Using 86,891 tweets, from the official corporate Twitter accounts of 715 unique firms, this study examines whether and how managers strategically attract and distract investors’ attention from corporate news through Twitter. We find that firms with good earnings news use Twitter to post more earnings-related information directly, whereas firms with bad earnings news post more non-earnings-related information on Twitter. We further find that depending on earnings performance firms strategically choose the format of tweets (qualitative or quantitative) and the tone of earnings tweets (positive or negative) to attract investors’ attention to good news or distract investors’ attention from bad news. Our results are robust to difference-in-differences (DID), alternative sample periods, and different variable specifications. Our findings provide empirical evidence for investors and regulators regarding current practices in corporate information on Twitter.

本研究使用来自 715 家独特公司的官方企业 Twitter 帐户的 86,891 条推文，检验管理者是否以及如何通过 Twitter 战略性地吸引和转移投资者对企业新闻的注意力。我们发现，拥有良好盈利消息的公司使用 Twitter 直接发布更多与盈利相关的信息，而拥有糟糕盈利消息的公司在 Twitter 上发布更多与盈利无关的信息。我们进一步发现，根据收益表现，公司战略性地选择推文的格式（定性或定量）和收益推文的基调（正面或负面），以吸引投资者对好消息的关注或分散投资者对坏消息的注意力。我们的结果对差异中的差异 (DID)、替代样本周期和不同的变量规格具有稳健性。