Using Social Media Economic Indicators to Monitor People's Responses to Recent Changes

In a world where markets shift with every headline and social feeds overflow with opinions, understanding economic sentiment in real-time isn't just valuable; it's essential. Introducing the free Fear + Cheer Index (FCI), a tool powered by Infegy's API designed to track the collective mood around the economy as it happens.

Figure 1: Screenshot of Infegy's Fear + Cheer Index.

Whether it's rising financial anxiety, cautious optimism, or sudden spikes in layoff discussions, the FCI captures what traditional indicators can't: how people feel right now.

Why Sentiment Matters in 2025: From Tariffs to Tension

In 2025, economic uncertainty moves at the speed of social media. The recent tariff crisis showed how market confidence can collapse quickly, not from delayed reports, but from real-time public reaction. While official data lagged, social conversations were already signaling alarm.

In our recent Insight Brief, we demonstrated how a single keyword ("tariff") tracked the progression of this global shock. What started as a seemingly smaller campaign issue on social media exploded after Trump’s Liberation Day, and prompted a 20% market drop across major market indices.

Figure 2: Daily post volume mentioning "tariff" (January 1, 2024, through April 7, 2025); Infegy Social Dataset.

Key phases emerged:

• Early Warnings: Social posts flagged U.S.-Mexico trade tensions before headlines did.
• Rising Anxiety: Conversations about higher prices and financial stress surged as tariffs expanded.
• Global Escalation: April's sweeping tariff announcement triggered social activity and market volatility spikes.

The shift wasn't just when people talked, but how, moving from concern to fear long before traditional indicators reacted.

This is where the Fear + Cheer Index excels. Tracking real-time sentiment flags rising financial anxiety and declining optimism weeks ahead of market volatility spikes, offering a crucial early warning during one of the most turbulent economic events since COVID-19.

How the Infegy API Powers Real-Time Economic Insight

At the heart of the Fear + Cheer Index is the Infegy API, a fast, flexible pipeline delivering social data straight into your applications, dashboards, or analysis workflows.

Think of it this way: while Infegy Starscape provides a powerful interface for exploring social trends, the API lets you embed that same intelligence wherever you need it. For the FCI, we automated data collection across key economic topics, from consumer behavior to labor market stress, using a series of structured API queries built with Infegy's AI Assist.

Here's what makes the Infegy API ideal for projects like this:

• Scalability: Query millions of posts in seconds
• Flexibility: Customize datasets, timeframes, and filters
• Advanced Aggregations: Pull sentiment trends, topic volumes, and keyword analysis with a single call
• Real-Time Updates: Schedule recurring queries to keep your insights fresh without manual intervention
• Seamless Data Wrangling: Structured JSON responses simplify post-processing, making it easy to normalize, calculate ratios, and visualize trends.

Behind the Scenes: The Architecture of the Fear + Cheer Index

So, how does it all come together? The Fear + Cheer Index isn't just a dashboard; it's a fully automated sentiment engine. We do it in 3 easy steps:

1. Gathering Social Data

• A Python script routinely calls the Infegy API, fetching daily sentiment and volume data across multiple indicators like:

1. Economic Sentiment Index (ESI)
2. Financial Anxiety
3. Hope vs. Despair Ratio
4. Layoff Mentions
5. Consumer Behavior Signals

2. Organizing Social Data

• We process raw API responses to normalize volumes, calculate ratios, and smooth out fluctuations.

3. Rendering Social Data

• The processed data is stored in a data.json file. It feeds directly into a clean, interactive web interface built with vanilla Javascript, HTML, and CSS hosted on Hubspot and accessed via their API.

Figure 3: Data Architecture Associated with Infegy's Fear + Cheer Index

Hope vs. Despair: More Complex Data Wrangling

Measuring economic sentiment isn't always straightforward, especially when balancing optimism against pessimism. That's precisely what our Hope vs. Despair Ratio captures: the real-time tug-of-war between positive and negative financial outlooks across millions of social conversations.

Unlike simple sentiment scores, calculating this ratio requires pulling two distinct datasets: one for "hopeful" mentions and another for "despairing" ones. We query the Infegy API for both categories daily, using targeted keyword strategies and sentiment filters.

Once we have the raw daily counts, the calculation is simple. If the ratio is above 1.0, optimism dominates. If it falls below 1.0, pessimism takes over.

Figure 4: How We Calculate Our Infegy's Hope vs. Despair Ratio

Once processed, the ratio is visualized in our Fear + Cheer dashboard, offering a clear view of shifting public mood. A sudden dip? That's a warning sign. A steady climb? Confidence may be returning.

Figure 5: Infegy's Hope vs. Despair Graph Rendered

By blending advanced API querying with lightweight data wrangling, we've transformed a complex sentiment landscape into a single, easy-to-interpret metric that helps analysts, investors, and decision-makers stay ahead of emotional market turns.

Turning Social Noise Into Economic Foresight

Traditional economic reports lag behind reality. By the time data is published, sentiment has often shifted. Infegy's Fear + Cheer Index bridges that gap, offering a real-time pulse on public sentiment.

If you're navigating today's volatile economy, insights like these aren't just interesting but actionable.

Want to see how social listening can power your economic intelligence tools?

Let's start a conversation so you can build with the same technology behind the Fear + Cheer Index.