Can Negative Emotions on Social Media Predict Corporate Financial Risks: Perspective from Baidu Tieba

Abstract

The intrinsic relationship between social media and corporate development has emerged as one of the key research topics today. Most current studies focus on the positive impacts and opportunities that social media can bring to enterprises. However, there remains a lack of a unified explanation for the influence of negative news on social media on businesses. Consequently, the research theme of this paper is to explore whether negative sentiments on social media can predict corporate financial risks. Firstly, this paper collects data related to bearish posts on social media and financial risks of enterprises. Subsequently, regression analysis is conducted on the data using SPSS. The results reveal that, under the condition of controlling the asset-liability ratio, negative posts on social media do have an impact on corporate financial risks, with a greater number of negative posts correlating to a higher level of financial risk for the enterprise. This paper fills a gap in understanding the negative implications of social media on certain aspects of businesses and provides data support for researching the influence of negative sentiments on social media on corporate financial risks.