Reconstructing divorce on Xiaohongshu: a corpus-assisted critical narrative analysis

China’s rising divorce rate has become a significant public issue, yet how everyday internet users collectively make sense of this phenomenon remains under-investigated. Drawing on a dataset of five posts and 3868 comments from Xiaohongshu, this study employed computational topic modeling and critical narrative analysis to investigate how individuals share “small stories” to discursively construct and negotiate the meaning of marital dissolution. The findings reveal a discursive tension: a dominant discourse upholds family structural completeness, positioning divorcees as “irresponsible” and their children as “impaired.” Conversely, a female-oriented counter discourse reframes divorce as a liberating escape from toxic marriages, empowering women and redefining children of divorce as “resilient.” By emphasizing love over structural definitions of family, these narratives challenge traditional patriarchal views and shift the public conversation toward a more positive, agentic trajectory.