by Rhys Sandow
At the turn of the millennium Backstreet Boys released their hit single “Show me the meaning of being lonely”. The lyrics talk about realities of heartbreak and the need for connection and understanding associated with losing a loved one. 25 years later the concept of loneliness brings a far more complex meaning and disturbing statistics. Across the globe loneliness is rapidly becoming one of the most urgent public health risks (see the new report from the World Health Organization, From Loneliness to Social Connection: Charting the Path to Healthier Societies). Nearly half of adults in the UK feel lonely occasionally, sometimes, often, or always (see here). Some groups are especially at risk of loneliness, particularly young, disabled people (see here).
In order to proactively reduce loneliness, we need a greater understanding of people’s experiences and feelings they describe under the concept of LONELINESS and how these are talked about (see here). This task was explored by Justyna Robinson (Concepts Analytics Lab) and Faith Matcham (Psychology) at the University of Sussex , whose work towards creating a personalised chatbot for loneliness intervention was funded by Sussex Digital Humanities Lab. Ultimately, the headline findings are that
For this project we explored data on loneliness collected by Mass Observation Project (MOP). In 2019 MOP issued a survey, the directive on Loneliness and Belonging (see here). The directive consists of two parts. Firstly, participants were asked to provide five words that they associate with loneliness, e.g. despair, fear, frustration, quiet, and sad (see Figure 1). Secondly, they provided long-form narrative responses to a series of questions related to the broader topic of loneliness.
We identify conceptual patterns and change in human thought through a combination of distant text reading and corpus linguistics techniques.
Sussex Digital Humanities Lab
University of Sussex
Silverstone SB211
Arts Road, Falmer,
East Sussex, BN1 9RG