Social media discourse practices of international doctoral students: liminal spaces for Chinese students in the UK

Using a sample of 20 participants recruited from social media platforms, the study adopts a multi-phased qualitative design combining narrative-biographic interviews, discourse extracts from participants’ Xiaohongshu accounts, and dialogic-action interviews. Participants were selected across disciplinary backgrounds. The study is supplemented by the auto-ethnographic reflections of the researcher.

Via thematic analysis, the findings identify five interrelated themes: building personal and professional personae, documenting life, getting things done, maintaining and creating connections, and engaging in the doctoral figuration on Xiaohongshu. Participants’ online activities intertwine with offline doctoral trajectories, which position social media profiles as extensions of doctoral space. These practices reveal doctoral literacy as a dynamic and situated phenomenon in postdigital environments, encompassing not only academic and professional development but also emotional support, everyday experience, and transitional moments.

The study further highlights how seemingly non-academic discourse practices illuminate the ways Chinese doctoral students in the UK navigate multiple identities and institutional conditions throughout their doctoral journeys. In doing so, the research offers new insights into postdigital doctoral literacy and contributes to broader understandings of international doctoral student experiences and digitally mediated academic life.

By examining the digital discourse practices of Chinese doctoral students on social media, this study demonstrates that seemingly ordinary online expressions are analytically significant sites for understanding doctoral life. It, then, also contributes to postdigital discourse research, deepens understandings of doctoral literacy and international doctoral student experiences, and highlights social media as a valuable platform for researching and rethinking doctoral education.<br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2028.</i>