A year of pandemic: levels, changes and validity of well-being data from Twitter. Evidence from ten countries

Francesco Sarracino, Talita Greyling, Kelsey O'Connor, Chiara Peroni () and Stephanie Rossouw

No 831, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: In this article we describe how well-being changed during 2020 in ten countries, namely Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, South Africa, and Spain. Our measure of well-being is the Gross National Happiness (GNH), a country-level index built applying sentiment analysis to data from Twitter. Our aim is to describe how GNH changed during the pandemic within countries, to assess its validity as a measure of well-being, and to analyse its correlates. We take advantage of a unique data-set made of daily observations about GNH, generalized trust and trust in national institutions, fear concerning the economy, loneliness, infection rate, policy stringency and distancing. To assess the validity of data sourced from Twitter, we exploit various sources of survey data, such as Eurobarometer and consumer satisfaction, and big data, such as Google Trends. Results indicate that sentiment analysis of Tweets an provide reliable and timely information on well-being. This can be particularly useful to timely inform decision-making.

Keywords: happiness; Covid-19; Big Data; Twitter; Sentiment Analysis; well-being; public policy; trust; fear; loneliness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C55 H12 I10 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-hap and nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/233601/1/GLO-DP-0831.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Year of Pandemic: Levels, Changes and Validity of Well-Being Data from Twitter. Evidence from Ten Countries (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:831

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().