Social Media Disclosure Research Articles

Correction to: Social media disclosure and reputational damage

Correction to: Social media disclosure and reputational damage

The effects of a client's social media disclosure and audience engagement on auditor judgment

The rapid rise of social media enables companies to disclose information to the public instantly. Thus, auditors may initially receive client information via a client's social media account instead of through private, client-to-auditor communication. Drawing on Social Penetration Theory, we conduct an experiment to investigate how a client's initial disclosure via social media (versus private disclosure) and audience engagement of the client's posts (e.g., number of “likes,” “replies,” and “reposts”) affects auditors' perception of the auditor-client relationship and their evaluation of the client-provided information. We find that when auditors initially receive client information via social media with high audience engagement, they are less willing to accept the client's preference than when the same information is disclosed privately or publicly with minimal audience engagement. Our findings are consistent with auditors perceiving client disclosure via social media with high audience engagement as a significant violation of their communication expectations such that their relational closeness with the client weakens and causes them to respond critically. We contribute to the literature on the use of social media for corporate disclosure, which has implications for the auditor-client relationship and audit quality.

What does it mean to be responsible for Canadian Cannabis firms? An examination of CSR identity through social media disclosure

PurposeThe study aims to examine the extent of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of Canadian cannabis firms and how they view responsibility. It also explores how cannabis firms build their CSR-based organizational identity through Twitter.Design/methodology/approachDeductive and inductive content analyses were carried through on tweets for a sample of 18 firms listed on the Canadian marijuana index during the legalization period of the recreational use of cannabis.FindingsThe results of this study show that cannabis firms approach responsibility by focusing on consumer and community/local development and by raising awareness and providing product information. The findings also highlight that the firms build their organizational identity mainly around their products’ medical benefits, the scientific efforts behind product development and the continual stigmatization they experience. At the industry level, cannabis firms attempt to build a harmonized identity to neutralize stigma.Originality/valueThis study allowed for a comprehensive understanding on how cannabis firms position themselves within an emergent sin industry and how they create their CSR identity through Twitter. It advances our understanding on the meaning of responsibility about the specific and distinctive features of the cannabis industry. From the methodology side, this study developed two content analysis tools: a coding instrument and a dictionary. These tools could be useful for conducting future studies related to the CSR disclosure of cannabis firms worldwide.

Social media disclosure and reputational damage

We provide new evidence on the effects of social media in the context of a financial scandal using a sample of banks that were accused of manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). We find that increased bank Twitter activity when the scandal surfaced has a positive moderating effect on equity returns. However, the dissemination of content operated by social media users has a negative counterbalancing effect, thus amplifying the impact of the scandal. In particular, tweets that are unrelated to the scandal and characterized by positive sentiment contribute to exacerbating the reputational damage suffered by banks. We contribute to the emerging literature on the role of social media in capital markets.

Toward a Feminist Social Media Vulnerability Taxonomy

Vulnerability intimately shapes the lived human experience and continues to gain attention in computer-supported cooperative work and human-computer interaction scholarship broadly, and in social media studies specifically. Social media comprise sociotechnical affordances that may uniquely shape lived experiences with vulnerability, rendering existing frameworks inadequate for comprehensive examinations of vulnerability as mediated on social media. Through interviews with social media users in the United States (N = 20) and drawing on feminist conceptualizations of vulnerability and social media disclosure and privacy scholarship, we propose a feminist taxonomy of social media vulnerability (FSMV). The FSMV taxonomy reflects vulnerabilitysources, states, andvalences, within which we introduce the state ofnetworked vulnerability andambivalent, desired, andundesired valences. We describe how social media enable forms of vulnerability different from in-person settings, challenge framings that synonymize vulnerability with risk/harm, and facilitate interdisciplinary theory-building. Additionally, we discuss hownetworked, ambivalent, andun/desired vulnerability extend and diverge from prior work to create a theoretically rich taxonomy that is useful for future work on social media and vulnerability. Finally, we discuss implications for design related to granular control over profile, content, and privacy settings, as well as implications for platform accountability, as they pertain to social media vulnerability.

Social Media Disclosure of Political Ideology and Divided Capital Market

Social Media Disclosure of Political Ideology and Divided Capital Market

Students’ Social Media Disclosures: Reconsidering the Rhetorics of Whistleblowing

This article examines how whistleblowing evolves as a rhetorical genre alongside emergent media. By analyzing three events involving student disclosures on social media, this article argues that students’ social media communication can qualify as whistleblowing, just as whistleblowing can qualify as rhetoric. Notably, whistleblowing’s current conventions, which are heavily based in business and organization studies, suggest otherwise. This article introduces a concept called kinderuption to facilitate rhetorical analyses of whistleblowing. Approaching whistleblowing events as kinderuptions invites critical attention to audience engagement and influence, and a reconsideration of underlying themes like intention, harm, and care.

Post‐traumatic stress disorder and hiring: The role of social media disclosures on stigma and hiring assessments of veterans

AbstractA significant percentage of veterans suffer from post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Veterans are often directed to social media platforms to seek support during their transition to civilian life. However, social media platforms are increasingly used to aid in hiring decisions, and these platforms may make veterans’ PTSD more discoverable during the hiring process. Based on social identity theory and identity management theory, the integrated suspicion model, and the stigma literature, we conducted four studies that examine veterans’ PTSD disclosures on social media and the consequences in the hiring process. Study 1 suggests that 16%–34% of veterans included cues related to PTSD status on social media. Study 2, based on 290 upper‐level business students, shows that veterans with PTSD were more stigmatized than veterans without PTSD, and stigmatization is associated with more suspicion and lower hiring‐related ratings (of expected task performance, expected organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), expected counterproductive work behaviors (CWB), and intention to interview). Study 3, based on 431 working professionals with hiring experience, further supports relationships from Study 2. Study 4, based on 298 working professionals, identifies peril (i.e., perceptions regarding danger) as an additional mediator for the effects of PTSD on hiring‐related ratings. In sum, we identify and explore the identity management conundrum that social media disclosure poses for veterans with PTSD in the hiring process and discuss potential remedies and avenues for future research.

Future-oriented disclosure and corporate value: the role of an emerging economy corporate governance

PurposeKuwait has taken significant steps to reform its corporate governance (CG) by introducing the New Company Law (NCL) in 2013. This study investigates how this reform of CG mechanisms affects the disclosure of future-oriented information. Likewise, it explores how CG mechanisms affect the informativeness of this disclosure.Design/methodology/approachThe sample comprises the nonfinancial firms listed on the Boursa Kuwait from 2014 to 2018. The study uses an automated textual analysis to measure the level of future-oriented disclosure in the annual reports of these firms. The informativeness of disclosure is proxied by firm value at three months of the date of the annual report.FindingsThe study finds that Kuwaiti firms with larger board sizes and substantial ownership by institutional investors are less likely to disseminate future-oriented information. Conversely, firms with more independent directors and larger audit committees are more inclined to provide future-oriented disclosure. Furthermore, the disclosure of future-oriented information carries contents that enhance investors' valuations of Kuwaiti firms, especially in firms with fewer institutional ownership and more prominent audit committees.Research limitations/implicationsIt focuses on management decisions to disclose information in the annual reports. Examining other channels of disseminating information, such as social media disclosure, provides avenues for future research.Practical implicationsPolicy setters in Kuwait should consider the importance of some CG mechanisms to improve the transparency of Kuwaiti firms, as suggested by the NCL. Likewise, investors should rely on such specific CG mechanisms to build their prospects about the firm's value.Originality/valueApart from developed countries, the current study is the first evidence on how CG mechanisms could affect the informativeness of future-oriented disclosure in a developing economy. It is also the first to investigate the new CG mechanism introduced by Kuwait NCL in 2013.

“How a Facebook Update Can Cost You Your Job”: News Coverage of Employment Terminations Following Social Media Disclosures, From Racist Cops to Queer Teachers

Social media posts and profiles have become a key part of hiring and firing processes, producing a “hidden curriculum of surveillance.” When hiring, employers routinely engage in “cybervetting” job candidates, making judgments based on their social media presence (or absence), and so too can social media disclosures impact (positively and negatively) employment progression and even result in termination. Where is the line between personal social media use and professional identities? What is the difference between holding people in positions of power to account and invading the privacy of everyday people? What kinds of social media posts get people fired? In this article, we report on a study of 312 news media articles that document stories of people being fired because of a social media post. We divide the corpus into posts made by the individuals who are fired (“self-posts,” n = 264) and posts made by others that resulted in the subject of those posts losing their job (“third party,” n = 48). Racism was the most common reason people were fired in these news stories, followed by other forms of discriminatory behavior (such as queerphobia), offensive content, workplace conflict, political content, acts of violence, and abuse. We examine these narratives through the lens of what van Dijck describes as “professional value,” and ultimately seek to question how these stories normalize the “hidden curriculum of surveillance,” putting additional pressure on employees and young people who are called to act on social media through the prism of future employment.

The Effects of a Client’s Social Media Disclosure and Audience Engagement on Auditor Judgment: A Social Penetration Theory Perspective

The Effects of a Client’s Social Media Disclosure and Audience Engagement on Auditor Judgment: A Social Penetration Theory Perspective

Linguistic Formality and Audience Engagement: Investors' Reactions to Characteristics of Social Media Disclosures*

ABSTRACTAs firms increasingly use social media to provide disclosures to investors, it is important to understand whether the characteristics that are associated with these disclosures lead to different reactions from investors than disclosures provided via more traditional channels. In this paper, we use an experiment to examine whether linguistic formality in positive news disclosures, and engagement of social media users surrounding the disclosures (e.g., “likes” and “retweets”), affect investors' judgments about a firm and its management. Results suggest that, as predicted, investors are more sensitive to signals of audience engagement when disclosures use informal rather than formal language. Specifically, when associated with signals of high audience engagement, the use of informal language leads to greater willingness to invest than the use of formal language in a disclosure. However, also as predicted, the use of informal language hurts willingness to invest when associated with signals of low audience engagement. In two follow‐up experiments, we investigate how news valence and linguistic formality are expected to affect the level of audience engagement in the first place, and we investigate whether managers strategically vary their use of linguistic formality based on characteristics of the setting. Overall, our results provide evidence on how firms might use social media disclosures to better connect with investors. This study contributes to the growing literature on linguistic attributes of disclosures, and the emerging literature investigating the consequences of issuing financial disclosures through social media.

CSR disclosure on Twitter: Evidence from the UK

Ongoing advancements in technology have dramatically changed the disclosure media that companies adopt. Such disclosure media have evolved from traditional paper-based ones to the internet as the new platform for disclosing information on companies’ designated websites; however, the new media for disclosures are currently social media platforms. Among the important disclosures that companies make are Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosures. These are now deemed indispensable due to growing social awareness among societies. While a significant body of the literature is dedicated to studying CSR disclosures and their determinants on the traditional media, studies examining CSR disclosures on social media are quite few. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate corporate social media accounts for CSR disclosures, as well as identify their determinants. The sample of the study is comprised of tweets posted on the Twitter accounts belonging to the FTSE 350 constituents. Topic modeling, an unsupervised machine learning approach, is applied to identify CSR disclosure tweets and regressions are run to identify the determinants of CSR disclosure on Twitter. The utilization of topic modeling to reveal CSR content on social media is considered a new approach to mainstream CSR disclosure literature; as such, this paper examines the new phenomenon of CSR disclosures on social media using new research methods. Results show that the popularity of Twitter as a CSR disclosure platform has risen significantly over the past few years. The paper also provides evidence that the presence of women on company boards, especially non-executive women, is positively associated with the extent of CSR disclosure on Twitter. Results highlight the importance of board independence for CSR disclosure in a social media disclosure context, complementing other disclosure platforms. Larger firms are also found to disclose more CSR information on Twitter compared to smaller ones indicating that firm size plays an important role determining a company’s level of CSR disclosure on social media.

A Mixed Methods Inquiry into the Role of Tom Hanks’ COVID-19 Social Media Disclosure in Shaping Willingness to Engage in Prevention Behaviors

ABSTRACT Given the vast amounts of COVID-19-related messages flooding mediated and interpersonal communication channels during the global pandemic, celebrity COVID-19 disclosures offer rare opportunities to cut through message fatigue and apathy and garner the attention of wide swaths of the public. We conducted a convergent mixed method analysis of audience responses to actor Tom Hanks’ March 11, 2020 disclosure of his COVID-19 diagnosis via social media. We collected our data within 24 hours of his announcement, allowing us to quickly capture emotional and cognitive responses to the announcement and to assess both demographic and psychosocial differences in types of people who heard the news in this time frame and those who had not. In our study, 587 participants had heard the news of Hanks’ disclosure while 95 had not. Participants who had heard responded to an open-ended prompt asking if the disclosure affected them at all. Those who had not heard were funneled into a field intervention to test how random assignment to seeing Hanks’ disclosure post or not would affect audiences’ COVID-19-related emotions, cognitions, and willingness to enact prevention behaviors. The results of this mixed methods study revealed differences in responses to Hanks’ disclosure based on health information source trust and involvement with Hanks as well as effects of the intervention on efficacy for dealing with COVID-19. We discuss implications for health communication theory and crafting messages that can effectively build off the attentional inertia generated by celebrity illness disclosures to encourage prevention efforts.

Social Media Disclosure and Reputational Damage: Evidence from the LIBOR Scandal

Social Media Disclosure and Reputational Damage: Evidence from the LIBOR Scandal

How CEO Social Media Disclosure and Gender Affect Perceived CEO Attributes, Relationship Investment, and Engagement Intention

How does a chief executive officer (CEO)’s social media content disclosure on Twitter affect perceived CEO attributes, relationship investment, and public engagement, and to what extent does the CEO’s gender (male vs. female) moderate how publics evaluate content disclosures? A 2 (CEO gender: male vs. female) × 4 (level of disclosure: 100% corporate vs. 70% corporate and 30% personal vs. 30% corporate and 70% personal vs. 100% personal disclosure) between-subject experimental design was used to address these questions with a random sample of 465 adult Twitter users in the United States. Results showed that posts that featured high personal disclosure did not increase the perceived likability or competence of the CEO. Nor did CEO gender impact these outcomes. However, CEO professional disclosure proved to be an effective means to gain high levels of perceived relationship investment from publics. Finally, publics may hold implicit gender bias in cognitive (i.e., perceived relationship investment) and behavioral evaluation (i.e., engagement intention) of a female CEO.

Social Media Disclosure of Intellectual Capital and firm value

This paper aims to examine the relationship between firm value and the level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital by Kuwaiti and Omani listed firms. The level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital was measured by adapting a checklist of 78 items. Also, the financial reports were used to determine Tobin's Q. The results showed that the level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital was 71% by Kuwaiti and Omani firms. Moreover, the findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between the firm value and the level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital. The study recommends that the Kuwaiti and Omani bourses must develop a formal guideline for social media disclosure of intellectual capital to create harmony in disclosing information and to enhance the firms' value through taking the advantages of social media in attracting the more talented employees and to maximise the customers and investors benefits.

Social media disclosure of intellectual capital and firm value

This paper aims to examine the relationship between firm value and the level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital by Kuwaiti and Omani listed firms. The level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital was measured by adapting a checklist of 78 items. Also, the financial reports were used to determine Tobin's Q. The results showed that the level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital was 71% by Kuwaiti and Omani firms. Moreover, the findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between the firm value and the level of social media disclosure of intellectual capital. The study recommends that the Kuwaiti and Omani bourses must develop a formal guideline for social media disclosure of intellectual capital to create harmony in disclosing information and to enhance the firms' value through taking the advantages of social media in attracting the more talented employees and to maximise the customers and investors benefits.

What Do Employees Know? Evidence from a Social Media Platform

ABSTRACT We use employee predictions of their companies' six-month business outlook from Glassdoor.com to assess the information content of employee social media disclosures. We find that average employee outlook is incrementally informative in predicting future operating performance. Its information content is greater when the disclosures are aggregated from a larger, more diverse, more knowledgeable employee base, consistent with the wisdom of crowds phenomenon. Average outlook predicts bad news events more strongly than good news events, suggesting that employee social media disclosures are relatively more important as a source of bad news. Consistent with the organizational theory, we find systematic differences in the quantity and nature of the information in employee disclosures when the disclosures are grouped based on employee attributes and job responsibilities. Finally, average outlook predicts future returns of firms that attract less attention by analysts and investors, suggesting that investors in these firms use outlook inefficiently.

What Do Employees Know? Evidence from a Social Media Platform

We use employee predictions of their companies’ six-month business outlook from Glassdoor.com to assess the information content of employee social media disclosures. We find that average employee outlook is incrementally informative in predicting future operating performance. Its information content is greater when the disclosures are aggregated from a larger, more diverse, more knowledgeable employee base, consistent with the wisdom of crowds phenomenon. Average outlook predicts bad news events more strongly than good news events, suggesting that employee social media disclosures are relatively more important as a source of bad news. Consistent with the organizational theory, we find systematic differences in the quantity and nature of the information in employee disclosures when the disclosures are grouped based on employee attributes and job responsibilities. Finally, average outlook predicts future returns of firms that attract less attention by analysts and investors, suggesting that investors in these firms use outlook inefficiently.