Interactions and Sentiment in Personal Finance Forums: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

The kinds of interactions taking place in an online personal finance forum and the sentiments expressed in its posts may influence the diffusion and usefulness of those forums. We explore a set of major threads on a personal finance forum to assess the degree of participation of posters and the prevailing sentiments. The participation appears to be dominated by a small number of posters, with the most frequent poster contributing even more than a third of all posts. Just a small fraction of all possible direct interactions actually take place. Dominance is also confirmed by the large presence of self-replies (i.e., a poster submitting several posts in succession) and rejoinders (i.e., a poster counter-replying to another poster). Though trust is the prevailing sentiment, anger and fear appear to be present as well, though at a lower level, revealing that posts exhibit both aggressive and defensive tones.