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Analysing happiness, how the CSIRO is tracking our feelings

June 26, 2014
Dave Milne never expected to be able to use his skills in mathematics and natural language processing to save lives, but a project he’s been working on with the Black Dog Institute may achieve just that.
As the data mining and social media researcher at the CSIRO he has been central to the recently launched “We Feel” tool – the first generation of technology which will ultimately help psychologists to identify and help people in danger of suicide.

Every second of the day 4000 people are tapping their thoughts, feelings and ideas into 140 characters and sharing it with the world through the microblogging site Twitter.

/><br /> <br /> <em>The feeling map allows CSIRO to see the emotional fall out from global events in real time.</em><br /> <br /> “Should the real-time data gained using this incredible tool prove accurate, we will have the unique opportunity to monitor the emotional state of people across different geographical areas and ultimately predict when and where potentially life-saving services are required,” Christensen says.<br /> <br /> The Black Dog Institute spends a significant proportion of its budget each year on research, and Christensen hopes that tools like “We Feel” will complement this research, and more importantly provide data in real time.<br /> <br /> Although it’s seeking to pick up sadness, at this stage the news is happy; while there have been minor peaks of anger and fear, since the tool was first launched, the most commonly expressed emotion across the world is joy.