‘Running to the Comments’: Examining the Cross-Platform Elasticity of Comment-to-Like Ratios Across Instagram and TikTok

Audience engagement in the form of comments and likes has long been known to influence the visibility of content creators, but little has been discussed in the ways that these interaction ecologies diverge between platforms. Using poetry posts surfaced from Instagram and TikTok’s search results as a case study, this paper utilises a regression model to compare the elasticity of growth for comment-to-like ratios between platforms. Results demonstrate that for low-engagement posts, Instagram’s ratios are higher, but those on TikTok scale at a much faster rate once posts gain more traction. The paper discusses comment strategies that content creators may use to leverage this information in an economy where attention grows scarce and social proof is increasingly more valuable.