Death of Michael Jackson marked a sad day in the history of Internet

Two scientists reached that conclusion after creating a 'sensor' to check 2, 3 million blogs and collect sentences with 'I'm sorry' or 'I am'

Is it possible to say how happy we all are? According to U.S. scientists have developed a way to measure the happiness of millions of bloggers, yes.

Scientists discovered that the day of the death of Michael Jackson was one of the darkest, while the last U.S. presidential election was the happiest day in four years.

Peter Dodds, Chris Danforth, a mathematician and computer scientist respectively Advanced Computing Center at the University of Vermont, have created a 'sensor' to check 2, 3 million blogs and collect sentences that begin with 'I'm sorry' or 'me feel '.

SCALES OF SADNESS AND HAPPINESS

Each sentence then receives a score of 1 to 9 of happiness depends on a point system assigned to 1034 words. For example, 'winning' brand 8, 87 points, 'paradise' 8, 72, 'pancakes' 6, 08, and' suicide '1, 25.

The researchers said that this' hedonómetro 'showed that on the U.S. Presidential election last November was the most successful in four years, with a peak in the word' pride ', while that on the death of the King of Pop was an of the most unhappy.

'The proliferation of online personal writing such as the blogs gives us an opportunity to measure the emotional levels in real time', the experts said in the report entitled 'Measuring the happiness of written expression on a large scale music, blogs, and presidents '.

THE METHOD

Their study, reported this week in the Journal of Happiness Studies, involved the collection of nearly 10 million lines.

'Our method is only reasonable for large-scale texts, such as what is available on the network. Any sentence would not show too loose. There is too much variability in individual expression, "said Dodds.

Scientists said that although the authors of blogs tend to be younger and more educated than the average, to fully represent the U.S. population.

Besides writing in a natural environment where they feel comfortable in contrast to other studies of happiness, where participants are put in the spotlight.

'They believe they are communicating with friends but (as the blogs are public), we are looking over your shoulder, "said Danforth.

¿STUDY REVOLUTIONARY?

Researchers said their results also contradict recent data from social science suggests that people are basically the same in all stages of their lives.

The new method indicates that young adolescents are the most unhappy, with a disproportionate use of words such as' sick ',' hate ',' stupid ',' sad ',' depressed ',' boring ',' lonely ',' annoying 'and' fat '.

Then, people become more successful until they reach the age to where happiness declines.

But scientists said it was impossible to know exactly what happens in the heads of the people.

'Our study is an exploration of data, "said Danforth. 'It is not about developing a theory, "he added.