Sociologist of media, communication, and social theory at the Department of Media and Communications at the prestigious London School of Economics. As a sociologist of media and culture, Nick Couldry approaches media and communications from the perspective of symbolic power, historically concentrated in media institutions. He is co-founder with Paola Ricaurte and Ulises Mejías of "The Tierra Común network". With his co-author of "The costs of connection”, Ulises Mejias , explains in this interview that digital colonialism benefits Western countries and that the digital divide only accentuates the processes of capitalist control over digital resources. He pleads with Ulises Mejias for what they call "A new digital pact".
Your book seems to take us back 40 years. When Ithiel de Sola Pool was arguing for what he considered "Technologies of Freedom". It is clear from your analysis that "the imperatives of the digital system" are working their way into the lived world of humans from the outside and are annexing both life and space.
Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias: De Sola Pool's discourse on technologies was wrong, to begin with: it ignored inequalities of access and use, and completely ignored the political economy of communication through which new technologies emerge. However, it was a powerful narrative that was associated with the growth of the Internet and the development of the entire world. In this way, it served to mask much deeper transformations in the organization of computing, information, and society. Transformations have opened the way to a radically corporatized and privatized social space. Today, the gap between the rhetoric surrounding media, information technology, and social reality is even greater than it was in the days of De Sola Pool in the 1970s. For the first time, we have technologies whose purpose is much greater than transforming the lives of some autonomous individuals: what needs to be questioned at the root is the purpose of technologies and companies, which literally boils down to the reconstruction of time and space of social life.
You mention "the strategy of data extractivism" in the processes of data colonialism. Nevertheless, you tend to "ignore" the infrastructure as a determining variable. Shouldn't we activate the concept of "cultural materialism" to analyze the whole process, because superstructure and infrastructure are linked? "The superstructure is of the emerging base" as argued by Raymond Williams.
Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias: We do not think it is true that we ignore the infrastructure. The second chapter of our book on "Cloud Empire" is specifically about infrastructure. However, we also consider the social relationships on which new infrastructures such as connected computers are embedded. Although we do not explicitly use Raymond Williams' concept of "cultural materialism", we consider our book to be very much in line with his analysis: what we are trying to do is exactly to reflect on the material infrastructures of data collection. Which are deeply embedded in everyday life and tend to influence culture and society from within and from the bottom up (from the infrastructure to the superstructure).
On the web and social media platforms, the slogans of "communication", "sharing", and "global village" are ultimately just a conceptual tool in the service of capitalist ideology that masks the reality of the obstruction of truly participatory democracy by the privatization and commodification of human communication?
Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias: We could not agree more. These slogans - for example, Facebook's rhetoric about a "global community" - are not the reality of today's world. Instead, they are merely the "sugar on the pill" that disguises the real project of Facebook, and other platforms, which is to create a parallel social world from which profit can be continually extracted and invested. This has been clear even since the first patents Facebook registered over a decade ago.
You say "we are at the dawn of a radical transformation, and expansion of capitalist production processes of which data colonialism represents a fully formed new mode of production". What then, is your analysis of what happened during the periods of confinement, when millions sought refuge in digital space and social network platforms occupied primarily by capitalist forces that transformed human contact into a commodity?
Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias: There is no doubt that the pandemic has intensified the pressures towards data colonialism by imposing remote living and working as the norm, via digital data collection platforms. The result is increasingly a process of changing the terms and conditions of our daily lives, on a basis that favors "the extractors" of data, not those who would resist it. Perhaps we can say that the cause of data colonialism has been accelerated in recent years. Nevertheless, resistance is still possible, and the purpose of our book is precisely, to identify new ways of struggle and new ways of imagining how we connect and communicate with each other through tools that do not necessarily depend on overtly capitalist digital platforms.
It seems, outside of the Western sphere, the debate about the grip of digital colonialism does not resonate much! Although you admit that the process of "digital colonialism" - whereby the North monopolizes the supply of digital technology and can hinder Southern economies, particularly in Africa, from developing their own digital economies, manufacturing capabilities and other domestic industries?
Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias: In fact, we find that the concept of "data colonialism" resonates in the countries of the Global South where we have shared our work, from Latin America to Africa to Asia. We believe this is because data colonialism provides them with a theoretical model to analyze digital inclusion, not just exclusion. Decades of Western development theories show us that the problem is that the "underdeveloped" South must catch up to generate its own modern (in this case, digital) economies and industries. Nevertheless, the problem is not that the South has been excluded from this model. The problem is that it has been included, from a colonial perspective, in a model of growth and development that masks the South's disenfranchisement and oppression. This trend continues in the digital age. Moreover, while data mining is not limited to the South, people who have experienced colonialism can easily relate to what is happening now. We hope they can help articulate forms of resistance too!
What role can the world of the academy play in initiating a fruitful debate that allows us to break free from data colonialism and to (re)negotiate the balance of power between the mercantile logics of platforms and the needs of users?
Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias: We do not intend to generalize, because the academic world is not universal. Unfortunately, some academics and researchers, both in the North and the South, are actively participating in the expansion of data colonialism by working with large technology companies and authoritarian states. Despite this, academia can also provide spaces to examine the problem from new perspectives and propose new solutions. Researchers can join with civil society activists and advocates to form networks of innovation and support. We have seen time and again that imagination and creativity is the greatest weapon in the struggle against colonialism. The process of decolonizing data is certainly a creative process. We need to mobilize our imagination to find ways to disconnect ourselves from extractive infrastructures and to form new ways of connecting.
Interview by Tahar Kaidi
