Big Data South

'(Big) Data and the North-in-South: Australia’s Informational Imperialism and Digital Colonialism' by Monique Mann and Angela Daly in the forthcoming 'Big Data from the South' special issue of Television and New Media edited by Stefania Milan and Emiliano Trere comments 

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 neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This article draws on discuss 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 decolonised through Indigenous Data Sovereignty but acknowledge these are not currently the norm so Australia's digital colonialism/coloniality endures for the time being.