TY - JOUR
T1 - How are social and mass media different in relation to the stock market? A study on topic coverage and predictive value
AU - Dong, Hang
AU - Ren, Jie
AU - Padmanabhan, Balaji
AU - Nickerson, Jeffrey V.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - Although investors in financial markets have access to information from both mass media and social media, trading platforms that curate and provide this information have little to go by in terms of understanding the difference between these two types of media. This paper compares social media with mass media in the stock market, focusing on information coverage diversity and predictive value with respect to future stock absolute returns. Based on a study of nearly a million stock-related news articles from the Sina Finance news platform and 12.7 million stock-related social media messages from the popular Weibo platform in China, we find that social media covers less stocks than mass media, and this effect is amplified as the volume of media information increases. We find that there is some short-term predictive value from these sources, but they are different. Although mass media information coverage is more predictive than social media information coverage in a one-day horizon, it is the other way around in a two-to five-day horizon. These empirical results suggest that social media and mass media serve stock market investors differently. We draw connections to theories related to how crowds and experts differ and offer practical implications for the design of media-related IS systems.
AB - Although investors in financial markets have access to information from both mass media and social media, trading platforms that curate and provide this information have little to go by in terms of understanding the difference between these two types of media. This paper compares social media with mass media in the stock market, focusing on information coverage diversity and predictive value with respect to future stock absolute returns. Based on a study of nearly a million stock-related news articles from the Sina Finance news platform and 12.7 million stock-related social media messages from the popular Weibo platform in China, we find that social media covers less stocks than mass media, and this effect is amplified as the volume of media information increases. We find that there is some short-term predictive value from these sources, but they are different. Although mass media information coverage is more predictive than social media information coverage in a one-day horizon, it is the other way around in a two-to five-day horizon. These empirical results suggest that social media and mass media serve stock market investors differently. We draw connections to theories related to how crowds and experts differ and offer practical implications for the design of media-related IS systems.
KW - Future stock absolute return
KW - Information coverage diversity
KW - Mass media
KW - Predictive value
KW - Social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122181378&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85122181378&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.im.2021.103588
DO - 10.1016/j.im.2021.103588
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85122181378
SN - 0378-7206
VL - 59
JO - Information and Management
JF - Information and Management
IS - 2
M1 - 103588
ER -