The Space of the World, Data Colonialism, and Social Contract: Reconstructing Digital Futures—A Dialogue with Nick Couldry
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This is an extended dialogue with Nick Couldry, a leading media scholar at the London School of Economics and one of the most influential critical voices in contemporary communication studies. Over the past two decades, Couldry has developed an increasingly urgent theoretical framework for understanding how digital technologies reshape human social life—and how resistance remains possible. The conversation unfolds around three foundational works that chart the evolution of his thought: The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can’t? (2024) , which diagnoses how social media platforms have fundamentally restructured social interaction through systematically flawed spatial design; Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (2024) (co-authored with Ulises Mejias), which situates digital data extraction within the long history of Western colonialism; and the forthcoming Predatory AI: How We Can Resist the Corporate Capture of the Human Mind (planned for 2026) , which confronts the systematic capture of human cognitive autonomy.
Source: Communication and the Public
Authors: Nick Couldry, Guofei Gao
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7135227224
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