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Social Indicators Research

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01.04.2015

Measuring Idiosyncratic Happiness Through the Analysis of Twitter: An Application to the Italian Case

verfasst von: Luigi Curini, Stefano Iacus, Luciano Canova

Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research | Ausgabe 2/2015

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Abstract

We examine messages posted by Italian users on the social networking service Twitter to investigate idiosyncratic shocks of happiness. Contrary to questionnaires, analyzing social media allows to nowcast happiness in real-time, including mapping its fluctuation due to the occurrence of extemporaneous facts. Our data set comprises over 43 millions of tweets posted on a daily basis in all the 110 Italian provinces and collected during 2012. In measuring happiness, we construct an original index using innovative statistical techniques to quantify the level of happiness at the provincial level related to a specific amount of tweets. We then explore the determinants of happiness in our sample. Static variables such as the overall quality of institutions seem to matter only marginally in affecting the average level of happiness of the Italian provinces. On the contrary, meteorological variables and events related to specific days, such as the variability of the spread between German and Italian Bonds or the payday, have the largest impact.

Vorheriger Artikel Pre- and Post-crisis Life-Satisfaction and Social Trust in Transitional Countries: An Initial Assessment

Nächster Artikel Are Happy Youth Also Satisfied Adults? An Analysis of the Impact of Childhood Factors on Adult Life Satisfaction

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“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think” (Bentham 1789: 1, Chapter 1).

A standard question is: "Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the way things are going in your life today?"

Such as: enjoyment, warm, happy.

Such as: frustrated, depressed, angry, hassled, criticized.

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Unfortunately we started our analysis since the first of February 2012, Therefore, the analysis does not cover January 2012.

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Traditionally, August, 15th is a particularly important feast in Italy, representing Summer’s peak and involving many celebrations.

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Replicating our analysis by employing a multilevel model that explicitly takes account of the hierarchical structure of our data (daily-observations of iHappy nested within a province) does not alter any of our findings. Data available upon request.

This relevant effect can be partly explained by the large coverage of financial news in Italian newspapers and media throughout 2012.

Interestingly, re-running the analysis reported above by weighting the iHappy index for the relative population at each provincial level, does not produce significantly different results compared to the ones reported, which at least constitutes a reinforcing element of our rank. The same happens if we weight the analysis for the number of tweets posted from each province. Data available upon request.

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Titel: Measuring Idiosyncratic Happiness Through the Analysis of Twitter: An Application to the Italian Case
verfasst von: Luigi Curini
Stefano Iacus
Luciano Canova
Publikationsdatum: 01.04.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research / Ausgabe 2/2015
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0646-2

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