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

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.