They were meant toadvance the ideologyof colonizers in colonies.

Today some print and electronic media remainat the service of coloniality and imperialism.

This process has a regressive effect.

Decolonizing the internet starts with looking at media history

This leads me to ask: is it possible to decolonize todays largest global communication platform, the internet?

There is no linear approach to the process.

But any attempt must start with looking at how the internet spreads knowledge and ideas about Africa and Africans.

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That is what the internet should be: a communication tool that fairly represents these pluriverses.

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In thinking about anything to do with decolonisation, its important to understand the history of colonisation.

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How does it manifest itself in the present moment?

It has the potential to reproduce as well as to change peoples understanding of the world.

This history teaches societies that platforms of communication are not free from ideological influence.

It is also the default gatekeeper of knowledge in modern society.

Knowledge systems

The internet is also a knowledge carrying platform.

Africa, then, has played a limited role on the internet as a carrier of knowledge.

Or does it entrench those narratives and understandings?

As a result of its limited online representation, the continent and its people largely remain unseen and unheard.

They are talked and written about.

Their forms of knowledge are packaged by others on the internet.

All this, by subjects who largely reside in neo-colonial and imperialistic geographies.

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