Voluntary disclosures on social media and financial performance of quoted firms in the Middle East

This study investigates whether there is a relationship between the voluntary disclosures shared by publicly listed companies in Middle Eastern countries on social media platforms and their financial performance. For this purpose, corporate posts on social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), and YouTube) were examined and categorized using content analysis. The research sample consists of 1,041 companies listed on the stock exchanges of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. The study is grounded in signaling theory, aiming to understand how social media engagement may be associated with financial outcomes. To test the hypotheses, the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test was applied, and all analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software. According to the research findings, 64% of companies in the Middle East actively use social media, and 96% of these companies voluntarily disclose information (strategic, financial and non-financial) through their social media accounts. While statistically significant relationships were identified between certain indicators of financial performance and the voluntary disclosures made by companies on corporate social media platforms, it should be noted that this domain is highly complex, and interpretations must be approached from a multidimensional perspective.