Decolonizing the Internet: Beyond the Buzzword

On Tuesday, 4th July 2023, the Centre for Media and Journalism Research is hosting a public talk to mark the launch of Internet Decolonized, a collaborative book project co-edited by Henna Zamurd-Butt and M.I. Franklin (Oxford University Press, 2024).

The meeting will be live-streamed on Google Meet.

Speakers Dr Syed Mustafa Ali (The Open University) and Henna Zamurd-Butt (Goldsmiths, University of London) will share their distinct interpretations of decolonizing (internet) politics and how these frameworks develop our understandings of socially just (global) connectivity.

In her talk, Zamurd-Butt will:

1. share insights from youth and feminist activist expressions of decolonizing politics, drawing from research at internet policy consultations such as the UN's Internet Governance Forum, Mozilla Festival events, and RightsCon meetings;
2. broach issues around the intersection of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion measures with these decolonizing movements.

Dr Ali's intervention will consider:

1. decolonization and violence (on language games and the limits of the discursive and epistemic);
2. internets before the Internet (recasting world systems thinking in network terms; and
3. political economy (ecology, theology} as decolonial lenses on the internet.

We warmly invite discussion from attendees and hope for an active conversation on these wide-ranging topics.

Chair: Professor Dr. Marianne Franklin (University of Groningen)
Inquiries to Marianne Franklin, m.i.franklin rug.nl

About the speakers

Henna Zamurd-Butt's doctoral research makes use of decolonial feminist frameworks and multi-sited ethnography to ask how we can better understand relations of gendered coloniality and resistance which materially and discursively shape global internet access. The work draws on five years of engaged ethnography with youth and feminist internet activists from the Global Majority as they participate in global internet governance conferences and carry out work in their communities. Henna is co-editor of Internet Decolonized (OUP, 2024), a collection of activist and academic interventions on what it means to decolonize the internet. Previously, Henna was co-director of Bare Lit Festival (2016-2022), an annual London-based event for Global Majority creatives, and Editor-in-Chief of Media Diversified (2013-2018) a platform for Global Majority writers and academics.

Dr Syed Mustafa Ali is Lecturer and Convenor of the Critical Information Studies (CIS) research group in the School of Computing and Communications at The Open University. His transdisciplinary research focuses on developing a hermeneutic framework grounded in Heideggerian phenomenology, critical race theory, and postcolonial/decolonial thought, and using this framework to explore how race, religion, politics, and ethics are entangled with various technological (Information and Communication Technologies) phenomena. In this connection, he has published work in the areas of Decolonial Computing and Algorithmic Racism, interrogating Trans-/Posthumanism, the discourse of ‘Big Data’, and internet governance.