Information Poverty Alleviation causing Implicit Information Poverty? Evidence from Rural Information Ecology in China

China’s targeted poverty reduction initiatives have expanded rural digital access, yet information-based interventions can also generate less visible forms of exclusion. This article examines how rural information ecology is shaped through information-driven poverty alleviation in the post-2020 transition toward rural revitalization. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a human–media–environment framework, the study conceptualizes implicit information poverty as a latent condition in which villagers appear connected but remain constrained in interpretation, participation, and communicative agency. The findings show that integrating media technologies into poverty alleviation can support economic opportunities, cultural cohesion, and diversified communication, but it also produces frictions: hidden impoverished populations, everyday resistance to media technologies, and selective interpretation of policy information. These dynamics reveal how connectivity may coexist with agency-poor information-ecological configurations. Addressing implicit information poverty is therefore crucial for sustaining rural governance capacities and avoiding new marginalization in ongoing technological transformation.