Expanding integrated storytelling networks: the role of AI newsbots and mobile apps in civic engagement

While scholarship increasingly examines the societal implications of artificial intelligence, less is known about how AI-generated news integrates into local communication ecologies and shapes civic engagement. Drawing on Communication Infrastructure Theory (CIT), this study investigates how individuals’ integrated connectedness to a storytelling network (ICSN) interacts with AI news consumption and active mobile app usage to influence four dimensions of civic engagement: offline and online civic participation, collective efficacy, and neighborhood belonging. Using a nationally representative U.S. survey (N = 1,252), results show that ICSN remains the strongest and most consistent predictor across behavioral, psychological, and cognitive outcomes. AI news consumption through automated news services predicts both offline and online civic participation but does not enhance collective efficacy or neighborhood belonging, suggesting that algorithmic content may mobilize civic actions without strengthening deeper communal ties. In contrast, active mobile app usage predicts all forms of civic engagement and amplifies the effect of ICSN on civic participation, highlighting mobile platforms as connective infrastructures that reinforce community storytelling networks. These findings extend CIT by situating AI news and mobile media as emerging storytellers and underscore the need for hybrid, human-algorithmic communication infrastructures to sustain civic life in a digitally evolving society.