Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market

This study tackles the complex task of measuring investor sentiment, a latent variable often measured through various proxies. The focus here is on textual sentiment extracted from online sources, specifically news media and social media sentiment. The central inquiry is whether these proxies are eq...

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Main Authors: Yudhvir Seetharam, Kingstone Nyakurukwa
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-11-01
Series:International Journal of Information Management Data Insights
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667096824000624
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author Yudhvir Seetharam
Kingstone Nyakurukwa
author_facet Yudhvir Seetharam
Kingstone Nyakurukwa
author_sort Yudhvir Seetharam
collection DOAJ
description This study tackles the complex task of measuring investor sentiment, a latent variable often measured through various proxies. The focus here is on textual sentiment extracted from online sources, specifically news media and social media sentiment. The central inquiry is whether these proxies are equivalent indicators of investor sentiment. Employing firm-level daily sentiment scores for DJIA stocks and leveraging Granger causality and transfer entropy, the research investigates the dynamics of information flow between these proxies. The findings show a prevailing pattern: information predominantly flows from social media to news for the majority of stocks while a reverse relationship is established for some stocks. The variations across stocks suggest that these proxies do not uniformly capture the same underlying phenomena. The study shows the significant role of social media in shaping news media sentiment and prompts considerations about regulating social media platforms in the context of their impact on financial markets.
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series International Journal of Information Management Data Insights
spelling doaj-art-82d6f77fdcd94895837f1d3c13cbac9a2025-08-20T02:38:18ZengElsevierInternational Journal of Information Management Data Insights2667-09682024-11-014210027310.1016/j.jjimei.2024.100273Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock marketYudhvir Seetharam0Kingstone Nyakurukwa1University of the Witwatersrand, School of Economics and Finance, Johannesburg, South AfricaCorresponding author.; University of the Witwatersrand, School of Economics and Finance, Johannesburg, South AfricaThis study tackles the complex task of measuring investor sentiment, a latent variable often measured through various proxies. The focus here is on textual sentiment extracted from online sources, specifically news media and social media sentiment. The central inquiry is whether these proxies are equivalent indicators of investor sentiment. Employing firm-level daily sentiment scores for DJIA stocks and leveraging Granger causality and transfer entropy, the research investigates the dynamics of information flow between these proxies. The findings show a prevailing pattern: information predominantly flows from social media to news for the majority of stocks while a reverse relationship is established for some stocks. The variations across stocks suggest that these proxies do not uniformly capture the same underlying phenomena. The study shows the significant role of social media in shaping news media sentiment and prompts considerations about regulating social media platforms in the context of their impact on financial markets.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667096824000624Behavioural financeTransfer entropyOnline investor sentiment
spellingShingle Yudhvir Seetharam
Kingstone Nyakurukwa
Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
International Journal of Information Management Data Insights
Behavioural finance
Transfer entropy
Online investor sentiment
title Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
title_full Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
title_fullStr Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
title_full_unstemmed Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
title_short Headlines or Hashtags? The battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
title_sort headlines or hashtags the battle in social media for investor sentiment in the stock market
topic Behavioural finance
Transfer entropy
Online investor sentiment
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667096824000624
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