IAMCR invites applications for the newly launched thematic award Decolonising the Digital. The award will be offered for three consecutive years, from 2025 to 2028 to work that contribute to our understanding of the new global dynamics of digital politics, cultures, and infrastructures, with the aim of identifying modes of control and resistance, and ultimately, challenging digital colonialism.
About the award
The term digital colonialism refers to the ways dominant powers exploit digital infrastructure, data, and knowledge—alongside control over computational technologies and labor disparities—to reinforce global dependencies rooted in historical colonialism. The broader concept of Decolonizing the Digital addresses the political, economic, and social domination enabled by digital technologies, as well as the resistance movements challenging these practices. Research on digital colonialism critically examines how these technologies deepen existing inequalities and introduce new forms of exploitation, discrimination, and control.
The list of topics below is provided to demonstrate the breadth of research that may be considered, not to limit it.
- The installation and provision of digital surveillance technologies and services
- A new ‘scramble for Africa’ in which Big Tech actors race to install infrastructure and extract data on the African continent
- Digital imperialism: using tech power to control and shape politics, the social, economic and technological wherewithal
- Extraction of natural resources required by the global tech sector
- International and multilateral movements that seek to redress or deepen digital inequalities
- Data mining/extraction and innovative strategies by civil and other actors to resist these
- Use of intellectual property rights, software licensing etc. to create knowledge dependencies
- South-to-South coalitions and conflicts that either challenge or reinforce digital colonialism
- Domination of local digital ecosystems through acquisitions and anticompetitive practices
- Discursive/ideological domination and resistance.
The award has an interdisciplinary scope as it potentially encompasses academic research in the fields of international communication, political economy, policy studies, law, digital divide, platform regulation etc. Consequently, eligible papers may be submitted to any of IAMCR's various thematic sections and working groups. In addition, the theme has an explicitly global focus, which will encourage the exchange of ideas between and the contributions of scholars from diverse regions and academic traditions.
Awarded papers will be acknowledged with a USD 750 grant. There will be no ranking among the awarded papers.
The Award Selection Committee will select up to three papers, but can decide to award fewer or none. Decisions of the Award Selection Committee will be final.
Requirements
To be selected for the 2025 Decolonising the Digital Award, papers are required to display scholarly excellence, to be innovative in nature, and to have an explicit focus on Decolonising the Digital.
- Papers may be submitted by scholars at all seniority levels (including emerging scholars)
- Papers must have been accepted for presentation at IAMCR 2025 by one of IAMCR's sections or working groups. See the calls for proposals of IAMCR's 37 thematic sections and working groups
- Papers should have a maximum of 7,000 words (Abstract and references will not count towards the paper limit)
- Papers must be based on work that has not already been published or firmly committed elsewhere
- Applicants must be current members of IAMCR (i.e. for the year 2025), either individually or as a representative of an institutional member
Procedure
- An abstract of the paper must be submitted to any IAMCR section or working group by 23h59 on 7 February 2025.
- If the abstract is accepted for presentation at the conference, the full paper must be received by 23h59 UTC on 24 March 2025.
- If an award is made, the author(s) will be notified by 21 April.
Decolonising the Digital Award 2025 Selection Committee
- Weiyu Zhang, Chair (National University of Singapore)
- Andrea Medrado (University of Exeter, UK)
- Benjamin Birkinbine (University of Nevada, Reno, USA)
- Claudia Padovani (University of Padova, Italy)
- Guy Hoskins (Carleton University, Canada)
- Julia Pohle (WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany)
- Leah Komen (Daystar University, Kenya)
- Usha Raman (University of Hyderabad, India)