Innovative practices of the Xiaohongshu (RedNote) platform: Engaging in international Chinese communication in the Nigerian context

As a new type of media, digital platforms are an organic system of mutual construction and symbiosis with established forms of cultural communication and knowledge transmission. Driven by the global wave of digitization, international Chinese language communication has presented new opportunities and encountered numerous challenges. Based on theories of digital embodied cognition and cultural cognitive schema (CCS), this study focuses on Nigerian Chinese learners, adopting a mixed-methods design. It selects digital platforms, such as Xiaohongshu (RedNote), as the empirical field. It combines quantitative data with semi-structured in-depth interviews to systematically investigate Chinese language acquisition and cultural adaptation in the context of digital platforms. The study found that informal learning behaviours such as short video imitation and comment interaction can effectively promote the internalization of linguistic structures, which verifies the applicability of digital embodied cognition theory in cross-language acquisition scenarios. It also found that Xiaohongshu (RedNote) breaks the time and space limitations of traditional language learning through the closed-loop mechanism of ‘content co-creation–instant feedback–community reinforcement’, highlighting the value of social media as a multifunctional language learning ecosystem. The coupling effect of the platform’s ‘interest-driven content recommendation mechanism’ and ‘CCS’ drives users to realize the transition from ‘information receivers’ to ‘content co-creators’, thus transforming cultural differences into cross-cultural communication dynamics. These mechanisms provide new paths and insights for the digital transformation of international Chinese language education. This study enriches the theoretical dialogue among media, language acquisition and cross-cultural communication in the digital era. It provides a theoretical basis and a practical, digitally enhanced path for deepening exchanges through mutual understanding between China and Africa.