The power of narrative: engaging different audiences through media content in ICOs

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on the distinction between two types of audiences in the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) context (i.e. traditional investors and communities of followers) to explore what kind of information embedded in media news they are more interested in and which dimensions have the greatest impact in attracting their attention. Using a semantic network approach, we analyze the content of 1,976 news related to a sample of 395 ICOs between 2015 and 2020. The results suggest that news content attracts the attention of each type of audience differently: conventional investors prioritize aspects such as ICO regulatory issues and the cryptocurrency project’s management team, overlooking factors such as news length or sentiment. In contrast, Twitter users show a stronger interest in ICO attributes, news length, and specific linguistic elements such as sentiment and the use of financial terminology.