Hybrid Identity in Motion: Eileen Gu’s Cross-Platform Visual Self-Presentation on Weibo and Instagram

This study investigates the cross-cultural visual self-presentation of skier Eileen Gu, a U.S.-born athlete who migrated competitively to represent China at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. While previous scholarship has examined how sports media construct nationalistic and gendered narratives around athletes, little attention has been paid to how athletes themselves negotiate these identities through visual self-presentation on social media. Drawing on self-presentation theory, we analyzed 893 images from Gu’s official Weibo and Instagram accounts. Using a combination of human and computational content analysis, we found that Gu’s visual self-presentation highlighted personal life and used more sexual appeals on Instagram, but centered on athletics and national symbols on Weibo. Athletics-themed posts received the highest engagement, while nationalistic symbols boosted likes and comments on Instagram but reduced shares on Weibo. Visual characteristics and facial expressions predicted engagement only on Instagram. By integrating computational methods with self-presentation theory, this study contributes to sports migration scholarship by showing how athletes negotiate hybrid identity and mobilize cross-cultural support in digital sport communication.