Publication

Abstract : The extractive logic of Big Data-driven technology and knowledge production has raised serious concerns. While most criticism initially focused on impacts on Western societies, attention is now increasingly turning to consequences for countries and communities in the Global South. To date, most criticism has focused on private sector activities. In this paper, however, we argue that publicly funded knowledge and technology production projects must also be viewed through the lens of a neocolonial critique. To do so, we analyze the dynamics of collaboration in an EU-funded research project that is collecting data for the development of a social platform with a focus on diversity. The project includes pilot sites in China, Denmark, the UK, India, Italy, Mexico, Mongolia, and Paraguay. We present the experiences on four of the pilot sites and reflect on the original conception of the project, the challenges, ambiguities, and missed opportunities we encountered, as well as our progress and results to date. We then analyze the different experiences in comparison. As a result of our analysis, we identify key actions needed to counter prevailing logics of data colonialism and eurocentrism, which we believe are rooted in both historically grown structures of inequality and current constraints ingrained in recent EU-funding policies.