Last night saw Britain’s current mood about the upcoming Games projected onto the London Eye, through a spectacular light show.
The show, created by EDF the official electricity supplier to London 2012, is the first of its kind and used tweets about the Olympic and Paralympic games to measure how optimistic Britons are currently feeling about the Games.
A ground-breaking system, designed by world leading experts and based on sentiment analysis was then employed to develop an intuitive algorithm that linguistically analyses all the tweets, dividing them into positive and negative conversations which are then converted into various colours of light.
Purple reflects negativity, green conveys neutrality and yellow represents positivity. With one week to go before the Games begin, last night the London Eye appeared 63 per cent positive. A new light show will now take place every night during the Olympics and Paralympics, beginning at 9pm and lasting for 30 minutes.
EDF hope that the project will encourage Britons to get behind Team GB by simply tweeting their views on the Games using #Energy2012. They will also be examining levels of positivity at a more local level too, as they reveal which regions are most looking forward to the Olympics, by hour and per day.
Decathlon champion and winner of two Olympic gold medals, Daley Thompson (pictured above) unveiled the first light show last night.
He commented: “With a week to go before we kick off the greatest show on earth, there’s an incredible sense of excitement – and maybe a bit of nervous energy. So let’s take all those positive vibes and really lift the Energy of the Nation up to 100%!”
According to EDF analysis, the highest volume of positive London 2012 tweets so far, occurred on the 19th June, following England’s victory over Ukraine in the Euros, peaking at 72% as pride increased across the country.
While the most positive weekend to date was that of the 23rd and 24th of June which saw positivity measured at 68% and 71% respectively as Sir Chris Hoy, Sir Bobby Charlton and BMX / Road cyclist Shanaze Reade carried the Olympic torch.
Daley Thompson is backing the EDF Energy of the Nation, a nightly Olympic lightshow, driven by the nation’s London 2012 tweets. See your tweets light up the EDF Energy London Eye using #Energy2012 or at edfenergyofthenation.com
Sophia Smith, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
Image credit: EDF
