The Impact of Media and Social and Virtual Networks on the Policies and Decisions of Financial Markets Investors

In the world based on the digital space and the era of electronic and virtual communications, mass media and social networks, while playing the role of news sources for most financial information and data, regulate the problem of information asymmetry between investors and financial markets. It strengthens the adjustment and development of markets. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of mass media on the policy and tendencies of financial market investors. The target population was based on a survey in 2021 among 420 students with investment experience in the financial markets, which was selected by purposeful and non-random sampling and after collecting, 200 questionnaires were analyzed using the logit model. The results showed: a) Mass media leads to fluctuations in investors' tendencies and policies and affects their decisions. b) In the conditions of recession and crisis in the financial markets, the impact and penetration rate of news media is more than social and specialized media. c) while in the conditions of prosperity in the financial markets only, to adjust and carry out reforms in the stock market, the influence of news media is more than social and specialized media d) media news reports basically have an asymmetric effect in the sense that In conditions of market boom, investors pay more attention to optimistic reports and ignore reports that have negative signals. On the other hand, in the conditions of recession and lack of prosperity in the market, investors are more vulnerable to pessimistic media reports, and reports with active information do not have a significant and meaningful impact on their decisions. However, financial markets investors need to learn media literacy along with financial literacy in order to distinguish real news from fake news.