“Basically, the information on Twitter is more predictive than knowing the smoking rates, the obesity rates, the demographics, the income, the education of the community,” Schwartz says.
These tell-tale linguistic features include higher use of hateful language, profanity, and mentions of disliking others, he says. But it’s not necessarily the people who tweet in this manner who have high rates of heart disease. Rather, Schwartz explains, these individuals act as “canaries” or signals of the type of community in which they live.
In other words, he says, “If your neighbours are hateful, you’ve got a higher likelihood of dying from heart disease.”
