Media Effects and the Active Elite Audience: A Study of Communications in the London Stock Exchange

TLDR: This article explored the impact of communications on investor behavior and trading patterns in the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and found that the audience investigated is an elite one that most actively consumes its media and is rarely observed in studies of media effects.

Abstract: This article explores the impact of communications on investor behaviour and trading patterns in the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The significance of the work is two-fold. First, for many observers, the wild trading patterns that regularly occur in stock markets suggest the presence of ‘strong’ media effects in action; a finding in conflict with mainstream audience research. Second, the audience investigated is an elite one that most ‘actively’ consumes its media and is rarely observed in studies of media effects. The research thus attempts to identify in what ways the media are implicated in stock market movements and, at the same time, how exactly this active, elite audience makes use of its media. The empirical material presented here is primarily that gained from interviews with elite fund managers at the London Stock Exchange, Europe’s largest financial centre.