A Collective Theory of Happiness: Words Related to the Word Happiness in Swedish Online Newspapers
Garcia, Danilo and Sikström, Sverker LU
(2013)
In Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking
16(6).
p.469-472
- Abstract
- Background: A central theme in media psychology is how certain contemporary and dominant views may tend to perpetuate themselves by presenting a recurring picture we humans use to form our knowledge about the world. The present study is based on 1.5 million words from articles published online in the Swedish daily newspapers in 2010. We investigated which words were most (un-)common in articles containing the word happiness, compared with articles that did not contain this word.
Findings: Words related to people as portrayed by all pronouns (you and me along us and them among the most recurrent), important others (e.g., grandmother, mother), the Swedish royal wedding (e.g., Daniel, Victoria), the FIFA World Cup (e.g., Zlatan,... (More) - Background: A central theme in media psychology is how certain contemporary and dominant views may tend to perpetuate themselves by presenting a recurring picture we humans use to form our knowledge about the world. The present study is based on 1.5 million words from articles published online in the Swedish daily newspapers in 2010. We investigated which words were most (un-)common in articles containing the word happiness, compared with articles that did not contain this word.
Findings: Words related to people as portrayed by all pronouns (you and me along us and them among the most recurrent), important others (e.g., grandmother, mother), the Swedish royal wedding (e.g., Daniel, Victoria), the FIFA World Cup (e.g., Zlatan, Argentina, Drogba) were highly recurrent with the word happiness. At the other end, words related to things were predictive of context not recurrent with the word happiness, such as money (e.g., millions, billions), bestselling gadgets (e.g., iPad, iPhone), and companies (e.g., Google, Windows).
Conclusions: The results presented here map on those findings in the happiness literature showing that relationships, not material things, makes people happy. We suggest our findings mirror a collective theory of happiness, that is, an shared picture or agreement across members of a community about what makes people happy — people not things. This consensus influences the content of newspapers and recursively feed the collective theory of happiness itself. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/3408633
- author
- Garcia, Danilo
and Sikström, Sverker
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2013
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Collective Theory of Happiness, Happiness, News, Semantic Analyses, Subjective Well-Being
- in
- Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking
- volume
- 16
- issue
- 6
- pages
- 469 - 472
- publisher
- Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
- external identifiers
-
- wos:000320164300012
- scopus:84879118003
- pmid:23621718
- ISSN
- 2152-2723
- DOI
- 10.1089/cyber.2012.0535
- project
- Semantic Spaces
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- f84461fe-f91e-491e-a708-e0e8db6aba93 (old id 3408633)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-01 10:06:27
- date last changed
- 2022-03-19 17:22:59
@article{f84461fe-f91e-491e-a708-e0e8db6aba93,
abstract = {{Background: A central theme in media psychology is how certain contemporary and dominant views may tend to perpetuate themselves by presenting a recurring picture we humans use to form our knowledge about the world. The present study is based on 1.5 million words from articles published online in the Swedish daily newspapers in 2010. We investigated which words were most (un-)common in articles containing the word happiness, compared with articles that did not contain this word.<br/><br>
Findings: Words related to people as portrayed by all pronouns (you and me along us and them among the most recurrent), important others (e.g., grandmother, mother), the Swedish royal wedding (e.g., Daniel, Victoria), the FIFA World Cup (e.g., Zlatan, Argentina, Drogba) were highly recurrent with the word happiness. At the other end, words related to things were predictive of context not recurrent with the word happiness, such as money (e.g., millions, billions), bestselling gadgets (e.g., iPad, iPhone), and companies (e.g., Google, Windows).<br/><br>
Conclusions: The results presented here map on those findings in the happiness literature showing that relationships, not material things, makes people happy. We suggest our findings mirror a collective theory of happiness, that is, an shared picture or agreement across members of a community about what makes people happy — people not things. This consensus influences the content of newspapers and recursively feed the collective theory of happiness itself.}},
author = {{Garcia, Danilo and Sikström, Sverker}},
issn = {{2152-2723}},
keywords = {{Collective Theory of Happiness; Happiness; News; Semantic Analyses; Subjective Well-Being}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{6}},
pages = {{469--472}},
publisher = {{Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.}},
series = {{Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking}},
title = {{A Collective Theory of Happiness: Words Related to the Word Happiness in Swedish Online Newspapers}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0535}},
doi = {{10.1089/cyber.2012.0535}},
volume = {{16}},
year = {{2013}},
}