Sebi to track social media for key info

Mumbai: In a bid to prevent fraudulent activities in the stock markets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has decided to closely monitor sensitive and confidential information flowing through various social media platforms and media outlets including electronic and print media.

The regulator is planning to outsource this activity to a third party for which it has invited expression of interest from interest players. The private party is required to develop a system that shall ‘crawl’ the digital media and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, websites of registered intermediaries, websites of associations of Sebi registered intermediaries, blogs of advisors or investors, specific LinkedIn groups, news chat rooms and Bloomberg/ Reuters chats among others. Such information should be captured and provided to Sebi daily on T+1 basis.

“As the regulator of Indian securities market, Sebi proposes to improve monitoring of the news or messages that are appearing ‘about Sebi’ in the social media, so that Sebi is well aware about the general perception of the market on the various issues pertaining to Sebi and can act on those thenceforth.

Accordingly, it has been decided to engage an outside agency who can track public information on Sebi and securities market, published and publicly accessible in the World Wide Web as well as the information in electronic and print media, and provide it to Sebi, in a manner that is relevant to the various departments of Sebi,” the regulator said.

Whenever, new content is generated on the digital media, which might be of high sensitivity, and high importance, Sebi said that such information should be made available to Sebi with the least possible latency instead of T+1 basis.

In addition to website based news feeds, the regulator would also closely track information disseminated on channels like electronic media (TV channels) and print media (newspapers and magazines), which contains information about Sebi and Indian securities market.

Apart from this, the regulator also wants to make its presence felt in social media platform to engage directly with various stakeholders. The regulator also plans to conduct online surveys and quizzes on such platforms. For this, the private party would advise Sebi on the suitability of various social media platforms and also create and maintain social media presence on behalf of Sebi.