Do Emotions Determine Rumors and Impact the Financial Market the Case of Demonetization in India

Abstract

Studies have identified that rumors circulate in social media and rumors influence different areas of decision-making. Given that rumors are essentially psychological phenomena, there are not enough studies that explore how textual content-based emotions determine social media rumors. Further, while behavioral finance identifies rumors as influencing financial markets, the relationship between social media rumors and financial markets is not well studied. This paper attempts to provide a direction for understanding these two questions. In the context of demonetization in India it finds that while text-based emotion extraction helps identify rumors circulating on social media, these emotions do not impact the movement of the financial market.