Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 30 April 2019
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Television & New Media
- Vol. 20 (4), 336-349
- 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.This publication has 22 references indexed in Scilit:
- Homo SacerPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,2020
- Computing the everyday: Social media as data platformsThe Information Society, 2017
- The Biopolitical Public Domain: the Legal Construction of the Surveillance EconomyPhilosophy & Technology, 2017
- Facebook and Finance: On the Social Logic of the DerivativeTheory, Culture & Society, 2016
- The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithmsInformation, Communication & Society, 2016
- The Deadly Life of LogisticsPublished by University of Minnesota Press ,2014
- big data @ workPublished by Verlag C.H.Beck oHG ,2014
- The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive webNew Media & Society, 2013
- The politics of ‘platforms’New Media & Society, 2010
- In the Social Factory?Theory, Culture & Society, 2008