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Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject

Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias [email protected]View all authors and affiliations
Volume 20, Issue 4
https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418796632

Abstract

We are often told that data are the new oil. But unlike oil, data are not a substance found in nature. It must be appropriated. The capture and processing of social data unfolds through a process we call data relations, which ensures the “natural” conversion of daily life into a data stream. The result is nothing less than a new social order, based on continuous tracking, and offering unprecedented new opportunities for social discrimination and behavioral influence. We propose that this process is best understood through the history of colonialism. Thus, data relations enact a new form of data colonialism, normalizing the exploitation of human beings through data, just as historic colonialism appropriated territory and resources and ruled subjects for profit. Data colonialism paves the way for a new stage of capitalism whose outlines we only glimpse: the capitalization of life without limit.

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Biographies

Nick Couldry is a professor of media, communications, and social theory. He is the author or editor of twelve books and more than one hundred journals and book chapters, including Media Society World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity 2012), and Why Voice Matters (Sage 2010). He is the joint Coordinating Lead Author of the chapter on Media and Communications for the International Panel on Social Progress (see www.ipsp.org).
Ulises A. Mejias is an associate professor of communication studies and director of the Institute for Global Engagement. He is author of Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and various articles including “Disinformation and the Media: The case of Russia and Ukraine” in Media, Culture and Society (2017, with N. Vokuev). He is the principal investigator in the Algorithm Observatory project (algorithmobservatory.com).

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