Page 105 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

YAN Hui / Structural origins of digital poverty in rural China 105

broadband networks while ordinary families can only choose slower network connection. Villagers’
trust in the village committee members is directly related with their chances of alleviation of digital
poverty.

3.2 Overlapped structural origins of digital poverty

In comparison with personal characteristics and experiences, such as age, gender, family size,
family structure, occupation, etc., the aforementioned structural economic, cultural, social and
political capital tend to change slowly, and impose profound effects on the eight core elements of
digital poverty in the long term. Not only individual structural factors have its impact on digital
poverty, but also several factors are overlapped and interweaved to create typical sorts of digital
poverty. Table 3 summarizes the cross-sectional associations of the different structural factors
supported by field evidences with eight ordinary types of digital poverty. The table lists only the
minimum set of structural factors that have a profound impact on a certain group of people in
certain type of digital poverty.

Table 3. Structural origins of different types of digital poverty
Type Economic Cultural Social Political
The physically poor × × ×
The digitally illiterate × ×
The psychologically vulnerable × ×
The socially lonely × ×
The digitally idle × ×
Digital resister × × × ×
Vain seekers × × ×
The digitally extremely poor × × × ×

The physically poor are often affected by the multiple intersection of economic capital, social
capital or political capital. In attempting to access and use digital tools and digital services, the
physically poor people are not only fundamentally constrained by their limited incomes and
inadequate physical conditions, such as the two residents with eye diseases and cervical spine
problems in Tuhe and Huifeng West Village of Tianjin, and other material and economic capital
constraints, but also not supported by their homogeneous social networks. The individuals in their
social networks are more possible to have no ICT devices, or no ability to be digitized, or be not
willing to be digital, coupled with the lack of access to political capital for digital benefits, and
therefore their lack of digital tools is reinforced by those structural factors. This is also a good
explanation for the low utilization rates of public electronic reading rooms in some areas and why
low-income families are always watching, hesitating and refusing to buy emerging ICT equipment.