Page 96 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 43

096 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.9, 2017

regarded as the deprived basic capacity for social members to participate in information society,
which includes capital capacity, information capacity and communication capacity. Capital
capability is the ability to own and make use of information and communication technologies,
covering physical, human, social and economic capital. Information capacity refers to the ability
to exchange information, the typical examples of which are political procedure, organizational
procedure, social protection mechanism, information managing process to improve product and
commercialization. Communication capability relates with the ability to analyze and communicate
information and opinions on politics, institution, social protection mechanism, technology,
producing process, and the like.
Besides supply and demands of ICTs services, ICT literacy and capability as the measuring
criteria of digital poverty, some other scholar (May, 2012) selected access to and usage of
ICT as the standard to measure the various degrees of digital poverty, and explore the multi-
dimensional poverty including financial poverty, property poverty, physical poverty, such as
housing and service connection, human capital, social capital, and digital capital. According
to the few domestic research, digital poverty stands for the deficiency state of ICT literacy and
capability.

2.1 Definition of digital poverty

Based on my former publications on the topic (H. Yan & X.M. Yan, 2014; H. Yan & Liu,
2015) and qualitative field data in 6 provinces, digital poverty is defined as multi-dimensional
phenomena and poor conditions in core digital elements by the agent, including digital tools,
digital services, digital psychology, digital ability, digital efforts, social norms, social support
and digital impacts.
Poverty in digital tools means agent’s shortage or deficiency of digital devices and physical
preparations, such as no access to ICTs, no ownership of ICTs, unique access to digital tools and
physical space, low autonomous and free usage of ICT, no condition for upgrading hardware or
software for personal digital tools, insufficient physiological conditions, and the like.
Poverty in digital services is aiming to describe the poor situations in which agent feels
limitations on basic telecommunication services, network connecting services and connecting
choices, freedom on connecting speed and space, and after-sale services. For instance,
individuals have no connection to broadband or WIFI, or no upgrading in network connecting
speed.
Poverty in digital psychology refers to agent’s insufficient preparations in consciousness,
motivations, willing, demands, confidence, or insistence, and furthermore their vulnerable
situations created by ICTs. The observable phenomena in this dimension, for example, can be
demonstrated by resistant behaviors in access and usage of ICTs, no driving power from the
bottom of heart to get access to and usage of ICTs, no demand or confidence in digitalization, and