AI-mediated participatory reading and relational well-being: a conceptual framework from contemporary China

This article develops a conceptual model of how AI-mediated reading practices reshape the social and relational conditions through which reading may contribute to well-being in contemporary China. Focusing on new mass literature and arts, it examines reading not only as textual reception but also as a practice increasingly connected to algorithmic selection, generative response, editorial mediation, and reading-centered community interaction. Through a theory-synthesis and model-building conceptual analysis based on a purposive narrative review, the article proposes the "AI-mediated participatory reading ecology": a bounded framework that traces a sequential relationship among reading-centered encounters, generative responses, mediating publishing, participatory interaction, and possible relational outcomes. The framework does not claim that AI-mediated reading directly improves mental health. Instead, it specifies the conditions under which reading-related participation may support relational well-being through recognition, perceived belonging, expression, and meaningful social connection. It formulates four analytically examinable propositions concerning textual anchoring, mediated visibility, interaction quality, and stratified participation. The Chinese case is significant because platformized cultural circulation, intelligent publishing, commercial infrastructures, and public cultural agendas converge with particular intensity. At the same time, AI-mediated reading may intensify content overload, homogenization, unequal visibility, attention capture, and the exclusion of less connected groups. The article's contribution lies in clarifying how AI-mediated infrastructures reshape the psychological and relational conditions under which reading may support social connection and well-being, while converting a broad descriptive category into a bounded mechanism model with explicit conditions, limits, and an empirical research agenda.