A Framework for Measuring Happiness in Online Social Networks

Research on happiness has been conducted for many decades with various interesting results reported by different groups of researchers. While there is a plethora of research efforts on happiness in general, there is little work being done to study the effects of online social networks on happiness. This is mainly due to the relative (in)maturity of online social networking as it has only been around for the last few years. This research attempts to answer if the offline social network phenomenon can be carried towards its online social network counterpart such as Facebook and MySpace, both of which have millions of active users. This paper describes the first phase of the research, where a framework for modeling happiness from a more comprehensive perspective is presented. A multi-dimensional happiness measure is developed based on Ryff‟s well-being theory [8] and its reliability and validity are discussed in this paper.