Big Data and Machine Learning in Quantitative Investment

CHAPTER 8A Social Media Analysis of Corporate Culture

Andy Moniz

8.1 INTRODUCTION

In today's globalized, service‐based economy, many firms derive substantial value from their intangible assets. Examples include corporate reputation, brand value, innovative efficiency (Chan et al. 2001), human capital (Edmans 2011) and organizational capital. The lack of physical substance associated with intangible assets, their opaque ownership rights and non‐existent market prices limit firms from valuing and recording most types of intangible assets in their financial statements. Until accounting standards change, investors seeking to resolve this ‘value paradox’ and integrate intangible asset valuations into their decision‐making processes must seek alternative sources of information beyond a firm's own financial statements. In our view, one alternative source of information is publicly available text published on the web, and in particular, social media.

The term ‘social media’ describes a variety of ‘new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues’ (Blackshaw and Nazzaro, 2006; Gaines‐Ross 2010). Social media enables individuals to share their opinions, criticisms and suggestions in public. To the best of our knowledge, prior textual analysis studies of social media datasets have mostly captured the perspective of consumers (for example, ...