Sharing experience or selling service?: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of self-proclaimed Hong Kong female PhD student identity in Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book)

Zihan Xia

doi:10.1515/mc-2025-0018

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Sharing experience or selling service?: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of self-proclaimed Hong Kong female PhD student identity in Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book)

Zihan Xia

Published/Copyright: September 24, 2025

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From the journal Multimodal Communication Volume 14 Issue 3

Abstract

This study employs a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to investigate the construction of hybrid identities by self-proclaimed female Hong Kong PhD students on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book). Analysing a collection of 40 posts from two prominent accounts, this paper examines how these individuals strategically blend semiotic resources to navigate the tensions between academic authenticity, postfeminist empowerment, and commercial promotion. The analysis identifies three core and interwoven identity categories: a professional sharing identity, which leverages institutional prestige and application expertise; a reflection sharing identity, which brokers gender stereotypes and promotes individual resilience; and a daily life sharing identity, which curates an idealised work-life equilibrium. It is argued that through the multimodal orchestration of these identities, using visual proof, empowering narratives, and synthetic personalisation, these posters naturalise their role as service promoters. This process effectively commodifies the academic persona, co-opting postfeminist discourses of choice and empowerment into a soft-selling strategy for educational consultancy. The findings illuminate a sophisticated mechanism of ideological manipulation within China’s platform economy, where resistant discourse is transformed into a marketable commodity, thereby contributing to critical understandings of the marketisation of higher education and the constraints on female empowerment in digital spaces.

Keywords: multimodal critical discourse analysis; post-feminism; identity construction

Corresponding author: Zihan Xia, Faculty of Humanities, Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China, E-mail: xiazihanevan@163.com

Funding source: Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of Ministry of Education of China

Award Identifier / Grant number: 24YJC740024

Funding source: National Higher Education Teaching and Research Project

Award Identifier / Grant number: 202515046YN

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable time and insightful comments on earlier version of this paper. Their constructive feedback and expert suggestions were instrumental in significantly improving the quality and clarity of this manuscript. I would also like to express my thanks to Prof Dezheng (William) Feng in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University for his inspiring lectures, invaluable guidance and support throughout my MA programme.

Research funding: This work was supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of Ministry of Education of China (24YJC740024) and National Higher Education Teaching and Research Project (202515046YN).

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Received: 2025-04-19

Accepted: 2025-09-10

Published Online: 2025-09-24

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https://doi.org/10.1515/mc-2025-0018

Keywords for this article

multimodal critical discourse analysis; post-feminism; identity construction