Tweets, Google Trends and Sovereign Spreads in the GIIPS

We examine whether the information contained in social media (Twitter & Facebook) and web search queries (Google) influences financial markets. Using a multivariate system and focussing on Eurozone’s peripheral countries, the GIIPS (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), we show that social media discussion and search-related queries for the Greek debt crisis provide significant short-run information primarily for the Greek-German government bond yield differential even when other financial control variables (default risk, liquidity risk and international risk) are accounted for, and to a much lesser extent for Portuguese and Italian sovereign yield differentials.