Verifiable content in social media stock‐analysis articles: The long and short of it
研究了SeekingAlpha上做空与做多文章的内容可验证性差异，发现做空文章可验证内容更多，且能引发更强市场反应、更好缓解收益反转，对投资者评估社交媒体信息可信度有参考价值。
Abstract Investment‐related social media platforms are transforming the traditional intermediary landscape by rapidly disseminating user‐empowered opinions and recommendations, raising concerns about the credibility of information on such platforms. We examine the differential content verifiability of SeekingAlpha.com articles with sell recommendations (short articles) versus articles with buy recommendations (long articles). We find that short articles contain greater verifiable content than long articles, and verifiable content in short articles generates greater market reactions and better mitigates return reversals than that in long articles. This asymmetry contrasts prior research evidence that greater content verifiability accompanies traditional sell‐side analyst reports with buy recommendations. Our results are robust to various confounding factors, including author effects, among others. Our results become more pronounced in the presence of greater retail ownership. Taken together, our results provide new evidence on investors’ assessment of the credibility of information on social media platforms.