Constructing the "Super Individual": A Critical Discourse Analysis of AI Productivity and Efficiency on Xiaohongshu

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how the “Super Individual” (超级个体) is constructed as a subject position through the AI productivity and efficiency discourse on Xiaohongshu (小红书), a leading Chinese lifestyle social media platform, and what ideological assumptions this construction naturalises in the context of contemporary China. Drawing on Fairclough’s (1992, 2003) Critical Discourse Analysis and theoretical perspectives on neoliberal subjectivity, the study analyses a corpus of 35 Xiaohongshu posts that invoke the “Super Individual” concept. The analysis identifies four recurring characteristics of the “Super Individual” subject position. As a system architect, the “Super Individual” builds and operates AI-augmented workflows. As a self-capitaliser, the “Super Individual” treats aspects of the self as a portfolio of assets. As a moment seizer, the “Super Individual” recognises and acts on the AI era’s urgency. As a crisis survivor, the “Super Individual” escapes the structural threats such as layoffs, credential devaluation, and replacement by AI. A social-practice-level analysis shows that this construction naturalises ideological assumptions about labour, the self, time, and the legitimate response to structural problems, with the freedom rhetoric recasting the effects of these problems such as unstable income and lack of formal labour protections as freely chosen lifestyles, while collective alternatives such as labour-market regulation, social insurance reform, and labour organising are excluded. The study shows that the “Super Individual” is not a natural product of AI transformation but a discursively constructed subject position that performs ideological work in the context of contemporary China.