Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

Digital colonialism deals with the ethics of digitizing Indigenous data and information without fully informed consent.

Digital colonialism is the new deployment of a quasi-imperial power over a vast number of people, without their explicit consent, manifested in rules, designs, languages, cultures and belief systems by a vastly dominant power (Renata Avila, 2017).  A new form of imperialism by technology conglomerates for commercial gains; academics and researchers to advance science, technology and research (Taiuru 2017).

Data colonialism is an emerging order for the appropriation of human life so that data can be continuously extracted from it for profit (Ulises A. Mejiasand Nick Couldry. 2019).

My interpretation of Digital Colonialism.

1. A dominant culture enforcing its power and influence onto a minority culture to digitize knowledge that is traditionally reserved for different levels of a hierarchical closed society, or information that was published with the sole intent of remaining in the one format such as radio or print.
2. A blatant disregard for the ownership of the data and the digitized format, nor the dissemination.
3. Digital data that becomes the topic of data sovereignty.
4. Digital and Knowledge workers who consult Indigenous Peoples to digitise their content and then digitise the content, but who fail to explain the power of technology and the risks including losing all Intellectual Property Rights.
5. Conglomerates and government who use their influence to digitize data without consultation.
6. A colonial view and approach to new Internet technologies such as New General Top Level Domain Names (GTLD) and Country Code Domain Names (CCTLD).
7. Digital access where an ethnic minority are the majority digital divide stakeholders; often while their knowledge and resources are being digitised.
8. Commercialisation of minority cultures CC TLD’s.
9. Commercial entities paying translators to create new terminology for software and systems, then claiming ownership of the new terminology.
10. Manipulation of search engine results to hide or change Traditional Knowledge.