Social Media for Corporate Reporting and Performance
Authors:   Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA Selangor, Malaysia., Mahmud* Radziah , Manan Nor Suhailati Abdul ,   Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA Selangor, Malaysia., Hashim Marshita ,   Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA Selangor, Malaysia.
Published: October 2019

Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information. They refer to a group of Internet-based application which is used to create and exchange user-generated content. A recent definition of social media suggests that it is a channel that allows users to opportunistically interact and selectively self-present, either in real-time or asynchronously, with both broad and narrow audiences. Corporate reporting refers to the process of communicating both financial and non-financial information about the resources and performance of a company. Corporate reporting includes the integrated reporting, financial reporting, corporate governance, executive remuneration, corporate social responsibility and narrative reporting. This study is carried out to examine the adoption of social media among Malaysian companies by industry type; and the impact of social media adoption on company’s performance. This study used Top 100 companies in Malaysia as the sample selected based on their market capitalization. These companies are considered to be leading companies that drive the Malaysian economy. It is expected that companies may use multiple forms of social media since users utilize different types of social media platform for different purposes. Therefore, this study considered various types of social media that are commonly used by companies. By using content analysis, the uses of social media were classified into 11 categories including investor relations, corporate social responsibility and financial reporting. The companies are categorized into four quartiles in order to determine whether there are differences in social media adoption by company size or growth opportunity. Statistical model is developed in examining the impact of social media adoption on company’s performance. The data of this study were collected within a period of 3 months and the social media platforms selected were Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, Google+ and LinkedIn since these platforms were regarded as common among users. The analyzed results suggest that companies from trading or services industry used social media more frequently as compared to the other industries. It is also reported that the highest group of companies that use social media platform comes from those companies that are having the total sales between RM589 million and RM1,245 million. However, there is no notable difference in the adoption of social media in terms of growth opportunities measured by market to book value among Malaysian companies. It is also discovered that the use of social media has positive and significant association with companies’ performance after controlling for size of the company and its leverage. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge in relation to a new dimension of corporate reporting as well as to the management of the companies.