About

This site ranks Instagram accounts in terms of their influence in the art world.

Rankings are based on which accounts follow which on Instagram and the eigenvector centrality algorithm. This algorithm gives a high rank to accounts with many followers, but only if those followers are also ranked highly, which is determined by their followers' ranks, and so on. When applied to Instagram's art world, this results in a densely connected cluster of highly influential accounts.

The network visualisations and tables on this site are based on data collected from Instagram in 2022. The first iteration of the dataset comprised accounts followed by hansulrichobrist as this account had the highest rank on a previous trial run. As accounts followed by this initial set of accounts were added to the dataset, the network began to take shape. It became clearer which accounts were central in the art world and which were peripheral. Accounts followed by these more influential accounts were prioritised for addition to the dataset. This process was repeated for 8412 high-centrality accounts until over thirteen million follows were recorded, resulting in a network of 2.4 million accounts.

These pages are available with network visualisations and tables:

• artworld.top/100
• artworld.top/250
• artworld.top/500

These pages include large network visualisations (they will be slow on most devices):

• artworld.top/1000
• artworld.top/2500
• artworld.top/5000
• artworld.top/10000

These pages only have tables:

• artworld.top/25000
• artworld.top/50000
• artworld.top/100000