Journal article
The Lexicocalorimeter: Gauging public health through caloric input and output on social media
PloS one, v 12(2), pp e0168893-e0168893
10 Feb 2017
PMID: 28187216
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
We propose and develop a Lexicocalorimeter: an online, interactive instrument for measuring the "caloric content" of social media and other large-scale texts. We do so by constructing extensive yet improvable tables of food and activity related phrases, and respectively assigning them with sourced estimates of caloric intake and expenditure. We show that for Twitter, our naive measures of "caloric input", "caloric output", and the ratio of these measures are all strong correlates with health and well-being measures for the contiguous United States. Our caloric balance measure in many cases outperforms both its constituent quantities; is tunable to specific health and well-being measures such as diabetes rates; has the capability of providing a real-time signal reflecting a population's health; and has the potential to be used alongside traditional survey data in the development of public policy and collective self-awareness. Because our Lexicocalorimeter is a linear superposition of principled phrase scores, we also show we can move beyond correlations to explore what people talk about in collective detail, and assist in the understanding and explanation of how population-scale conditions vary, a capacity unavailable to black-box type methods.
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Details
- Title
- The Lexicocalorimeter: Gauging public health through caloric input and output on social media
- Creators
- Sharon E Alajajian - University of VermontJake Ryland Williams - University of VermontAndrew J Reagan - University of VermontStephen C Alajajian - Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode IslandMorgan R Frank - Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyLewis Mitchell - The University of AdelaideJacob Lahne - Drexel UniversityChristopher M Danforth - University of VermontPeter Sheridan Dodds - University of Vermont
- Publication Details
- PloS one, v 12(2), pp e0168893-e0168893
- Publisher
- Public LIbrary of Science (PLOS)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000394244300002
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85012289107
- Other Identifier
- 991021806419204721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Multidisciplinary Sciences