Given the several rounds of quantitative easing over the last two decades, the American corporate bond market has been a preferable channel for corporate financing, which further fosters related market participants to explore the factors driving credit risk. On behalf of the debtholders, the credit rating agencies independently collect corporate information and assess the creditworthiness of the focal corporate, which is concluded as the credit rating outcomes. Recent literature acknowledges the vital role of CEO characteristics from multiple sources in shaping credit rating outcomes. They document that these CEO characteristics act as signals regarding CEO capacity or risk-taking incentives and influence credit ratings. Meanwhile, CEO-related information on social media has been extracted as effective predictors for credit rating assessment but lacks sufficient theoretical support. In this respect, a natural question to ask is how CEOs' public recognition on social media can influence credit risk assessment. Therefore, the dissertation utilizes digital gatekeeping theory and identity control theory to figure out what the CEO's social media recognition shapes and how it impacts corporate credit ratings with machine learning methods. In particular, this study relies on the social media context and tests whether the CEO's social media recognition could release the pressures on credit ratings when corporate conduct strategies with extensive pressure from social media (i.e., 5G strategies). Accordingly, we collect tweets for S&P 1500 firms’ CEOs from 2008 to 2020 and adopt the concerned dataset in the three studies below.

The first study, “Quantifying the Impact of CEO Social Media Celebrity Status on Corporate Value: Novel Measures from Digital Gatekeeping Theory,” invokes the CEO's public recognition on social media as an essential part of the CEO social media presence and shapes the CEO celebrity status under the social media context. Based on the digital gatekeeping theory, this study roots on public recognition to develop two new measures of CEO celebrity status on social media: CEO social media prominence and CEO social media tenor. The empirical analysis reveals that both measures are positively associated with corporate value. Moreover, we find that CEO awards from mass media positively moderate the association between CEO social media prominence and corporate value. Our empirical analysis reveals that CEO social media prominence positively relates to corporate value via advantages from corporate sales, reputation, and risk management, while CEO social media tenor improves corporate value via reputation enhancement. Collectively, our evidence suggests that CEO social media celebrity status is an important factor that top leaders and corporates incorporate into their corporate social media management strategies.

Confirming the role of CEO social media celebrity status, the second study, “CEO Social Media Celebrity Status and Credit Rating Assessment,” aims to explore the impact of CEO social media celebrity status on corporate credit rating and to determine whether potential threats to the CEO celebrity status negatively moderate this impact. The study collects tweets mentioning 874 CEOs from 513 unique S&P 1500 corporates. A panel data analysis was conducted on a panel with 4,235 observations from 2009 to 2020. The empirical findings confirm that CEO social media celebrity status is positively associated with corporate credit rating outcomes. Our path analyses reveal that CEOs with higher social media celebrity status have less incentive to conduct risk-taking behaviors and thus benefit credit ratings. When the rating agencies perceive potential threats to CEO celebrity status, the association between CEO social media celebrity status and credit rating is weakened. The findings of this study reveal that social media certificated celebrity CEOs tend to be risk-averse, unlike the mass media certificated celebrity CEOs.

The third study, “Placing the 5G Bets in the early stage: 5G Strategy Implementation, CEO Social Media Celebrity Status, and Credit Ratings”, focuses on pioneer corporates with 5G strategies and their debt financing problems. The prospects of 5G technology are designed with enhanced throughput, reduced delay, ultra-high reliability, and higher connection density. However, the application and development of 5G technology require corporates to invest massive resources, while the 5G monetization dilemma increases the financial burden. The study solves the conflicts and finds that 5G implementation negatively associates credit ratings via higher default risk and lower corporate value. Unlike other advanced technologies, 5G-related rumors have been spread widely on social media. This study further shows that the CEO's social media celebrity status significantly weakened the negative association between 5G implementation and credit ratings.

The contribution of this dissertation is three-fold. First, this study extends the digital gatekeeping theory by introducing and verifying the role of digital gatekeepers and their information selection mechanism in shaping CEO celebrity status. To the best of our knowledge, our paper is the first to introduce the mass communication discipline theory, digital gatekeeping theory, in exploring what drives the public recognition of CEOs on social media and its economic effect on corporate value. This research develops novel and valid measures of CEO celebrity status on social media, which extends the CEO celebrity studies from the mass media era to the social media era. It reveals how CEO public recognition on social media leads to corporate value enhancement, which offers novel insights into CEO social media presence literature and CEO celebrity literature. Practically, managers could leverage their influence on social media from a different perspective and call for corporate social media strategies devoted to enhancing the CEO celebrity status.

Second, the study contributes to previous literature on assessing corporate credit ratings. Previous studies have informed the role of social media and CEO-level factors in assessing credit risks. We further extend this line by explaining how a CEO social media celebrity status benefits corporate credit ratings by avoiding risky business actions. Besides, our empirical evidence suggests that the role of CEO celebrity status on social media on credit rating is significant and unique to celebrity status within the mass media context. The results further denote that credit rating agencies incorporate the direct opinions of the focal corporate from a broad audience, namely the social media audience, in assessing credit risk.

Third, the study contributes to the emerging literature on 5G adoption challenges and complements research on telecommunication technologies adoption challenges from the equity market. Relied on the digital gatekeeping theory, this study also points out that CEO social media celebrity status is an intangible and valuable asset, especially for corporates implementing advanced theory with higher media-oriented risks. Furthermore, the managerial implications also denote that managers should take tactics to enhance their influence in social media and absorb their social media influence in corporate governance, such as corporate crisis management. The directors and other stakeholders could also rely on our CEO social media celebrity status measures in making decisions, such as investment, negotiating debt yields, executives hiring, etc.