Constructing identity through digital double-swinging: the case of Chinese emerging adults

While motivations for platform-swinging are widely researched, the specific linguistic and semiotic practices users mobilise remain largely underinvestigated. This study investigates how Chinese emerging adults discursively construct fragmented identities across a complex polymedia environment. Drawing on interviews and multimodal screenshots from 20 mainland student migrants in Hong Kong (Mage = 23), we conceptualise platform usage as ‘double-swinging’, a simultaneous shifting of digital channels and semiotic codes. We propose the Discursive Platform-Swinging Model, wherein youth mobilise digital transliteracies (DTL) to navigate three distinct identity zones: performing a socialised self (WeChat/WhatsApp) through register shifts and linguistic accommodation; exhibiting a polished self (Xiaohongshu/Instagram) via stylised trans-semiotic curation; and enacting an authentic self (Weibo) using linguistic encryption for safe emotional release. By highlighting how users synchronise translingual, trans-semiotic repertoires with platform affordances, this study illustrates that identity shifting is both a sociotechnical and sociolinguistic achievement. However, while digital transliteracies empower youth to negotiate a functional identity portfolio amidst the ‘liquid modernity’, we highlight that this continuous linguistic and positional fragmentation risks inducing disorientation and lowered self-concept clarity. Therefore, we advocate for the cultivation of critical digital reflexivity, encouraging emerging adults to integrate their fluid online performances with their offline realities, fostering narrative coherence to mitigate dissonance.