It is well established today that emotions are an important part of most societal dynamics. Just as individuals may be characterized by a dominant emotion, societies, too, may develop a collective emotional orientation. The power of collective feelings is clearly seen in stock markets where collective fear and greed move market prices. As long as one prevails, no economic, political, or other factors matter: investors may disregard news that does not fit their current collective sentiment. Societies today are transforming into e-societies and techno-social networks are becoming an integral part of the modern lifestyle The Internet is well-known as a site for the expression of strong emotions - for example the rise of "flaming" in email and online discussion groups. Up to now emotions were not studied using methods of complex systems. Here we shall show first results of such studies.

A model of emotional agents will be discussed and computer simulations of their collective states will be presented. The model takes into account the spontaneous emergence of positive and negative emotions as well as emotional transfers. Data on emotional content from MySpace comments and BBC forums will be analysed. Statistics of emotional transitions and a distribution of affective clusters will be shown.