Seven Queensland universities among Australia’s ‘happiest’, based on students’ Instagram pictures

Artificial intelligence emotion recognition software analysed students’ faces in Instagram pictures and Queensland students were ranked among the happiest.

Artificial intelligence software has named seven Queensland universities among the top 20 ‘happiest’ universities in the nation, after analysing students’ Instagram photos.

The analysis, conducted by two overseas companies, collected photos in December and January and ranked universities based on the proportion of happy faces appearing in Instagram photos tagged at the various campuses. At least 100 students’ faces were analysed for each university.

The University of the Sunshine Coast at Sippy Downs topped the country’s happiest universities ranking with 63.55 per cent of happy faces in students’ Instagram photos geotagged at the campus.

Australia’s happiest universities, according to analysis by Resume.io and NeoMam Studios. Photo: Supplied.

The University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus in Brisbane came in second with 54.84 per cent. Sydney’s Macquarie University was third with 54.73, the University of Western Australia in Perth was fourth with 53.81, and Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology was fifth with 53.62.

In sixth was Rockhampton’s Central Queensland University totalling 53.08 per cent happy faces, Bond University on the Gold Coast came in ninth place with 51.57, while Griffith University’s Nathan campus in southern Brisbane held onto twelfth with 50 per cent.

Queensland universities also took fourteenth and fifteenth – James Cook University in Townsville with 48.65 per cent, and the Queensland University of Technology in Kelvin Grove in Brisbane with 47.02.

The Amazon Rekognition API tool analyses faces in photos of faces and calculates a percentage of how likely it is that face is expressing happiness.

Pictures were considered for analysis only if they were geotagged at an Australian university campus, and were not part of advertising material. To avoid background faces altering the results, the analysis set a threshold of no more than five faces per photo.

The analysis was conducted by Resume.io, a Dutch resume building service, and NeoMam Studios, a UK digital creative studio. It also analysed UK and US universities, the full results can be found here.