The Department of Media Studies presents PROFESSOR NICK COULDRY, London School of Economics and Political Science. This lecture will draw on the author’s work on data colonialism - most recently Data Grab (Penguin 2024) – his solo book on social media The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What if it Can’t? (Polity 2024), and his current work on AI’s impact on the social construction of knowledge. It will explore media and communications’ evolution over the past 20 years via a decolonial framework that, beyond identifying enduring neocolonial forces, shows how ever more of the world’s resources are captured in a new stage of colonial appropriation. Digital media platforms (and the large-scale AI characterizing platforms and many other digital interfaces) play a crucial role in this capture. Critical research must give ever more attention to the conditions of social life and the changing nature of social reality. A battle is emerging between business and community perspectives for the control of everyday infrastructures: is it time for critical researchers to choose sides?