Good News, Bad News: A Proposal to Measure Banks’ Reputation using Twitter

Abstract

The amount of literature and the research produced about reputa-tional risk in banking has grown rapidly (some of the contributions are: Fiordelisi, Soana and Schwizer, 2012; Gillet, Hubner and Plunus, 2010; Sturm, 2013) due to the obvious responsibilities of the banking and financial industry in the economic crises that have emerged since 2007. In banking studies attention has been paid to reputational damage stemming from operational risk events and losses: as often, when debating risks in banking, more effort has been dedicated to measuring effect rather than understanding the real determinants of risks and losses, and offering suggestions about how to manage risks and their causes. Having noticed a lack of or insufficient information on corporate reputation (CR) and reputational risk (RR) in the banking industry in the mainstream literature, we try to go back to basics and justify, both theoretically and practically, the need for new approaches and practices. We think that it can be useful to pick up information on how stakeholders observe and exchange opinions about reputational facts and events connected with decision-making processes and actions inside the banks.