contemplative) computing. At home, I stopped using my Nexus smartphone as a timepiece – I wore a watch instead – to prevent the otherwise inevitable slide from checking the time, or silencing the alarm, into checking my email, my Twitter feed or Wikipedia's List Of Unusual Deaths. After a couple of days, I disabled the Gmail and Twitter apps completely, and stored my phone in my bag while I worked, frequently forgetting it for hours at a time. At work, I shut off the internet in 90-minute slabs using Mac Freedom, the "internet blocking productivity software" championed by such writerly big shots as Zadie Smith and the late Nora Ephron. ("Freedom enforces freedom," its website explains chillingly.) Most mornings, I also managed 10 minutes with ReWire, a concentration-enhancing meditation app for the iPad that plays songs from your music library in short bursts, interrupted by silence; your job is to press a button as fast as you can each time you notice the music has stopped. I also tried to check my email no more than three times a day, and at fixed points: 9.30am, 1.30pm and 5pm.
Disconcerting things began to happen. I'm embarrassed to report that I found myself doing what's referred to, in Pang's book, as "paper-tweeting": scribbling supposedly witty wisecracks in a notebook as a substitute for the urge to share them online. (At least I'd never had a problem with "sleep texting", which, at least according to a few dubious media reports, is now a thing among serious smartphone addicts.) I had a few minor attacks of phantom mobile phone vibrations, aka "ringxiety", which research suggests afflicts at least 70% of us. By far the biggest obstacle to my experiment was the fact that the web and email are simultaneously sources of distraction and a vital tool: it's no use blocking the internet to work when you need the internet for work. Still, the overall result was more calmness and a clear sense that I'd gained purchase on my own mind: I was using it more than it was using me. I could jump online to look something up and then – this is the crucial bit – jump off again. After a few 90-minute stretches of weblessness, for example, I found myself not itching to get back online, but bored by the prospect. I started engaging in highly atypical behaviours, such as going for a walk, instead. Delete the scoop?
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Simple algorithms that make 'friend' suggestions don't cater for huge complexities found in human relationships, especially within families, finds Becca Bland Delete the scoop?
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Personal information including sexuality and drug use can be correctly inferred from public 'like' updates, according to study. By Josh Halliday Delete the scoop?
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Aaron Balick's insight:
Feature article in TILT magazine 
Joel Cheuoua's curator insight,
February 2, 6:13 PM
If you've ever felt like beign in the midst of a popularity contest on social media, here's the why ... Delete the scoop?
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Here are 100 of the most fascinating social media statistics and figures from 2012 that can help you better understand Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus for the coming year. Delete the scoop?
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Technology may make it easier to communicate electronically, but more difficult to do so emotionally. Delete the scoop?
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56% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind; Android and iPhone owners account for half of the cell phone user population. Higher income adults and those under age 35 lead the way when it comes to smartphone ownership. Delete the scoop?
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The ubiquitous internet meme comes in many forms -- from iterations on top of iterations of a viral video to a random picture of a cute animals with an ironic white Impact caption. Delete the scoop?
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Here on the Guardian's data team, we tend to have a healthy dose of skepticism about the accuracy of semantic analysis. Delete the scoop?
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If you actually look at Facebook's effect on our brains, it’s like taking a drug. The problem, according to Jonathan Harris, is that with software that makes you come back over and over again, you become the product.
luiy's curator insight,
April 20, 6:58 AM
So it’s one of the cautionary notes that we've shared in this Human Face of Big Data project, which is about technology that we use for good or bad. Some people think that Facebook is fantastic, other people are very worried about it. I find Facebook absolutely fascinating because I don’t think there’s ever been any one source that had so much information about each of us -- who we talk to, who our friends are, what books we read, what we're buying, what movies we saw, what our travel is. Delete the scoop?
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Smartphone adoption among teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone. Delete the scoop?
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Observer editorial: Unless we examine our relationship with computing, its advances could lead to trouble for mankind Delete the scoop?
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A new study from Pew Internet, a research center, found that the majority of Facebook users took voluntary breaks from the site, citing boredom or concerns about privacy. Delete the scoop?
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Twitter has increasingly restricted access to the largest organized database of modern language in the world, despite its immense research value. It's a tragedy. Delete the scoop?
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Twitter is quickly becoming the lens into all that moves us as individuals and also as a global society. Twitter has become a human seismograph, measuring and broadcasting the pulse of not just the Web, but also world and local events. Delete the scoop?
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The coolest I’ve found yet (thanks to David Patman) has been the We Feel Fine project defined as “an exploration of human emotion, in six movements. This project searches weblogs across the world for words associated with the statements “I feel” and “I am feeling” and records the feeling associated with that statement”. To quote from their website:
There is a stunning graphic in which you can see, in real time, groupings and clusterings of feelings as they occur. Interestingly, you can filter your searches by feeling, gender, age, weather, location or date, and then view your search in a variety of visually interesting ways.
When I looked at it at 8:55 on Tuesday morning the 3rd of July I could see that in Britain the dominant feeling was “better” (circa 130,000 people) followed by “bad” (93,000 then) “good” (77,000). By clicking on individual nodes, you can even gain access to the original text. By doing this, you can get a great deal of detail about the context, as well as the feeling tone. The creators Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar should be highly commended for this work.