When Comics Become “Literary Salons” on Instagram

Digital social networks represent emerging literary and artistic scenes in which writers, artists, and fans are actively involved, as are cultural institutions and industries interested in testing out narrative practices that create new forms of mediation between creators and audiences. This is the case of the digital comic Ete, co-produced by the public television network Arte and the community management company Bigger Than Fiction. The comic originally appeared on Instagram during the months of July and August of 2017 and 2018, with one or two episodes released a day.Using a socio-semiotic approach focused on processes of negotiation between technical apparatuses, cultural producer-creators, and audiences, this article will investigate forms of hybridization between logics of creation and narration that come from the world of comics and the logics of production, circulation, and reception that are specific to the Instagram platform. I combine analysis of the editorial enunciation found on Ete’s screen-pages with an empirical investigation that sheds light, first, on the production constraints and representations that governed the process of creation (drawing on two interviews with the creators of Ete) and, second, on some of the issues surrounding appropriation of the work by follower-readers, through analysis of their comments, which appear next to panels of the comic on Instagram. This analysis is complemented by the results of a questionnaire survey that yielded ninety responses.