Public Perceptions of Facebook’s Libra Digital Currency Initiative: Text Mining on Twitter

Abstract

Large corporations in the financial and technology sectors are increasingly interested in digital currencies, and central bank digital currencies are being actively researched around the globe. In this study, we analyzed the public discourse conducted through the social media platform Twitter concerning Facebook’s Libra digital currency initiative. Text mining of tweets posted during the one-month period around the official announcement of the digital currency project revealed that the majority of the public have a neutral sentiment toward the proposed digital currency. However, those with positive attitudes outnumbered those perceiving the digital currency initiative as negative, and the negative sentiment mainly stemmed from anger and anxiety. Through topical modeling analysis using latent Dirichlet allocation, we identified eight themes in the public discourse related to Facebook Libra. The study provides an early exploratory assessment of factors facilitating and hindering user adoption of one of the most important practical applications of blockchain technology.