The conference on Discourse approaches to financial communication (DAFC) is an interdisciplinary forum for discussing innovative research based on the analysis of texts, discourse, conversations and multi- modal messages in financial disclosures and investor relations, in business and financial media, and in the communication of financial intermediaries and regulators. Discourse-based studies at the interface between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and financial communication, interested in sustainable investment and the legitimacy of financial institutions, are also welcome.

The focus of the second edition of DAFC will be on how story and argument contribute to build sustainable trust in financial actors (CEO, corporate directors, analysts, etc.), institutions (banks, regulators, rating agencies, etc.), and in the whole market. While trust has been always recognized as one of the most crucial components of finance, the concrete communication processes by which individual, organizational and inter-organizational trustworthiness is preserved over time or restored after a crisis remain substantially under investigated. To fill this gap, we call for studies examining the discursive dynamics of trust in the financial context from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, similar to those presented during the first DAFC edition held in 2014 at Monte Verità (Ascona, February 2014).

Text-based sentiment analysis has gained prominence within financial studies as a means to capture how participants in the financial market anticipate news. Text analysis in now part of the burgeoning Big Data revolution that is leaving its mark also in financial communication. While the short-term connections between news, sentiment and markets have now been explored with the tools of automated quantitative text analysis, the issues of the creation of trust, of its sustainability, dissolution and recovery pose a new challenge require more diverse and sophisticated methods and deeper hypotheses on the relationship between discourse and belief change and on the social and organizational constraints of the production and use of discursive financial information.

In this context, qualitative approaches aiming at capturing the deeper texture of discourse in terms of narrative and argument acquire a new significance. Interesting studies adopting a qualitative perspective have been undertaken both within financial accounting research and within communication disciplines, such as discourse analysis, argumentation and rhetoric, corporate/business communication. These approaches constitute promising attempts to investigate how trust issues are communicated by financial actors and institutions (e.g. How does an equity story build trust? How narrative disclosures influence stakeholders’ impression on corporate trust? How arguments are structured and presented in order to persuasively justify a trust-related standpoint?). More in general, they can provide empirical evidence for the rhetoric-based theories on managerial behaviours, by illustrating concretely and explaining how discourse contributes to build institutional legitimacy within the financial market.

Furthermore, the conference invites the contribution of the growing strand of accounting research on impression management, particularly research focusing on the discursive strategies of impression management by corporate executives aimed at creating an image of credibility and trustworthiness. Evaluative studies aiming at detecting signs of manipulation, hubris and other irrational behaviours can shed light on the communication processes that lead to unhealthy persuasion and, ultimately, to a loss of trust by market participants. At a practical level, discourse based evaluations of corporate message reliability can provide the investment community with a detection tool enhancing decision-making, thereby potentially reducing capital misallocation, overreaction and market inefficiencies.

We strongly encourage the submission of papers embracing a dialogical and even polylogical perspective on financial communication. The diffusion of Web2.0 and social media channels has created rhetorical arenas and sub-arenas where investors and other stakeholders can timely react to corporate disclosures. As hinted by the recent crisis communication literature, studying how trust is discussed in these contexts represents an interesting research area with important interdisciplinary implications. To this purpose, theoretical contributions that help clarifying the definition and reciprocal relationship between kindred concepts like image, reputation and trust are also relevant. Finally, we welcome papers which aim at analysing large-scale multi-stakeholder debates revolving around trust- related issues.