Socionomics: Media and the Stock Market

When I taught high school English and composition at a community college, I used a video called Socionomics: History's Hidden Engine to get our discussion rolling. In this documentary, Robert Prechter Jr. gives viewers a visual representation of the relationship between media (and lately social media) and economics (i.e. the "mood" of the stock market). The question he poses: Does social climate impact the stock market or is it the other way around? Before moving on with this, here is a short clip from the documentary in which he discusses popular music and its relationship to the stock market:

The first, and most obvious problem with this, is that there is a very small selection of music used to create the chart. Yes, it is striking, but there is always a counterculture movement in music (which I would argue is nearly as popular as the so-called "pop music"). Plus, you have to figure that the popular music we are hearing today wasn't created today. Many times a group of writers come up with the song, it's reworked, given to an artist to be performed, recorded, marketed, and sent out to the masses. Thus, there is certainly a delay that needs to be accounted for here.

So is there a connection between various forms of media and the economic climate of our country? Probably. Media is one of the forms people can use to engage in social commentary. However, to engage in social commentary something usually needs to happen first--something needs to be going on that can be commented upon. Thus, I'm inclined to think that social mood and media doesn't impact the stock market, but, rather, that it is the other way around or that it is cyclical--one fuels the other which fuels the other, etc.

With that aside, though, this documentary shows how important media literacy is for understanding the world around us, providing commentary on it, and sharing it with others. This video gave my students (and me) so much to think about in the classroom. Whether or not we individually shared Prechter's views on socionomics, it did get us thinking and talking. And that is certainly worth a lot.

There is another great segment in this documentary that discusses fashion, namely skirt length, and the stock market. I'm planning to post a response and analysis to that in the next few days. It is quite an interesting clip!