Jump to content

Data colonialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Form of neocolonialism based on exploitation of data production
This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles. (December 2025)

Data colonialism is the practice by which governments, organizations, and corporations extract, control, or profit from data produced by individuals--often relying on low-wage labor or asserting ownership over users' digital activities. Scholars describe it as a contemporary extension of colonial and neocolonial logics, where technological infrastructures enable new forms of resource appropriation and power asymmetry.[1][2][3]

Concept

[edit]

Data colonialism combines historical forms of colonial appropriation with contemporary systems of data extraction. Couldry and Mejias argue that the data economy reorganizes human life into a continuous source of raw material for capitalist accumulation.[1] This process involves both large-scale capture of user-generated data and the deployment of low-cost labor forces to annotate, classify, or process that data for technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Scholars emphasize that control over data flows grants significant political, economic, and cultural power. Corporations and governments can shape markets, influence behavior, and build predictive systems by monopolizing access to data and the algorithms that operate on it.[2]

Labor and the AI industry

[edit]

The rapid expansion of the AI sector has increased global demand for data annotation and content moderation. Companies outsource data-labeling tasks--such as tagging images, transcribing audio, and classifying text--to workers in low-income countries. Reporting has documented how countries including Kenya, the Philippines, and Venezuela have become hubs for this type of labor, often performed for extremely low wages.[4]

Critics argue that these practices reproduce neocolonial economic structures: wealthier nations and corporations extract value from workers with limited bargaining power. At the same time, the benefits of AI technologies primarily accrue in the Global North. This dynamic has sparked debates about ethical sourcing of data, digital rights, fair compensation, and global inequalities within the AI economy.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Couldry, Nick; Mejias, Ulises A. (2019). The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  2. ^ a b Segev, Elad (2025). Information and Power: Popular and Personal Storytelling in the Digital Age. New York: Routledge.
  3. ^ Der, Matthew; Chen, Haoyuan; Chen, Jia-Lin. "Glossary: Data Colonialism". Purdue University.
  4. ^ Hao, Karen; Hernandez, Andres P. (20 April 2022). "How the AI industry profits from catastrophe". MIT Technology Review.