News Media Sentiment of Data Breaches

Abstract

Corporate data breachescompromise the confidentiality of personal information and affect businesses on different levels. While there has grown a considerable body of IS literature focusingon the financial impact of corporate data breaches through the observation of the stock market, yet there is scarce evidence of the consequences of data breaches that go beyond monetary and financial losses. This study explores how corporate data breaches are reflectedon news media channels.For this purpose and with a focus on publicly traded firms,a data sample of security breaches and the related news media publicationshavebeen extracted from thepublicly availabledatasource DataLossDB.org. To explore the news media reaction, a dictionary-based sentiment analysis approach based on General Inquirerhas been applied. The generated results provide evidence of a significant negative news media sentiment following the disclosure of breach incidents.