A Comparative Study between China and Abroad: BookTok, an Effective Way in Converging Traditional Reading with the Digital Media?

School of Journalism and Communication, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, Shaanxi, China

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Abstract

As reading practices increasingly migrate into short-video environments, platforms such as TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin have reconfigured how books are encountered, interpreted, and emotionally experienced. BookTok has emerged as a prominent site of this transformation, where reading is mediated primarily through audiovisual storytelling rather than direct textual engagement. Drawing on remediation theory, this study conceptualizes videolized reading as a platform-mediated reading practice in which narrative condensation, embodied performance, and algorithmic circulation jointly shape textual meaning and visibility. Using a mixed-methods comparative design, this paper analyzes BookTok content from China and abroad to examine how videolized reading operates across different cultural contexts. The findings reveal that while short-video platforms share similar technical affordances, the remediation of reading is culturally patterned. Chinese BookTok practices tend to emphasize instructional explanation and knowledge-oriented reading functions, whereas international BookTok foregrounds emotional immersion and affective performance. These differences reflect distinct cultural logics of reading that are re-articulated through videolization rather than displaced by it. By theorizing videolized reading and empirically demonstrating its culturally specific forms, this study extends research on media convergence and social reading. It argues that remediation processes in digital reading are not technologically neutral but are shaped by culturally embedded understandings of reading, emotion, and media practice.