Author(s)

Chen Yunqiao ¹, Li Wenfeng ¹, Wang Shuhui ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Foreign Studies, Lingnan Normal University, Zhanjiang, China

Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT

The economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the rapid expansion of Chinese higher education, has led to new challenges for the universities in terms of the graduate employment. In response to this pressure, a new genre—the university graduates reference post—has emerged on WeChat. These posts aim to promote graduates as "products" to the market and potential employers. This article examines this emerging genre, analyzing its generic structure, rhetorical moves, and communicative functions. It further connects these elements to broader shifts in Chinese university discourse, the marketization of higher education, and the influence of social media. The study is based on a corpus of 49 WeChat posts published for the 2020 graduate cohort. The principal findings are as follows: (1) The genre is dynamic and unstable in its internal components, exhibiting interdiscursive features. The dominant move types serve informative and promotional functions, while the relational function is less emphasized; (2) The most conventional moves are titling, department profile, graduate profile, and support; (3) The language is predominantly formal, with occasional instances of a personal, casual style. This suggests a hybrid register that combines authoritative dominance with promotional appeal. Multimodal resources are prominently used in key moves to enhance promotion; (4) While the primary communicative purpose of these posts is to "sell" graduates, the prevailing formality of the language somewhat mitigates the promotional force. A discernible power asymmetry within the genre indicates that higher education institutions are struggling to reconcile their authoritative position with the demands of the market. The findings are discussed within the theoretical contexts of higher education marketization and social media discourse.

KEYWORDS

CITE THIS PAPER

Chen Yunqiao, Li Wenfeng, Wang Shuhui, Marketing Graduates on Social Media: A Move Analysis of University Graduates Reference Posts on WeChat. Media and Communication Research (2025) Vol. 6: 102-109. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/mediacr.2025.060514.

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