Social networks, happiness and health: from sentiment analysis to a multidimensional indicator of subjective well-being

Abstract: This paper applies a novel technique of opinion analysis over social media data with the aim of proposing a new indicator of perceived and subjective well-being. This new index, namely SWBI, examines several dimension of individual and social life. The indicator has been compared to some other existing indexes of well-being and health conditions in Italy: the BES (Benessere Equo Sostenibile), the incidence rate of influenza and the abundance of PM10 in urban environments. SWBI is a daily measure available at province level. BES data, currently available only for 2013 and 2014, are annual and available at regional level. Flu data are weekly and distributed as regional data and PM10 are collected daily for different cities. Due to the fact that the time scale and space granularity of the different indexes varies, we apply a novel statistical technique to discover nowcasting features and the classical latent analysis to study the relationships among them. A preliminary analysis suggest that the environmental and health conditions anticipate several dimensions of the perception of well-being as measured by SWBI. Moreover, the set of indicators included in the BES represent a latent dimension of well-being which shares similarities with the latent dimension represented by SWBI.