AI-Powered Mobile App “Suzhou Stories”: Revaluing Cultural Capital through AI Mediation, User Experience, and Community-Based English Language Learning

Description

This project makes a significant contribution to the fields of digital media, cultural economy, and AI in education by developing a new framework for understanding how cultural value is produced, mediated, and redistributed through AI-powered platforms. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, the study advances the concept of embodied cultural capital by demonstrating how storytelling, craft knowledge, and lived experience can be transformed into legitimate pedagogical and economic assets within digital environments.

At the same time, the project critically engages with Tiziana Terranova’s notion of digital labour by examining how user participation generates value on the platform. It further incorporates insights from David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker to analyse the tension between creative fulfilment and potential exploitation in AI-mediated cultural production.

By integrating these frameworks, the project moves beyond descriptive studies of AI and instead provides a critical, theory-driven analysis of AI as a cultural-economic mediator, offering

Period	1 Jun 2026 → 26 Aug 2026
Degree of Recognition	Local