Twitter's Oscars Index Crowns 'Silver Linings Playbook' the Social Sentiment Winner

Twitter's Oscars Index, an experiment that tracks social media sentiment surrounding the top Academy Award contenders, has crowned a best picture winner: Silver Linings Playbook.

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Since the index began tracking positive sentiment, or nice comments posted on Twitter, the Bradley Cooper-Jennifer Lawrence dramedy has elicited more praise than any of the other eight best picture-nominated titles, with a score of 92.5 on a scale of 100.

STORY: Twitter Debuts 'Oscars Index' to Track Academy Awards Social Sentiment

When the index launched as a collaboration between Twitter and social analytics firm Topsy, the conversation about Silver Linings already had garnered the most positive chatter among nominated films in the top Oscar category. That didn't change much throughout awards season.

To put scores in perspective, Twitter explained the methodology: "For example, if a nominee has an index of 80, comments about that nominee are more positive than roughly 80 percent of all the other terms on Twitter."

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty -- a subject of sharp criticism about its depiction of torture -- garnered the least positive chatter by far, with a score of 8.5 as of Friday.

Jamie de Guerre, vp product at Topsy, told The Hollywood Reporter that throughout awards season, Twitter terms referencing the torture debate surrounding Zero Dark Thirty affected the score for the CIA thriller. He noted, though, that a sizable rise in positive sentiment occurred Feb. 17 when the film shared top screenplay honors at the Writers Guild Awards.

Other nominees in top categories who garnered the most positive sentiment on Twitter include Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) and Denzel Washington (Flight), who tied for best actor, Lawrence as best actress and Ang Lee (Life of Pi) as best director.

To determine the index winners, social sentiment was analyzed and averaged during the past 30 days, de Guerre said. Read more about the analytics here.