Theories of influence have been developed in the psychosocial field for many years, but little research has approached this notion from the angle of digital social networks. And yet, adolescents speak of “influencers”, those personalities on social media who push an idea and a way of being, but also the influence of the virtual community. This article offers a reflection on influence issues within social media for adolescents.
Adolescence, 2022, 40, 2, 403-416.
The article analyzes the phenomenon of virtual communities (Second Life and Cryopolis) in light of psychoanalytic theory, recognizing in their functioning a preponderance of impersonal and group motifs: paternal, maternal or fraternal complexes or imagines that organize representations and determine behaviors.
Using interviews with members and administrators of these sites, we will show that, within these virtual communities, the place given to authority, to justice, to the conception of reality or to genealogy suggests the crumbling of the paternal complex (or paternal metaphor in Lacanian theory) in favor of the fraternal complex. Finally, we will offer the « digital hydra » as a metaphor for these « communities of connected brethren ».
Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°3, pp. 667-677.