2019-Amanda Williamson
Is Unexpected Termination of International Joint Ventures Legitimised?
Dr Amanda Williamson, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Co-Investigator: Prof Martina Battisti, University of Portsmouth, UK
Project summary: News media play an important role in shaping how the public thinks and feels about entrepreneurship. These publicsentiments are a key driver of entrepreneurial activity, but the complex relationship between the two is consideredambiguous and remains underexplored. Due to a range of contextual factors, sentiments towards entrepreneurshipdiffer across countries and also change over time. However, little is known about how these sentiments change over timeand how they affect entrepreneurial activity.Using news media analysis and machine learning, we identify how public sentiments towards entrepreneurship haschanged since 2000 and how those changes differ between five English-speaking countries - the US, Canada, UK, NZ andAustralia. The resulting time-series data is then used to predict within and between country differences in entrepreneurialactivity.By leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and big data, the comparative time-series analysis will provide a morenuanced and in-depth understanding of the role of public perception on entrepreneurial activity in the short as well thelong-term. Theoretically, this is relevant as it advances our knowledge of social contagion effects on entrepreneurialdynamics. Practically, the relevance lies with entrepreneurship educators and media practitioners, who are responsiblefor transmitting the realities of the entrepreneurial career, but also policy makers, who have an interest in the level andsuccess of entrepreneurial activity at the national level.