By Celina Scott-Buechler
#sexylist2014, #mtvhits, #katyperrysexist, #NASDAQ, #stocks. Believe it or not, these are all trending social media hashtags. But is finance really a topic of social media buzz?
“An increasingly popular one,” Assistant Professor Byoung-Hyoun Hwang said.
Recently hired to the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at CALS, one of the topics Hwang is researching is this very phenomenon: social media outlets rapidly taking the place of more traditional forums for discussing, and more importantly predicting future stock market movements.
“I think it’s one of the most interesting parts of my work,” he said. “We’re trying to assess if the predictions circulating these networks are any good.”
Hwang believes there’s a shift at work. “This approach to predicting stock markets has only really popped up in recent history. Before, people would turn to ‘financial experts’ such as analysts working for investment banks or the Wall Street Journal,” he said. “But now there’s a move away from these ‘experts’. What we’re seeing happen is a democratization of the process.” He likens the shift to how Wikipedia has changed the way encyclopedic information is generated and disseminated.
Previously appointed as an assistant professor of finance at Purdue University, Hwang dove into research immediately upon arriving at Cornell this fall. Much of what he’s working on, such as his research on social media, is a continuation of what he started at Purdue. Still, Hwang said, he’s found the unique atmosphere at Cornell makes him look at these topics in a new light.
“It’s been really interesting being surrounded by such diversity,” he said. “Cornell’s model, with the different colleges and schools, means that you could be working on the same thing as someone else at the university, but from a completely different perspective as he or she is.”
Celina Scott-Buechler is a student writer in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
