"The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter Sentiment and Expressio" by Lewis Mitchell, Morgan R. Frank et al.

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Title

The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter Sentiment and Expression, Demographics, and Objective Characteristics of Place

Authors

Lewis Mitchell, University of Vermont
Morgan R. Frank, University of Vermont
Kameron Decker Harris, University of Vermont
Peter Sheridan Dodds, University of Vermont
Christopher M. Danforth, University of Vermont

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-29-2013

Abstract

We conduct a detailed investigation of correlations between real-time expressions of individuals made across the United States and a wide range of emotional, geographic, demographic, and health characteristics. We do so by combining (1) a massive, geo-tagged data set comprising over 80 million words generated in 2011 on the social network service Twitter and (2) annually-surveyed characteristics of all 50 states and close to 400 urban populations. Among many results, we generate taxonomies of states and cities based on their similarities in word use; estimate the happiness levels of states and cities; correlate highly-resolved demographic characteristics with happiness levels; and connect word choice and message length with urban characteristics such as education levels and obesity rates. Our results show how social media may potentially be used to estimate real-time levels and changes in population-scale measures such as obesity rates. © 2013 Mitchell et al.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Mitchell L, Frank MR, Harris KD, Dodds PS, Danforth CM. The geography of happiness: Connecting twitter sentiment and expression, demographics, and objective characteristics of place. PloS one. 2013 May 29;8(5):e64417.