Computer-Generated Influencer Miquela and Myths of Realness and Authenticity on Social Media: A Semiotic Analysis

Abstract

The purpose and aim of this study included an attempt to show the importance of incorporating the original online post in conducting research on online comments by exploring the relationship between an Instagram post can contains ideological messages and the corresponding comments made by Instagram users. It interpreted in which ways they related to each other. I conducted a case study on computer-generated influencer Miquela Sousa and her revelation post on Instagram and explored how Instagram comments on Miquela’s revelation post configured to ideological messages about realness and authenticity expressed in this post. I used a semiotic analysis in order to discover what ideological messages about realness and authenticity were expressed in the revelation post and to find out how these messages were read by Instagram users that posted the selected comments on the revelation post. The research findings confirmed the belief that there were ideological messages expressed in Miquela’s revelation post as it has shown that there were two messages found, namely: The myth of the mechanical world view and the myth of commercialized control over the authentic self on social media. Moreover, the results have shown that there were seven different repetitive types of comments found that were either hindering or confirming the myths. In conclusion, this research has shown that the selected corresponding comments correlated to the revelation post, because all types of comments used values of the ideologies in order to argue their intention with the myth. The findings have therefore offered new insights into research on online comments, as it has shown that there was a strong correlation found between ideologies expressed in Miquela’s revelation post and the resulting selected corresponding comments. Therefore, this study has attempted to show that the original post should be incorporated in research on online comments because it could have a prominent position and dominant control over the resulting conversations in the corresponding comments. Despite the fruitful results, this research was also limited because it used a small size of data set and thus the results did not allow to formulate generalized statements about the results of this study. Therefore, future research should be carried out in order to explore how all comments correlate to the ideological messages expressed in the revelation post. Moreover, the results were based on an interpretation of the relationship between the revelation post and the selected corresponding comments. In order to develop a full picture on this relationship, future research that includes interviews with the Instagram users that posted the selected comments is recommended.