Self-attribution of digital poverty by rural residents and its implications:Field studies in Anhui,Gansu and Tianjin of China

摘要

The paper conducted a grounded theory research on self-attribution analysis by rural residents on their digital poverty status from fields study in Dongzhi County of Anhui Province,Tianzhu of Gansu and Jinghai of Tianjin.It reports main research findings on categories of their feelings of reasons for digital poverty,which include digital ability,digital efforts,digital context and social support.The lack of digital ability is composed of the lack of digitally physical ability,digitally economic ability,digitally psychological ability,and digital literacy,combinations of which can describe the realities of their deficiency of digital ability.Digital efforts consist of time consumed on digital information behavior and using experiences based on it.Digital context is divided into information infrastructure,social norms which refer to social customs,habits,ethics,and epistemology in the digital world,and luck.Social support means social resources including tangible support and emotional support to the digital poor from their social relations and social institutions.Digital poverty model for rural residents is constructed and suggestions on alleviation of digital poverty are proposed.