Bank runs at the speed of social media
Deposit insurance and market discipline are rising topics after bank failures in which deposits left within hours. Yet only 3 recent papers on bank runs or deposits carry a social-media or digital-banking keyword. Does online talk now set the speed of runs, and should deposit insurance and liquidity rules change with it?
What prompted this
In the finance journals, "deposit insurance" had 7 papers in July–September 2026 against fewer than 2 expected from its earlier share, and "market discipline" is growing across all journals (12 against about 3); see the trends page. Since October 2025, 37 papers carry a bank-run, deposit-insurance or bank-deposit keyword (23 in finance journals, 14 in economics). Only 3 of them carry a social-media, digital-banking or fintech keyword.
Questions
- Do banks whose depositors talk more about them on social media lose deposits faster under stress, for the same share of uninsured deposits?
- Does online sentiment about a bank predict outflows days ahead, early enough for supervisors to act?
- Does app-based banking, where moving money takes minutes, make liquidity rules written for slower runs too lax?
Data that could help
- Bank-level deposits from regulatory filings (Call Reports) and branch deposits (Summary of Deposits).
- Social media posts that mention banks, and each bank's share of deposits above the insurance limit.
- The 2023 US regional bank failures as a stress episode.
Next step
Build a weekly count of social media posts per US bank for 2022–2024 and relate it to deposit flows around March 2023.