Data communism: Constructing a national data ecosystem
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Over the past decade, China has gradually begun to take a more proactive approach to digital development, passing a range of policies that aim to restructure how data is treated within its national economic system. These policies reflect the construction of a new data ecology in which data is gradually reconceptualized as a quasi-public good, rather than a private good. Strategic interventions aim to increase data circulation and supply, with the goal of promoting high-quality economic growth. Central to these reforms is the designation of data as a factor of production, which accelerates the authority of the communist party to shape the allocation of data within the national economic system. Viewed holistically, these policies reflect an intentional effort to construct a more communal data ecosystem that facilitates increased data circulation in support of a state-led centralized approach to social and economic development. What emerges is a variety of data communism, in which data resources are increasingly conceptualized to serve collective interests rather than the interests of capital.
Source: Big Data & Society
Author: Brett Aho
Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,000
OpenAlex ID: W4402546898