# A mimetic approach to social influence on Instagram

**Authors:** Hubert Etienne, François Charton  
**arXiv:** [2305.04985](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.04985)  
**Date:** 2023-05-08  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/paper/2305.04985v1/

## Key points

- The paper presents a sophisticated approach to studying social media influencers
- Influencers are defined as communication systems emerging from a dialectic interactional process between content creators and their audiences
- The authors analyze the audiences of 619 Instagram accounts belonging to French, English, and American influencers
- Significant differences in influencers' profiles, typical audiences, and content types are observed across different classes of influencers
- Influencer communication systems are built around "reading contracts" that form the basis of an influencer's image and influence
- Successful influencers often shift their content types as they grow their audiences and implement strategies to address this double bind
- The study acknowledges limitations due to the complex nature of social interactions and imperfect metrics used for analysis
- The paper provides a conceptual framework and methodology for studying influencer-centered online interactions
- Digitalization of social interactions has profound effects on social comparison, mimetic behaviors, and reciprocity
- Understanding followers' feedback can help influencers improve communication to reduce dissonance and reciprocity failure experiences
- Changing the design of social platforms can promote specific types of reciprocity over others
- The experimental protocol was approved by Meta's internal review board for compliance with guidelines and regulations
- All data analyzed in the study are included in the published article within an associated dataset file with privacy protections in place

## Summary

This paper presents a sophisticated approach to studying social media influencers by combining philosophical theories with quantitative analyses of online data. The authors define influencers as communication systems that emerge from a dialectic interactional process between content creators and their audiences. They primarily identify influencers based on the composition of their audience and the type of publications they use to communicate. To examine these parameters, the authors analyze the audiences of 619 Instagram accounts belonging to French, English, and American influencers. They also analyze 2,400 publications from these influencers in light of Girard's mimetic theory and McLuhan's media theory. Through this analysis, they observe significant differences in influencers' profiles, typical audiences, and content types across different classes of influencers. The findings support the claim that influencer communication systems are built around "reading contracts," which form the basis of an influencer's image and influence. The authors note that successful influencers often shift their content types as they grow their audiences and implement strategies to address this double bind. The paper acknowledges its limitations due to the complex nature of social interactions and imperfect metrics used for analysis. However, it presents a coherent conceptual framework and valuable methodology for studying influencer-centered online interactions. It also serves as a milestone towards more cross-disciplinary research by bridging quantitative social media studies with philosophical anthropology. The digitalization of social interactions has profound effects on social comparison, mimetic behaviors, and reciprocity. By understanding followers' feedback better, influencers can improve their communication to reduce dissonance and experiences of reciprocity failure. Additionally, changing the design of social platforms can promote specific types of reciprocity over others. In terms of ethics, the experimental protocol was approved by Meta's internal review board to ensure compliance with relevant guidelines and regulations. All data analyzed in this study are included in the published article within an associated dataset file. To protect users' privacy, Instagram user IDs were anonymized in one dataset (S0), while images associated with their publications were removed in another dataset (S1). Overall, this interdisciplinary study provides insights into how the digitalization of social influencers impacts reciprocity and mimetic behaviours. While conclusions should not be exaggerated due to limited data analysed and variables considered; nonetheless it lays a valuable foundation for future research in this area regarding implications for ethics as well as potential changes to platform designs which could promote certain forms or reciprocity over others..