How does Twitter feel today? Is it in love? Is it hopeful? Or maybe it’s fearful?

This new interactive infographic explores which emotions are running highest on Twitter in real-time.

The barometer measures the emotional state of Twitter by looking at five hashtagged emotions: #love, #happy, #fear, #longing, and #hope. It sources and displays tweets and images from both Twitter and Instagram to present a living tapestry of tweeted emotion.

Author Sebastian Faulks has created this infographic to help promote his latest novel, A Possible Life, which explores these emotions. He describes it as:

“…a live barometer of global human emotion. It illustrates the little moments in life and how we are all connected through the common thoughts, feelings and experiences that we share. It tells of the lives of others and all the possible lives to be had, in celebration of Sebastian Faulks’s new novel, A POSSIBLE LIFE.”

If you visit APossibleLife.com, you can interact with this emotional data visualization by clicking on each of the five emotion bars to see all of the tweets and Instagram photos that contain that particular emotion. You can also hover over any Twitter box on the right to read that particular emotional tweet.

This morning, for instance, Twitter was in a pretty good mood. 28 percent of emotional tweets contained the hashtag #love, 24 percent contained #happiness and 22 percent contained #hope. Only 14 percent used the word #fear.

You can take a look at the screenshot below for an example of this beautiful emotional barometer, but the real beauty lies in exploring these emotions for yourself, which you can do here.

(Hat tip: The Guardian; Egg faces image via Shutterstock)