Chris Danforth is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and a professor of

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

at the

University of Vermont The University of Vermont (UVM), officially the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is amon ...

. He is known for his work with the

Hedonometer A hedonometer or hedonimeter is a device used to gauge happiness or pleasure. Conceived of at least as early as 1880, the term was used in 1881 by the economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth to describe "an ideally perfect instrument, a psychophysical ...

, a tool developed for measuring collective mood with sentiment analysis. Danforth directs the Computational Story Lab at Vermont Complex Systems Center. His research job is focused on exploring human behavior through social media data. In 2007, Danforth collaborated with

Peter Sheridan Dodds Peter Sheridan Dodds is an Australian applied Mathematician. He is the director of the Vermont Complex Systems Center and Professor at the University of Vermont's Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He has collaborated in several researche ...

to develop a tool to measure happiness that they called a "hedonometer." For creating it, a team directed by Danforth surveyed speakers of several languages to rate words on a scale of happiest to saddest. In collaboration with social psychologist Andrew Reece, Danforth found that depressed people post photos on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

whose colors are cooler and darker than those of non-depressed people. In 2020, he found evidence that analyzing social media techniques might identify viral outbreaks.

References

University of Vermont faculty Living people American computer scientists Year of birth missing (living people) University of Maryland, College Park alumni Bates College alumni Complex systems scientists 21st-century American mathematicians Graph drawing people Information visualization experts Network scientists {{US-scientist-stub