![Photo of people in the article](https://business.wfu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/KeltonA_2014-683x1024.jpg)
Assistant Professor of Accounting Andrea Kelton received the Best Paper Award at the 2016 Accounting Information Systems Midyear Meeting held January 22-23. The award was for a paper she co-authored with Robin Pennington at N.C. State titled “If you tweet, they will follow: CEO tweets, social capital and investor say-on-pay judgements.”
Kelton’s study showed that CEOs who deliver important financial news through social media, like Twitter, were perceived as having a more personal relationship to the non-professional investors who participated in the experiment. The traditional method of disseminating this information, such as a company website, did not create the same parasocial interaction. Just as social media fosters the perception of personal relationships with celebrities and athletes, CEOs may be able to create this feeling on social media as well. That could influence whether investors vote to give them additional compensation. The paper is in the process of journal submission at this time.