Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
ORCID (Links to author’s additional scholarship at ORCID.org)
Abstract
Retail investors and other stakeholders are vigorously and loudly taking positions regarding corporate governance issues on social media. They are gathering on social media to discuss which stocks to invest in and to debate and collectively act on corporate governance-related matters. Propelled by new technologies and social media, retail investor engagement has shifted away from traditional venues like corporate voting and shareholder proposals. Retail investors have opened tens of millions of new brokerage accounts since 2020. These new retail investors, primarily Millennials and GenZ’ers, are adept at using technology and naturally gather and obtain information on social media. A co-author and I coined “wireless investors” to encapsulate retail investors using commission-free trading apps to invest and social media to source information. In this essay, I use the term “wireless stakeholders” to refer to wireless investors as well as employees, consumers, and community members who may not own company shares but use social media to voice their opinions regarding companies or obtain their company information via social media. These wireless stakeholders are taking advantage of social media platforms like YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discourse, among other venues, to transform corporate governance engagement. In Humanizing Corporate Governance, Caleb Griffin tackles the issue of amplifying the voice of human investors. He proposes much-needed reforms to encourage the engagement of retail investors, arguing that although they care about how companies are managed, they are often kept silent due to structural barriers. Although structural barriers do impede engagement and reforms to the system are necessary, this brief response to Humanizing Corporate Governance utilizes a case study of one particularly illustrious event involving AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. to show that retail investors and other stakeholders are anything but silent. As new retail investors continue to enter the market, particularly from the Millennial and GenZ generations (with Generation Alpha soon to be joining them), the future of corporate governance is in the hands of these new investors, which means it is on social media. It is time to meet retail investors and other individual stakeholders on social media so that corporate governance can be humanized.
Publication Title
Florida Law Review Forum
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Corporate governance, Social media, Retail investors, Wireless stakeholders, Shareholder engagement, Proxy voting, Social media platforms, Millennial investors, Generation Z investors, GenZ investors
Recommended Citation
Christina M. Sautter, Corporate Governance Through Social Media, 75 Fla. L. Rev. F. 89 (2024)
