Page 89 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

088 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

3) Research finding 3: The lower the degree of digital poverty is, the less types of digital poverty
overlap, and the more likely the digital poor are to get effective support from social networks.
In contrast to the seven groups of the composite digital poor and the social networks in the
research finding 2, twenty-six of the forty-seven non-digital poor (none of digital poverty features
has values of zero) sought help through social networks. Among them, fourteen cases got help in
digitalization through strong ties, and the other twelve cases got help through weak ties. Although
the number of sample cases is small, there is still some value of explanation. Those who sought
help through strong ties were mainly students, followed by young parents, and those who used
weak ties mostly encountered hardware failure and were older than middle age. This also proves
that there is a certain correlation between the age of a digital behavioral agent and the type of
social network, and it can be observed from the above cases that there is also a negative correlation
between the degree of digital poverty and the utilization level of social networks.

3 Microscopic investigation of the relationship between social networks and
different composite digital poverty phenomenon

A more microscopic and meticulous analysis of digital poverty cases reveals that social networks
have significantly different impacts on the composite poor with different types of digital poverty.
1) Research finding 4: The non-tool digital poor of types overlapped on the basis of digital
psychology and digital ability are more dependent on strong ties.
The relationship between social networks and the overlapping type of the psychologically
vulnerable in lack of digital psychology and the digital illiterate with inadequate digital ability is
verified in the study. After excluding the cases in which the composite digital poor of seven types
and six types without support of social networks, there are twenty-one case samples of the non-
tool digital poor formed based on vulnerability and illiteracy. Strong ties are involved in ten of
those cases, including wives, husbands, sons, children, grandsons, neighbor’s children, friends, etc.
of the digital poor. In this group of cases, none of the respondents mentioned examples of seeking
help through weak ties. Strong ties play a significant role in reducing poverty in digital ability and
digital psychology of these composite digital poor. In consideration of the high sensitivity and
privacy of digital psychology, as well as the long term and slow speed of improving digital ability,
strong ties in social networks outweigh weak ties for these people in reducing key features of
digital poverty.
2) Research finding 5: The digital poor of dual or single type on the basis of digital social
support are dependent to both strong ties and weak ties to a certain extent.
In all the cases, the socially lonely appeared alone twenty times. Eight of them got effective
social support through strong ties, nodes of which included their elders, such as fathers, uncles,
aunts, schoolmates, colleagues and friends. Six of them got help through weak ties. There are three
cases in which the socially lonely and the vain seekers are overlapped. One of the three asked