Christopher M Danforth
Biographic Data
| ID | 3425866 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher M Danforth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher M |
| FAMILY NAME | Danforth |
| SIGNATURE | DANFORTH C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vermont |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9857-2845 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Perceived and quantified nature exposure in relation to mental health
A decomposition of book structure through ousiometric fluctuations in cumulative word-time
While quantitative methods have been used to examine changes in word usage in books, studies have focused on overall trends, such as the shapes of narratives, which are independent of book length. We instead look at how words change over the course of a book as a function of the number of words, rather than the fraction of the book, completed at any given point; we define this measure as “cumulative word-time”. Using ousiometrics, a reinterpretat…
Computational Paremiology: Charting the temporal, ecological dynamics of proverb use in books, news articles, and tweets
Proverbs are an essential component of language and culture, and though much attention has been paid to their history and currency, there has been comparatively little quantitative work on changes in the frequency with which they are used over time. With wider availability of large corpora reflecting many diverse genres of documents, it is now possible to take a broad and dynamic view of the importance of the proverb. Here, we measure temporal ch…
Nature Exposure is Associated With Reduced Smartphone Use
Evidence links greenspace exposure with restorative benefits to cognition and well-being, yet nature contact is declining for younger demographics. Although natural settings have been shown to restore the capacity to inhibit distracting stimuli, it remains unknown whether smartphone attention capture disrupts nature contact. Here, we analyzed ~2.5 million observations of logged smartphone use, texting, calling, and environmental exposures for 701…
Spatial changes in park visitation at the onset of the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the mobility patterns of a majority of Americans beginning in March 2020. Despite the beneficial, socially distanced activity offered by outdoor recreation, confusing and contradictory public health messaging complicated access to natural spaces. Working with a dataset comprising the locations of roughly 50 million distinct mobile devices in 2019 and 2020, we analyze weekly visitation patterns for 8,135 parks acros…
Doomscrolling during Covid-19: The negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic
These results suggest that regular viewing of pandemic-related social media is associated with increases in psychopathology for those with existing vulnerabilities. Those with such vulnerabilities should adopt strategies to limit social media consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Visitors to urban greenspace have higher sentiment and lower negativity on Twitter
With more people living in cities, we are witnessing a decline in exposure to nature. A growing body of research has demonstrated an association between nature contact and improved mood. Here, we used Twitter and the Hedonometer, a world analysis tool, to investigate how sentiment, or the estimated happiness of the words people write, varied before, during, and after visits to San Francisco's urban park system. We found that sentiment was substan…
Divergent discourse between protests and counter-protests: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter
Since the shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, the protest hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has amplified critiques of extrajudicial killings of Black Americans. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, other Twitter users have adopted #AllLivesMatter, a counter-protest hashtag whose content argues that equal attention should be given to all lives regardless of race. Through a multi-level analysi…
The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes
Advances in computing power, natural language processing, and digitization of text now make it possible to study a culture’s evolution through its texts using a ‘big data’ lens. Our ability to communicate relies in part upon a shared emotional experience, with stories often following distinct emotional trajectories and forming patterns that are meaningful to us. Here, by classifying the emotional arcs for a filtered subset of 1,327 stories from P…
Transitions in climate and energy discourse between Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy
Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse. Media coverage of extreme weather events simultaneously shapes and reflects public discourse on cli…
Climate Change Sentiment on Twitter: An Unsolicited Public Opinion Poll
The consequences of anthropogenic climate change are extensively debated through scientific papers, newspaper articles, and blogs. Newspaper articles may lack accuracy, while the severity of findings in scientific papers may be too opaque for the public to understand. Social media, however, is a forum where individuals of diverse backgrounds can share their thoughts and opinions. As consumption shifts from old media to new, Twitter has become a v…
Human language reveals a universal positivity bias
Significance The most commonly used words of 24 corpora across 10 diverse human languages exhibit a clear positive bias, a big data confirmation of the Pollyanna hypothesis. The study’s findings are based on 5 million individual human scores and pave the way for the development of powerful language-based tools for measuring emotion.
The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter Sentiment and Expression, Demographics, and Objective Characteristics of Place
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…
Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter
Individual happiness is a fundamental societal metric. Normally measured through self-report, happiness has often been indirectly characterized and overshadowed by more readily quantifiable economic indicators such as gross domestic product. Here, we examine expressions made on the online, global microblog and social networking service Twitter, uncovering and explaining temporal variations in happiness and information levels over timescales rangi…
No prominent works on this page.
Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter
Individual happiness is a fundamental societal metric. Normally measured through self-report, happiness has often been indirectly characterized and overshadowed by more readily quantifiable economic indicators such as gross domestic product. Here, we examine expressions made on the online, global microblog and social networking service Twitter, uncovering and explaining temporal variations in happiness and information levels over timescales rangi…
The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter Sentiment and Expression, Demographics, and Objective Characteristics of Place
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…
Climate Change Sentiment on Twitter: An Unsolicited Public Opinion Poll
The consequences of anthropogenic climate change are extensively debated through scientific papers, newspaper articles, and blogs. Newspaper articles may lack accuracy, while the severity of findings in scientific papers may be too opaque for the public to understand. Social media, however, is a forum where individuals of diverse backgrounds can share their thoughts and opinions. As consumption shifts from old media to new, Twitter has become a v…
Human language reveals a universal positivity bias
Significance The most commonly used words of 24 corpora across 10 diverse human languages exhibit a clear positive bias, a big data confirmation of the Pollyanna hypothesis. The study’s findings are based on 5 million individual human scores and pave the way for the development of powerful language-based tools for measuring emotion.
The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes
Advances in computing power, natural language processing, and digitization of text now make it possible to study a culture’s evolution through its texts using a ‘big data’ lens. Our ability to communicate relies in part upon a shared emotional experience, with stories often following distinct emotional trajectories and forming patterns that are meaningful to us. Here, by classifying the emotional arcs for a filtered subset of 1,327 stories from P…
Transitions in climate and energy discourse between Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy
Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse. Media coverage of extreme weather events simultaneously shapes and reflects public discourse on cli…
Divergent discourse between protests and counter-protests: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter
Since the shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, the protest hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has amplified critiques of extrajudicial killings of Black Americans. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, other Twitter users have adopted #AllLivesMatter, a counter-protest hashtag whose content argues that equal attention should be given to all lives regardless of race. Through a multi-level analysi…
Visitors to urban greenspace have higher sentiment and lower negativity on Twitter
With more people living in cities, we are witnessing a decline in exposure to nature. A growing body of research has demonstrated an association between nature contact and improved mood. Here, we used Twitter and the Hedonometer, a world analysis tool, to investigate how sentiment, or the estimated happiness of the words people write, varied before, during, and after visits to San Francisco's urban park system. We found that sentiment was substan…
Spatial changes in park visitation at the onset of the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the mobility patterns of a majority of Americans beginning in March 2020. Despite the beneficial, socially distanced activity offered by outdoor recreation, confusing and contradictory public health messaging complicated access to natural spaces. Working with a dataset comprising the locations of roughly 50 million distinct mobile devices in 2019 and 2020, we analyze weekly visitation patterns for 8,135 parks acros…
Doomscrolling during Covid-19: The negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic
These results suggest that regular viewing of pandemic-related social media is associated with increases in psychopathology for those with existing vulnerabilities. Those with such vulnerabilities should adopt strategies to limit social media consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
A decomposition of book structure through ousiometric fluctuations in cumulative word-time
While quantitative methods have been used to examine changes in word usage in books, studies have focused on overall trends, such as the shapes of narratives, which are independent of book length. We instead look at how words change over the course of a book as a function of the number of words, rather than the fraction of the book, completed at any given point; we define this measure as “cumulative word-time”. Using ousiometrics, a reinterpretat…
Computational Paremiology: Charting the temporal, ecological dynamics of proverb use in books, news articles, and tweets
Proverbs are an essential component of language and culture, and though much attention has been paid to their history and currency, there has been comparatively little quantitative work on changes in the frequency with which they are used over time. With wider availability of large corpora reflecting many diverse genres of documents, it is now possible to take a broad and dynamic view of the importance of the proverb. Here, we measure temporal ch…
Nature Exposure is Associated With Reduced Smartphone Use
Evidence links greenspace exposure with restorative benefits to cognition and well-being, yet nature contact is declining for younger demographics. Although natural settings have been shown to restore the capacity to inhibit distracting stimuli, it remains unknown whether smartphone attention capture disrupts nature contact. Here, we analyzed ~2.5 million observations of logged smartphone use, texting, calling, and environmental exposures for 701…
Perceived and quantified nature exposure in relation to mental health
Computer Science (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Social media (5 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Urban Green Space and Health (4 works) · Demography (3 works) · Geography (3 works) · Happiness (3 works) · Language and cultural evolution (3 works)