It's Not Just About Sad Songs: The Effect of Depression on Posting Lyrics and Quotes

Lucia Lushi Chen; Walid Magdy; Heather Whalley; Maria K Wolters

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5

It's Not Just About Sad Songs: The Effect of Depression on Posting Lyrics and Quotes

Lucia Lushi Chen, Walid Magdy, Heather Whalley, Maria K Wolters

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract / Description of output

When studying how mental illness may be reflected in people’s social media use, content not written by the users is often ignored, because it might not reflect their own emotions. In this paper, we examine whether the mood of quotes posted on Facebook is affected by underlying symptoms of depression. We extracted quotes and song lyrics from the feeds of 781 Facebook users from the MyPersonality database who had also completed the CES-D depression scale. We found that participants with elevated depressive symptoms tend to post more song lyrics, especially lyrics with neutral or mixed sentiment. By analysing the topics of those lyrics, we found they center around overwhelming emotions, self-empowerment and retrospection of romantic relationships. Our findings suggest removing quotes, especially lyrics, might eliminate content that reflects users’ mental health conditions.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	SocInfo 2020: Social Informatics
Publisher	Springer
Pages	58-66
Number of pages	9
ISBN (Electronic)	978-3-030-60975-7
ISBN (Print)	978-3-030-60974-0
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5
Publication status	Published - 7 Oct 2020
Event	International Conference on Social Informatics - Pisa, Italy Duration: 6 Oct 2020 → 9 Oct 2020 https://kdd.isti.cnr.it/socinfo2020/

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Publisher	Springer, Cham
Volume	12467
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	International Conference on Social Informatics
Abbreviated title	SocInfo 2020
Country/Territory	Italy
City	Pisa
Period	6/10/20 → 9/10/20
Internet address	https://kdd.isti.cnr.it/socinfo2020/

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

Social media
Quotes
Lyrics
Depression

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5Licence: All Rights Reserved

It's not just about_CHEN_DOA16072020_AFVAccepted author manuscript, 327 KBLicence: All Rights Reserved

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5Licence: All Rights Reserved

Cite this

@inproceedings{d1e84bbbc2d1483ba02f750a3ed88c36,

title = "It's Not Just About Sad Songs: The Effect of Depression on Posting Lyrics and Quotes",

abstract = "When studying how mental illness may be reflected in people{\textquoteright}s social media use, content not written by the users is often ignored, because it might not reflect their own emotions. In this paper, we examine whether the mood of quotes posted on Facebook is affected by underlying symptoms of depression. We extracted quotes and song lyrics from the feeds of 781 Facebook users from the MyPersonality database who had also completed the CES-D depression scale. We found that participants with elevated depressive symptoms tend to post more song lyrics, especially lyrics with neutral or mixed sentiment. By analysing the topics of those lyrics, we found they center around overwhelming emotions, self-empowerment and retrospection of romantic relationships. Our findings suggest removing quotes, especially lyrics, might eliminate content that reflects users{\textquoteright} mental health conditions.",

keywords = "Social media, Quotes, Lyrics, Depression",

author = "Chen, {Lucia Lushi} and Walid Magdy and Heather Whalley and Wolters, {Maria K}",

year = "2020",

month = oct,

day = "7",

doi = "10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5",

language = "English",

isbn = "978-3-030-60974-0",

series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",

publisher = "Springer",

pages = "58--66",

booktitle = "SocInfo 2020: Social Informatics",

address = "United Kingdom",

note = "International Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2020 ; Conference date: 06-10-2020 Through 09-10-2020",

url = "https://kdd.isti.cnr.it/socinfo2020/",

}

TY - GEN

T1 - It's Not Just About Sad Songs: The Effect of Depression on Posting Lyrics and Quotes

AU - Chen, Lucia Lushi

AU - Magdy, Walid

AU - Whalley, Heather

AU - Wolters, Maria K

PY - 2020/10/7

Y1 - 2020/10/7

N2 - When studying how mental illness may be reflected in people’s social media use, content not written by the users is often ignored, because it might not reflect their own emotions. In this paper, we examine whether the mood of quotes posted on Facebook is affected by underlying symptoms of depression. We extracted quotes and song lyrics from the feeds of 781 Facebook users from the MyPersonality database who had also completed the CES-D depression scale. We found that participants with elevated depressive symptoms tend to post more song lyrics, especially lyrics with neutral or mixed sentiment. By analysing the topics of those lyrics, we found they center around overwhelming emotions, self-empowerment and retrospection of romantic relationships. Our findings suggest removing quotes, especially lyrics, might eliminate content that reflects users’ mental health conditions.

AB - When studying how mental illness may be reflected in people’s social media use, content not written by the users is often ignored, because it might not reflect their own emotions. In this paper, we examine whether the mood of quotes posted on Facebook is affected by underlying symptoms of depression. We extracted quotes and song lyrics from the feeds of 781 Facebook users from the MyPersonality database who had also completed the CES-D depression scale. We found that participants with elevated depressive symptoms tend to post more song lyrics, especially lyrics with neutral or mixed sentiment. By analysing the topics of those lyrics, we found they center around overwhelming emotions, self-empowerment and retrospection of romantic relationships. Our findings suggest removing quotes, especially lyrics, might eliminate content that reflects users’ mental health conditions.

KW - Social media

KW - Quotes

KW - Lyrics

KW - Depression

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-60975-7_5

M3 - Conference contribution

SN - 978-3-030-60974-0

T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science

SP - 58

EP - 66

BT - SocInfo 2020: Social Informatics

PB - Springer

T2 - International Conference on Social Informatics

Y2 - 6 October 2020 through 9 October 2020

ER -

It's Not Just About Sad Songs: The Effect of Depression on Posting Lyrics and Quotes

Abstract / Description of output

Publication series

Conference

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Cite this