Media sentiment emotions and consumer energy prices

Abstract

This paper analyzes how sentiment from different news sources affect[s] energy prices for consumers. We assess the impact of sentiments derived from newspaper and social media on prices of gasoline, heating oil and natural gas from 2006 until 2021. Having shown that sentiments derived from social media and newspapers differ significantly in the first step, we show that newspaper sentiments have significant effects on prices in times of high news coverage while the effects of social media news are negligible. Finally, we illustrate that strong emotions in newspaper coverage have additional price effects and analyze a potential factor structure for out-of-sample forecasts.