Chris Danforth

{{short description|American computer scientist and professor}}

Chris Danforth is a computer scientist and a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Vermont. He is known for his work with the Hedonometer, a tool developed for measuring collective mood with sentiment analysis.{{cite web |title=Can people's tweets help find coronavirus outbreaks? |url=https://www.bates.edu/news/2020/05/01/can-peoples-tweets-help-find-coronavirus-outbreaks/ |website=News |accessdate=30 October 2020 |language=en |date=1 May 2020}}

Danforth directs the Computational Story Lab at Vermont Complex Systems Center.{{cite web |title=Chris Danforth |url=http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/ |website=Chris Danforth |accessdate=30 October 2020}} His research job is focused on exploring human behavior through social media data.{{cite web |title=Chris Danforth |url=https://www.case.org/chris-danforth |website=www.case.org |accessdate=30 October 2020}}

In 2007, Danforth collaborated with Peter Sheridan Dodds 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.{{cite web |last1=Bakuli |first1=Ethan |title=UVM 'happiness calculator' research highlighted in popular Reply All podcast |url=https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2020/10/29/uvm-happiness-calculator-research-highlighted-reply-all-podcast/6069635002/ |website=The Burlington Free Press |accessdate=30 October 2020}}

In collaboration with social psychologist Andrew Reece, Danforth found that depressed people post photos on Instagram 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.