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STUDIES IN LOGIC, GRAMMAR
AND RHETORIC 67 (80) 2022
DOI: 10.2478/slgr-2022-0021
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution BY 4.0 License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
Jarosław Kinal
University of Rzeszów
e-mail: jkinal@ur.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0002-2810-7307
Mariola Kinal
University of Rzeszów
e-mail: mkinal@ur.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0002-8890-1828
INFORMATION AS A FACTOR REGULATING AND
DEREGULATING MARKETS. A CASE STUDY OF
THE DOT.COM CRISIS, THE LEHMAN BROTHERS
CRISIS AND THE SARS-COV2 PANDEMIC
Abstract. Present, as Manuel Castells (1996) notes, we live in the informa-
tion age. Knowledge and the way it is acquired and processed are the driving
forces of the economy, and information processing systems are the strength of
economies. The aim of this article is to identify the key role of the information
supply phenomenon in contemporary socio-economic processes. The initial part
of the article will define such concepts as: information, infodemia, information
market, in the further part examples of the use of information in the process
of forming social behaviour in the market context will be presented. For this
purpose, three major economic crises from the turn of the 20th and 21st century
will be used cross-sectionally. The first will be described as the dot-com crisis,
i.e. the first global Internet players, which led to the collapse or loss of value
of many global Internet platforms through the creation and bursting of a spec-
ulative bubble. The second crisis described below was related to the collapse
of Lehman Brothers, a leading US bank, and the US housing crisis. In the above
case, both supply and concealment of information in the public sphere could be
observed. The last crisis described is the crisis related to the SARS-COV2 pan-
demic, in which dis- and mis- information activities proved to be crucial.
Keywords: infodemia, crisis, market, virtual economy, e-economy.
1. Historical and definitional introduction
The massive development of communication technologies and their
social adaptation has modified both the social rituals and economic be-
haviour of modern humans. Widespread access to information has both
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Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
accelerated market processes and changed the characteristics of human
economic behaviour (2006). The development of the Internet has influ-
enced the emergence of new phenomena such as the digital economy, e-
commerce and has changed previous purchasing models by introducing, for
example, the ROPO model (research offline, buy online). Information as
a factor, not as an element, has become the basis of all activity. Ways of
acquiring, processing and distributing information have become key skills
in the modern economic game. The very concept of information is vari-
ously defined in the specialist literature. R. B. Ash (1965) defined infor-
mation as an element of a communication system. Such a view can be
called a systems view. Information is one element of a larger whole and
only the interconnection of the individual elements will enable a creation
in a functional context. Another definitional perspective is presented by
the authors of the so-called semantic theory of information, who con-
sider information to be a set of messages about facts, events, charac-
teristics of objects, etc., captured and presented as such. Another defi-
nition perspective is presented by the authors of the so-called semantic
theory of information, who believe that information is a set of messages
about facts, events, characteristics of objects, etc., formulated and pro-
vided in such a form that it allows the recipient (human or machine) to
respond to the situation and undertake appropriate activity (Stefanow-
icz 1987). Some researchers in the systemic stream propose a dichoto-
mous model of information: narrow information and broad information.
In the broad view, information is not only a message, but also any de-
cision, prohibition, suggestion or command. It can be transmitted in the
human-to-human system, but also in other systems in which the func-
tions of sender and receiver can be performed by living beings, machines
or objects. In a narrow sense, information refers to a message obtained
by humans through observation or reflection (Czekaj 2012: 17). The phe-
nomenon of information inflation in social space has been defined as in-
formation oversupply (Eppler, Mennings 2004: 326), information overload
(Babik 2010) or, in the extreme case, infodemia (WHO), i.e. a state of
permanent information overload, in which true and false information is
mixed. The term infodemia first appeared during the SARS-COV2 pan-
demic and was defined as the sudden appearance of information on health
issues. It is a condition in which individuals or social groups with techni-
cal capabilities and some above-average need for information are exposed
to a huge oversupply of information causing a lack of rationality in ac-
tion. In a networked environment, this can lead to a situation of dom-
inance or equivalence of true and false information and their erroneous
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Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
connotation and deconnotation. An additional distinguishing element of
infodemia is the emergence of a mechanism for the transmission of in-
formation through unofficial channels using media and social messaging.
In the process of understanding the influence of information on the eco-
nomic and social decisions of individuals and social groups, it is also im-
portant to recall the rule of inaccessibility, one of the psychomanipula-
tion techniques consisting in giving a nimbus of uniqueness or temporal-
ity to information, in order to build interest in the individual in the in-
formation. This action has often been used in the situations described
in this article to trigger some social action, such as during the dot.com
crisis to perpetuate positive investment trends and buyer attitudes to-
wards highly and misleadingly valued companies. An interesting concept
of the use of information as an economic good was proposed by Pawel
Dziekański, who pointed out that “(r)evelopment of the global informa-
tion society means that information is treated as an economic good, a ba-
sic resource and a fundamental economic category”. He also pointed out
that today we are facing a transformation in the organisation of the world
economy resulting from correlative processes: “1) the technological rev-
olution, based mainly on information technologies, 2) the formation of
the global economy, 3) the change of the development paradigm, consist-
ing in the transition from an industrial economy to an information econ-
omy, a knowledgebased economy.” (Dziekański 2012: 337). As D. Mater-
ska (2005) points out, the production of information (information goods)
is expensive, but its reproduction costs little. Thus, nowadays the domi-
nant problem is becoming a flood of information rather than access to it.
In economic processes, we are also dealing with the phenomena of timeli-
ness, completeness, assimilability, readability and reliability of information
and the emergence of information asymmetry, which is defined as a sit-
uation in which one party to a transaction has more information about
the conditions and circumstances of that transaction than the other party
(Dziekański 2012: 390). The primacy of information as an economic good
in the modern world has led to the emergence of a new type of economy
– the information economy. This type of economy, proposed by Mark Po-
rat, is characterised by an increased emphasis on information activities and
the information industry, in which information is valued as a capital good
(Riffkin 2000). Manuel Castells points out that the information economy
is regarded as a ‘stage’ or ‘phase’ of the economy, following the stages of
hunting, agriculture and production. Such a conceptualisation is widely ob-
served in relation to the information society, which is a related concept
(Castells 1996).
427
Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
2. The dot.com crisis and the impact of information
on investor decisions
The term dot.coms refers to companies (e.g. Google, Amazon, Ebay,
Aol.com) established in the early phase of the Internet’s development (1995–
2001) that have monetised their expertise thanks to the popularisation of
the Internet. A characteristic feature of these companies is that they de-
rive most of their income from selling services or products in the virtual
space. The etymology of the name derives from the domain “.com” (En-
glish: dot com) originally intended for the commercial use of the World
Wide Web.
The period of pioneering popularisation of Internet services began
in 1995, in which Windows 95 was created along with the Internet Explorer
browser, but the phenomenon of start-tech funding1has its roots several
years earlier. The transition of the internet from the military-academic phase
to the phase of mass popularisation had already begun in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. In 1995, the number of Internet users stood at 18 mil-
lion, and analysts correctly estimated a leap in this number in the follow-
ing years. As a result, investment funds and individual investors turned
their attention to this industry, counting on the high returns associated
with a low-saturation and forward-looking investment market. In addition,
media companies encouraged people to invest in risky technology stocks
by presenting overly optimistic expectations of future returns and a ‘get
rich quick’ mantra. Business publications such as The Wall Street Journal,
Forbes, Bloomberg and many investment analysis publications stimulated
investment demand. As David Shedden points out, “(Alan Greenspan’s)
speech on ‘irrational exuberance’ in December 1996 also gave impetus to
technological growth and the bubble” (Shedden 2015). The speech has been
recorded as one of Greenspan’s so-called “excuses”. The then Fed chief of-
ten prompted investors to take risks, which he then warned them against.
In 1996, he made a famous statement about irrational exuberance, warn-
ing that the market had become too volatile. He then changed course and,
with the authority of his office, supported the thesis that, in the end, this
exuberance did not turn out to be so irrational (Forbes 2009). Such in-
formation from the market regulator also influenced inappropriate investor
decisions. The favourable information climate supported the low interest
rate environment of 1998–1999 in the US. This combination of factors
caused investors to seek out new opportunities to multiply their capital.
The relative newness of internet technology helped entrepreneurs to eas-
ily raise funds for ‘promising’ ideas, even without having a realistic busi-
428
Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
ness plan. It was not uncommon for the funds provided by venture capi-
tal funds to be wasted and to fail to produce tangible results, an exam-
ple being Lendido.com, which was intended to be used for user-to-user
lending of various types of white and brown goods and tools, in which
investors invested more than $48 million, but which did not get beyond
the design and investor presentation phase. Some researchers of the phe-
nomenon such as Thung Pang point to a certain characteristic of the
market’s response to the new technology. In his essay, Pang pointed out
parallels between the dot.com crisis and the spread of railways (1840s),
the introduction of radio (1920s) or the development of personal computer
design (1980s).
At each of these historical moments, stock exchanges witnessed an in-
crease in investment interest in the shares of companies whose activities
were related to the technical innovation in question. The above factors led
to an unwarranted investment boom, which, among other things, manifested
itself in the fact that companies listed on the NASDAQ rose from 781 points
in 1995 to more than 5,000 points in 2000, as presented in Chart 1.
Chart 1
Growth in value of NASDAQ internet companies 1994–2004
Source: NASDAQ Composite
The Internet bubble described above reached its peak on 10 March
2000, when the NASDAQ Composite stock index reached a record high
of 5132.52 points and closed that day at 5048.62 points, its highest value
429
Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
since inception, signalling the peak of the fascination with Internet com-
pany shares. With the emergence of the highs in internet stocks, there
were increasing calls suggesting that companies were significantly overval-
ued, including from Bloomberg and The Economist. As such commentary
increased, so did the investment zeal of funds, which, for example, in 1998
invested 38% of their investment funds in dot.coms (Hayes 2019). Criti-
cal commentary on the wisdom of investing in technology companies was
covered up by the companies’ marketing and PR activities. In 2000, of
the 35 commercials presented at the time, as many as 17 belonged to dot-
coms, which had to pay an average of $2.2 million for them at the time.
These spots produced very little return on investment (ROI) and gen-
erated only temporary brand interest. As the data shows, two-thirds of
these companies saw a significant drop in website traffic just one week
after the Super Bowl. (AdEverest 2019). As pl.economy-pedia.com points
out: the massive sell-off of shares, registered on 13 March 2000, triggered
a chain reaction of sell orders. If we add to this the panic of investors, fund
managers and the liquidation of institutional positions, we have achieved
a drop of more than 9% in the Nasdaq index in less than a week. The
biggest clear evidence of the failure of the ‘get big fast’ strategy came after
Christmas 1999, when online retailers performed poorly. By 2001, the bub-
ble was deflating at full speed. Most dot-com companies ceased operations
when they failed to make a profit and had no financing left. In total, the
internet boom caused technology companies to lose £5 trillion in value,
from March 2000 to October 2002. (pl.economy-pedia.com 2020). An addi-
tional factor encouraging investment was also the media interest in the topic
of new internet companies, the so-called dot coms. In the period 1998–
2000, one can observe an increased interest in investment topics in es-
tablished magazines, as presented by The Economist and the New York
Times in Chart 2.
Examples of companies that gained significantly during the bull mar-
ket and closed during the downturn include (1) Boo.com, an online cloth-
ing shop. The company spent $188 million in six months. It went bankrupt
in 2000; (2) Gadzoox – a database company. Gadzoox shares tripled in value
on their first day on the stock market valuing the company at $1.97 bil-
lion. 4 years later the company was sold for $5.3 million; (3) iVillage –
a mass media company. This company’s share prices rose 255% to $84.
The company was acquired by NBC for $8.5 in 2006 and subsequently closed
(Wiech 2022). The crisis was also widely reported in the popular press,
e.g. in The Guardian, which on its front page called the crisis a dot.com
bomb (dot.com bomb).
430
Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
Chart 2
Number of press publications on Internet businesses in The Economist
and The New York Times, 1998–2000
Source: Web archives of The Economist, The New York Times and the webarchive.com
tool
Image 1
Articles in The Guardian
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/gallery/2008/oct/15/archive-past-financial-
turmoil
As Stefan Theil notes: the media followed the bubble, not the flow of
information. What’s more, the ubiquitous news theme works just as well as
advertising. The bubble was able to grow because we were inundated with
investment advice investment tips and stories of IPO riches in almost every
medium. Magnified and amplified by the press, the growing market monop-
olised our attention (Theil 2013).
431
Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
The dotcom crisis changed both the investment attitude towards inter-
active companies and also made a change in the structure of the media.
Editorial departments began to form technology descriptive or new technol-
ogy analytical departments so that the feedback provided by the media had
a greater level of specialisation.
3. Lehman Brothers crisis
Founded in 1850, Lehman Brothers was one of the most solid invest-
ment institutions in the US financial system until 2008. During its early
years, the company was primarily involved in commodities trading, mainly
cotton. As the years passed, real estate investments began to play a greater
role, as well as the gradual opening of banking establishments as early as
the second half of the 19th century. In 1887, Lehman Brothers became
a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Despite the turbulent events
of the following years, such as the Civil War, the First World War, the
Great Depression of 1929–1933 or the second global conflict, the company
grew and began trading securities in the 1970s. In 1984, the company was
taken over by Shearson American Express (for between $350 million and
$360 million), but just ten years later, as a result of financial troubles, the
joint stock company Lehman Brothers was formed back. From the begin-
ning of the 21st century, on a large scale, the bank started to invest strictly
in mortgages, which in the first years resulted in huge profits. Among other
things, the company was involved in: granting mortgages, buying them from
other banks, issuing mortgage-backed securities, and financing the purchase
or construction of commercial real estate. 2004 total assets reached a record
$137 billion. A year later, the bank was named ‘Best Investment Bank’ by
the British magazine Euromoney. In 2006 and 2007, the company achieves
the best financial result among the largest companies of the United States
and Canada, and becomes the leader of the British stock market in terms
of turnover. During the same period, property prices in the United States
(a phenomenon dubbed the subprime crisis) began to fall, leading Lehman
Brothers to collapse in record time. On 15 September 2008, Lehman Broth-
ers declared bankruptcy and stock indices began to fall at a rapid pace.
As a result, the US went into recession for two years (2008–2009). Within
a year, the number of unemployed people in the US rose from 7 million to
as many as 15 million. The subprime crisis was triggered by a large drop
in US house prices following the collapse of the real estate bubble, which led
to mortgage defaults, foreclosures and the devaluation of real estate-related
432
Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
securities. Declines in housing investment preceded the Great Recession fol-
lowed by reductions in household spending and then business investment.
The reductions in spending were more significant in areas with a combina-
tion of high household indebtedness and greater declines in housing prices.
The causes of the crisis were many, with commentators attributing varying
levels of blame to financial institutions, regulators, credit agencies, govern-
ment housing policy and consumers, among others. Noel Banks points out
that one of the most important factors that triggered the crisis was creative
information policies on credit risks linked to a relaxed credit system. Also
contributing to the recession were the policies of media companies which, as
Elijah Wood has pointed out, irresponsibly presented propaganda content
infrequently camouflaging the persuasive (advertising) nature of the mes-
sage by offering this content as articles or affiliate interviews. At the time
of the crisis, the media failed to exercise proper restraint, publishing sensa-
tionalist reports and exacerbating social unrest, which, according to some
researchers, may have led to a prolongation of the crisis from 5% to 20%
of its duration. In the above case, the change in media attitudes under the
influence of the dynamics of the economic situation is clearly visible, as
presented in detail in Table 1.
Table 1
Examples of headlines in the US press
Enthusiasm “Generations of Prosperity”
Neutral attitude “Is there an economic problem?”
Scepticism “Tough times for mortgages”
Interestingly – the dispersion of information as a signal of the Lehman
Brothers crisis could be observed using non-media information from the
specialised information market. As Rick Quax, Drona Kandhai and Peter
M. A. Sloot point out in their paper: The decline in IDL after bankruptcy is
consistent with the interpretation of the critical phenomenon as a release of
accumulated stress1, similar to the way an earthquake releases accumulated
tension between tectonic plates. Together, these two observations suggest
that the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was a self-organised critical transition
and that the IDL index is capable of detecting it. (Quax et al. 2013). The au-
thors go on to describe that by observing the IDL indicator, it could have
served as an early warning signal for the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.
After analysing the collected empirical material, the authors also defined
a warning point, which they defined as the crossing of a critical point, as
illustrated in chart 3.
433
Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
Chart 3
Illustration of the Quax, Khandai and Sloot hypothesis on the predictability
of the Lehman Brothers collapse crisis through IDL analysis
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01898
4. Infodemia COVID-19 (SARS-COV2)
The emergence of the global SARS-COV2 outbreak has changed both
the infosphere and the way news is presented and perceived in the me-
dia space. The first media reports in Europe were of a reporting nature,
reporting on the outbreak in Wuhan and its impact on the local commu-
nity. Expert voices were largely trivialised. It was only with the emergence
of the first cases of infection that the information focus changed. There were
434
Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
reports of problems with the diagnostic procedure, individual safety mea-
sures and possible shortcomings. After this event, more and more industries
started to monitor pricing and market demand policies. In particular, in
the first stage of the pandemic, the direct protection products industry, due
to insufficient capacity, increased prices; in addition, the market went into
a speculative frenzy, which, among other things, led to the cost of a dis-
posable mask reaching a price of PLN 10 on an auction portal in Poland
in March 2020 (as at 30.08.2022 – 0.29 gr). The situation was similar in
the disinfectant manufacturer industry. At the same time, stock market in-
vestors began investing in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries.
For example, the Polish manufacturer Bioton rose from PLN 2.08 per share
on 13.03.2020 to PLN 5.54 on 31.07.2020 within two months. The food ser-
vices market was also unsettled by the initial reports of lockdown and its
introduction. A factor that to some extent determined consumer behaviour
was the flood of information provided by the media and the negative tone of
the published information. In the process of absorbing information, for the
first time on a massive scale, there was a phenomenon of receiver synthesis
of true information and disinformation supported by the phenomenon of
misinformation. The number of monothematic information on COVID-19
increased significantly with the global spread of the virus (the tipping point
was reached on 12 March 2020), as presented in Chart 4.
Chart 4
Media mentions of coronavirus
Source: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/12/21175570/coronavirus-covid-19-social-
media-twitter-facebook-google
435
Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
An analysis of the use of the Google Trends tool indicating the number
of searches on Google’s most popular search engine also shows the great
interest of internet users in coronavirus and its inclinations, as presented
in Chart 5.
Chart 5
Searches for the term Coronavirus in selected countries
for the period 1.02.2020–30.03.2020
Source: Own compilation based on Google Trends.
Through the introduction of restrictions and a rigid information pol-
icy, the structure of the retail market has changed. The phenomenon of the
growth of large players in the online sales markets (Amazon, Allegro) and
postal companies (FedEX, DPD or Paczkomaty) can be observed. There
has been a significant, almost 40%, growth in Polish e-commerce in 2020.
436
Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
This trend is characterised by irreversibility. According to PwC (2021), as
many as 75 per cent of respondents declare that they will maintain the
frequency of e-commerce purchases at the same level as now, and 10 per
cent anticipate an increase in e-commerce activity. Thanks to the successful
campaigns of the online retail industry and shipping companies, shoppers’
habits have also changed. Data aggregated by Marta Jędrzejak shows that
36% of shoppers during the pandemic period opted for the click&collect ser-
vice for the first time (e.g. parcel machines) and 62% planned to do so even
after the restrictions had ceased. Analysing the Infosphere, two interesting
studies can also be cited. In the first, the Nielsen Research Institute pre-
sented a diversification of interest in TV genres. The results of the analysis
showed a sharp increase in interest in news programmes with a decline in au-
dience interest in shopping and economy/finance programmes. The results
of the Nielsen study are presented in Chart 6.
Chart 6
Nielsen study of TV audience during COVID period
Source: https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-media-consump
tion-across-north-asia/
The second study was conducted in Poland and shows a surge of media
interest in COVID-19 between January 2020 and March 2020. The data
shows that from mid-January to 12 March, 235,000 publications about the
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Jarosław Kinal, Mariola Kinal
coronavirus appeared in Polish media. As many as 1.1 million social media
posts were published during the same period. The largest increase in publica-
tions on COVID-19 occurred in the last days of February and the beginning
of March, when journalists began to address the threat of the outbreak –
still an epidemic at the time – reaching Poland. The fastest increase in the
number of publications both in both traditional and social media occurred
on 9 March. Three out of four mentions of COVID-19 appeared online. This
was followed by radio, press and television. A recording of a speech by the
director of the Sanepid in Słubice proved to be the most popular (reach
of 7 485 472 on Facebook), and in terms of the number of reactions, a photo
by youtuber mamikoyoko taken in Singapore (54 821 likes on Instagram)
(Wirtualnemedia.pl 2020). Interestingly, the increase in the number of news
items relating to the coronavirus translated, after analysis with the Google
Trends tool, into a jump in internet users’ interest in queries in the search
engine: “online shopping”, “internet shopping” and “home delivery”.
5. Conclusion
Contemporary social development is defined in some studies as the abil-
ity to acquire and interpret information. On the other hand, with a signif-
icant overproduction of information, we are faced with the problem of too
many mutually exclusive sources, which can lead to cognitive dissonance at
the individual level and misdiagnosis of the situation at the level of groups
and societies. The examples presented above illustrated to some extent the
role of information in the process of economic and social change and social
changes. A huge role, if not a decisive one, in market decisions is played
today by adequate information research. Using examples from two decades,
we can also observe the influence of the media and experts on investment
decisions or market changes. The example of the dot.com crisis indicated
the weakness of the professional media in predicting the market situation;
contrary to the principle of cool calculation, editors allowed themselves to
be carried away by their apparent enthusiasm in describing a curved real-
ity. The Lehman Brothers crisis highlighted, as has been shown, the lack of
caution in analysing information from specialist sources. The Covid 19 in-
fodemia demonstrated consumer flexibility in market exploration. The next
step will be to learn how to select information appropriately, a process that
will not necessarily benefit traditional media and will make markets even
more unpredictable and dependent on the reinterpretation of information
provided to the public.
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Information as a Factor Regulating and Deregulating Markets...
N O T E
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