This study examines the information-seeking practices of an American Fulbright Scholar navigating China's digitally restrictive sociotechnical environment. Guided by Chatman's Theory of Information Poverty, it investigates how individuals adapt their information behaviors when confronted with censorship, linguistic constraints and cultural unfamiliarity. The study aims to extend theoretical understandings of information poverty by analyzing how mobile technologies and platform-specific affordances mediate access, risk and adaptation within constrained digital ecosystems.
Data were collected over six months using reflective diaries and voice memos, producing 2,181 documented information-seeking incidents. These incidents were systematically coded into four categories – situational relevance, risk-taking, secrecy, and deceptive practices – using a structured Excel-based classification schema. The study employs qualitative content analysis to identify behavioral patterns, emergent strategies and sociotechnical influences shaping information access. This reflexive, diary-based approach foregrounds lived experience, temporal variation, and the complexities of operating within a surveilled and restrictive digital environment.
The analysis reveals that situational relevance (49%) and risk-taking (28%) dominated information-seeking efforts, with secrecy (13%) and deceptive practices (10%) emerging as additional adaptive strategies. Findings demonstrate how digital literacy, mobile platform affordances, and socio-technical infrastructures enable individuals to negotiate information poverty under conditions of surveillance and constraint. The study highlights the creative repurposing of technologies to circumvent barriers, emphasizing how cross-cultural digital engagement requires continuous assessment of risk, trust, and context.
This study is limited by its single-participant design, reflective method, and focus on one geopolitical context, which may constrain generalizability. The diary-based approach also relies on self-reported incidents, potentially omitting unrecorded or unconscious behaviors. Despite these limitations, the findings offer theoretical insight into how information poverty manifests in censored, mobile-first environments and highlight avenues for comparative, multi-participant and cross-platform research. They underscore the need for further examination of information practices under surveillance and the role of sociotechnical infrastructures in shaping adaptive strategies.
The findings suggest that universities and sponsoring agencies should provide targeted digital literacy preparation for scholars working in restrictive environments, including guidance on platform governance, risk assessment and safe communication practices. Institutions may also need to update training protocols to address the ethical challenges of conducting academic work under surveillance. These insights can inform program design for international researchers, support staff, and librarians who advise academic travelers navigating cross-cultural digital ecosystems.
This study highlights how censorship regimes and sociotechnical infrastructures shape everyday information access, influencing autonomy, trust, and safety for individuals operating across borders. The adaptive strategies documented – risk-taking, secrecy, and deception – underscore the broader social consequences of restrictive digital environments, including uneven access to knowledge and heightened vulnerability for foreigners and linguistic minorities. By illuminating these dynamics, the research contributes to societal understanding of digital inequality and the lived impacts of information control.
This study offers a rare, theoretically grounded examination of the information-seeking practices of an academic migrant working within a censored and surveilled digital environment. By integrating longitudinal diary data with Chatman's Theory of Information Poverty, it illuminates how mobility, cultural displacement and restrictive sociotechnical systems shape everyday information behavior. Academic migrants remain an under-examined population in information behavior research, and this study provides novel empirical and conceptual insights into how they negotiate risk, access, and adaptation across geopolitical and linguistic boundaries.
