A newly developed algorithm by researchers at Brunel University London and the University of Leicester detects depression in Twitter users with an accuracy of 88.39 percent. The software determines a person's mental state by extracting and analyzing 38 criteria from their public Twitter profile. This includes the content of the posts, the times at which they are posted and other users in the environment. The team says similar systems could be useful for police investigations or finding suitable applicants for jobs.

Better than other tools

“We tested the algorithm on two large databases and compared our results with other depression detection techniques. In all cases, we managed to outperform existing techniques in terms of classification accuracy,” said Abdul Sadka, Director of the Brunel Institute of Digital Futures. The algorithm was trained on two databases that contained the Twitter history of thousands of users as well as additional information about those users' mental health. 80 percent of the information in each database was used to teach the bot, while the other 20 percent was used to test its accuracy.

The bot first excludes all users with fewer than five tweets and then corrects spelling errors and adds abbreviations. It then takes into account 38 different factors - such as a user's use of positive and negative words, the number of friends and followers they have, and the use of emojis - and uses them to make a decision about that user's mental and emotional state.

Further utilization

“The next stage of this research will be to examine its validity in different environments or backgrounds,” said Huiyu Zhou, a machine learning expert at the University of Leicester. It is even more important to make the technology resulting from this research usable for other applications such as e-commerce, recruitment tests or candidate screening. Anyone who uses social media will become a transparent person in the future, a frightening idea for many.

Source: pte


If you enjoyed this post and value the importance of well-founded information, become part of the exclusive Mimikama Club! Support our work and help us promote awareness and combat misinformation. As a club member you receive:

📬 Special Weekly Newsletter: Get exclusive content straight to your inbox.
🎥 Exclusive video* “Fact Checker Basic Course”: Learn from Andre Wolf how to recognize and combat misinformation.
📅 Early access to in-depth articles and fact checks: always be one step ahead.
📄 Bonus articles, just for you: Discover content you won't find anywhere else.
📝 Participation in webinars and workshops : Join us live or watch the recordings.
✔️ Quality exchange: Discuss safely in our comment function without trolls and bots.

Join us and become part of a community that stands for truth and clarity. Together we can make the world a little better!

* In this special course, Andre Wolf will teach you how to recognize and effectively combat misinformation. After completing the video, you have the opportunity to join our research team and actively participate in the education - an opportunity that is exclusively reserved for our club members!


Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )