Decolonising “Data Colonialism” Propositions for Investigating the Realpolitik of Today’s Networked Ecology

Abstract

This article proposes a critique of “data colonialism” as elaborated by Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias. The main limitation of this theory is the essentialist conception of “colonialism,” “quantifier sector” and “self,” which overlooks historical-materialist roots and hinders a comprehensive understanding of datafication as a socio-cultural process. By recontextualizing some of the authors’ major claims, especially with regard to China, it is advanced the need to think about datafication as emerging out of a complex networked ecology whose founding logic is one of abstracted digital rationality. Some propositions—in the forms of ethnographic research and teachings along the line of data activism—are also elaborated.