The Impact of Corporate Governance, Firm Characteristics on Voluntary Electronic Social Media Disclosure during the COVID 19 Global Crisis: An Empirical Study on listed Firms in the Egyptian Stock of Exchange

Recently, Social Media has considered an important corporate disclosure channel to disseminate firms’ information to the interested users. This study empirically investigates the impact of Corporate Governance; in terms of board of directors’ characteristics and ownership structure in addition to firm’s characteristics on the corporate voluntary electronic social media disclosure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, this study examines the impact of different board of directors’ characteristics which are (the number of independent directors, the CEO duality, the board size, the presence of foreign director in the corporate board) on the corporate voluntary electronic social media disclosure. Besides, this study examines the impact of different ownership structures which are (institutional ownership, governmental ownership, foreign ownership, and managerial ownership) on the corporate voluntary electronic social media disclosure. Further, this study examines the impact of different firm’s characteristics in terms of (firm’s size, profitability, and financial leverage) on the corporate voluntary electronic social media disclosure based on a sample of 100 firms listed in the Egyptian Stock of Exchange for the year ended 2020 during the last COVID-19 pandemic.
The results of this research indicate that among the board of director’s characteristics; there is significant positive relationship between both the number of independent directors in the corporate board as well as the separation between the CEO and board chairman positions on the corporate board and the firm’s voluntary disclosure on social media platform. With respect to the ownership structures; the results of this research indicate that there is significant positive relationship between both the institutional ownership as well as the governmental ownership and the firm’s voluntary disclosure on social media platform. Moreover among the firm’s characteristics; the results of this research indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between the firm’s size and the voluntary corporate disclosure on social media platform.