Social media users on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok, who engage in lively discourse on cryptocurrency, and meme stocks or stocks that rally due to social media hype (Nann, 2019 McCluskey, 2021), also responded to the financial crisis by sharing posts, memes, and hashtags like #StockMarketCrash2020, #BearMarket, #Recession, etc. Some of the biggest corporations, and institutional investors like banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc., witnessed record losses, and deliberated on the events with business pundits on mainstream media. On March 11, 2020, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020), stock markets around the world crashed spectacularly, with US indices falling 20% since February’s high, officially entering a bear market ( Stocks Plunge, With Dow in Bear Market, 2020). By analyzing the WSB posts, we identify key themes that can help technical communicators understand how a social media platform like Reddit can be used for tactical organizing, and what positive or negative real-world impact can the events emerging out of the WSB-GME frenzy have on tactical technical communication. The purpose of this article is to study how the confluence of technology, digital rhetoric, remote collaboration, tied with an underlying idea of social justice, created one of the most remarkable events in the stock market in recent times. Yet, they continued to buy the stock because of an almost cult-like following prevalent in WSB. In spite of the emergence of community, gratitude, and activism in the WSB subreddit, many Redditors also faced losses when the GME stock price fell.
This mass act, fueled by Reddit posts from investors like Keith Gill, made the GME stock price shoot up 1,700% in January 2021, leading to massive gains for retail investors, with three of its largest individual shareholders gaining $3 billion, and hedge funds losing nearly $20 billion during that period (Griffith, 2021 Li, 2021). In a classic David versus Goliath move, small investors used the networking technologies afforded by social media to collectively buy and hold the stock of video game company, GameStop (GME), which hedge funds had bet against. When the US, as much as the rest of the world, struggled in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of retail investors banded together on a Reddit forum called Wall Street Bets (WSB) to take on a system that they felt disproportionately benefited large corporations and institutional investors. In a networked society, social media have often been used as tools to facilitate communication, collaboration, organizing, and advocacy. Recognize how networked interactions influence the democratization of information, consumer engagement, and the rhetoric of finance.Identify emerging trends of retail investors embracing their collective power afforded by social media platforms.Learn how information is socialized by means of technical exchanges and political expressions.Understand the power of social media in grassroots organizing and facilitating tactical efforts.KEYWORDS: Reddit, GameStop, social media, stock market, tactical technical communication Practitioner’s Takeaway While technology assumes an agentive role in facilitating tactical efforts, it can also create an information bubble, where users may be gripped by a cult-like devotion for their heroes and desire to be part of the latest trends, thereby making risky financial bets.Ĭonclusion: The WSB-GME saga illustrated implications for tactical technical communication as well as the impact of networked interactions on democratization of information, consumer engagement, and the rhetoric of finance. Results: We found the networked social mania to be driven by a discourse founded on a common goal and a shared leadership that emerges from vertical and horizontal community building.
#Wallstreetbets lingo guide professional
We curated a series of Reddit posts pertaining to the WSB-GME saga and applied critical discourse analysis with a focus on the tactical and multimodal elements in these posts to identify their professional and theoretical implications. Methods: We employed a case study methodology that combined positivist and interpretive perspectives toward a developing event.
Purpose: What can technical communicators learn from a seemingly swank event such as the Reddit Wall Street Bets and GameStop (WSB-GME) saga? In this article, we identify tactical organizing in online spaces as a complex convergence of social uptake and socialized information afforded by news sharing and mass user interactions in digital platforms.
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