A study out of the University of Ottawa suggests Edmontonians are the ‘saddest’, based on analysis of tweets coming from residents of six different Canadian cities.
Researchers used computers to analyze more than 130,000 tweets, searching for words such as ‘happy’ or ‘sad’, and other elements indicating positive or negative emotions.
“So we extracted the words that present those emotions within hashtags, within emoticons,” Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, Interactive Media Researcher at the University of Ottawa said.
Out of all of the cities monitored; Edmonton had the most tweets containing the word ‘sad’, or conveying similar feelings.
Despite the result, the lead researcher tempered the findings, saying it was merely a one-week snapshot of tweets, not an overall read on Edmonton’s happiness.
“Edmonton is not a sad city, it had relatively sad tweets, compared to other cities in this particular period,” El Saddik said.
El Saddik suggested two major, but very different current situations might be contributing to their results.
“It seems to me, two issues: the Oilers are not performing well this season, and the oil prices are going down,” El Saddik said.
The same research team plans to carry out another study, with a long-term look at tweets across the country.
With files from Bill Fortier
