In digital rural governance, the effective integration of accounting and rural development is crucial for maximizing rural economic benefits. This paper uses CiteSpace software and LDA modeling to examine the current state and hot topics in rural accounting research from 2018 to 2022. The study was visualized by analyzing valid literature and using perplexity to determine the best effect of topic extraction. The results show that the number of annual publications in this field continues to grow, and the number of universities and institutions publishing relevant papers is also increasing yearly. Regarding research hotspots, the keyword “rural” appears most frequently, reaching 122 times, followed by “financial management” with a frequency of 106 times. The keyword with the highest centrality is “rural revitalization”, with a centrality as high as 0.38. The research keywords are mainly divided into rural revitalization and financial management, with the financial management group being the most dominant. However, the number of studies on rural revitalization has been increasing yearly, and the gap between them has been narrowing. The importance of accounting is growing in promoting rural revitalization and improving rural economic efficiency.