The vision for my poster was to portray digital division and digital colonialism. I created an oval object to represent our Earth and added photos that represent my thoughts about digital inequality, digital colonialism, and what possibly caused digital colonialism – colonization.
The photo which represents “Africa”, I used a photo taken during Belgian colonial rule in Congo. I wanted this photo to show the divide between the local Congo people and the Belgian. The motivations of colonization were good, gold, and glory. I wanted to show that colonization in some way has affected digital colonization. For countries that were colonized, it is apparent that they lost resources and were therefore placed at a lower starting level compared to those who colonized others. Countries starting at a higher position with enough resources, and their people not needing to worry about their next meal would want to improve on their lifestyles and make their lives easier, and there comes the digital age. However, for countries that have lost many of their resources to this day and age, some are struggling to feed their citizens. If one is unable to be certain of their next meal, they wouldn’t be thinking to update digitally.
As parts of the world advancing heavily on the digital path, the other part of the world has been affected by colonization struggles to feed their citizens. Thus, a huge digital gap has been created. This in turn will create digital inequality amongst different nations in our world.
The articles and videos that we have been looking at talk mainly about Western countries and Asia, so I chose to replace the continents – USA, Asia, and Africa with photos that I think represent my thoughts on colonialism and how it’s affecting digital colonialism. While children in America are having access to the internet, children in Africa, Indian and other countries are starving as a result of colonialism in the past.
The four company logos on the top represent some of the companies that own the internet backbone or are “trying” to provide internet access to other, developing countries.
I have two arrow directions, grey and red. The grey arrows are pointing downwards to the continents, and have a Wifi logo in front of them. This is to represent the internet access provided. The red arrows pointing upwards, towards the companies have a “money” logo. This is to represent that in a lot of cases, the companies are looking for profit, rather than helping people.
There is a photo of a white lady and a woman of color on the right-hand side, which is overlapping all the arrows that are pointing up ( or down) from Asia and Africa. From our discussions, we have talked about the term “white saviors”, and I feel that some companies are using this as a shield to gain profit. (Free Basics)
I understand the internet inequality is occurring even in developed countries. However, in my poster, I wanted to talk about the extreme cases and the countries in which this situation is occurring due to colonization.
Image Citations:
[Amazon Logo]. (2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/business/amazon-logo-hitler-mustache.html
[Child using computer]. (n.d.). https://cdn.lifehack.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/large_5403052781.jpg
[Facebook logo]. (2005). https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/2344286/facebook_logo_label_logo_website_icon
[Google logo]. (2013). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_%22G%22_Logo.svg
[Microsoft logo]. (2012). https://support.microsoft.com/
[Money symbol]. (2015). https://support.microsoft.com/
[Poverty]. (2018). https://englishdocs.eu/abject-poverty/
P.U.I.G.G. (2019). [Colonization]. https://www.livescience.com/65507-conservation-colonialism-legacy.html
[White Savior]. (2020). https://strasburgfilm.com/the-white-savior-trope/
[Wifi logo]. (n.d.). https://www.pngkit.com/view/u2w7w7y3o0i1u2w7_internet-connection-icon-png-internet-access-icon/
[World Continent Map]. (n.d.). https://www.worldatlas.com/continents
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