Abstract
Australia is a country firmly part of the Global North, yet geographically located in the Global South. This North-in-South divide plays out internally within Australia given its status as a British settler-colonial society which continues to perpetrate imperial and colonial practices vis-à-vis the Indigenous peoples and vis-à-vis Australia’s neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This article draws on and discusses five seminal examples forming a case study on Australia to examine big data practices through the lens of Southern Theory from a criminological perspective. We argue that Australia’s use of big data cements its status as a North-in-South environment where colonial domination is continued via modern technologies to effect enduring informational imperialism and digital colonialism. We conclude by outlining some promising ways in which data practices can be decolonized through Indigenous Data Sovereignty but acknowledge these are not currently the norm; so Australia’s digital colonialism/coloniality endures for the time being.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 379-395 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Television and New Media |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 26 Oct 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2019 |
Funding
We would like to thank Harley Williamson for her research assistance on this article. We would also like to thank Peter Kalule and Sarah Keenan for their comments on an earlier version of this article. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been funded by the QUT Faculty of Law Intellectual Property and Innovation Law program.
Keywords
- Australia
- big data
- data colonialism
- southern criminology
- southern theory