The Internet, from the Age of Innocence to the Age of Decadence: A Study of the Internet as a Tool of Digital Colonialism Using Content Analysis Tool

The paper addresses the issue of recolonization shaping itself in images different from the traditional ones, as the Internet was expected to provide services of a strategic and technical nature to developing countries, especially in agriculture, industry, trade, and culture, which did not happen correctly. Instead, the Internet became a tool for punishment, with the dominance of large companies that implemented incomprehensible policies. Over time, the Internet will provide added value to the countries of the Global South, or at least that the two concepts are intertwined and conflicting. International organizations indeed provide services of this type. For example, citizens can sometimes declare their refusal to publish a topic on social media, or at least restrict its publication based on an imaginary principle called community standards, while they allow publications from the other side about racism, homosexuality, masculinity, and more. Hence, if this opinion on this issue conflicts with one of the social media applications, punishment will be imposed on the opposing opinion and its owner. Also, countries with a colonial nature have used their companies to control the world and data, especially data from developing countries. The paper attempts to shed light on this issue. Shedding light on these practices by trying to answer two questions: the first is whether there are contradictory Internet concepts between the United States and Europe and between the countries of the Global South, and what are they? The second is whether solutions can be reached to remove suspicions of post-colonialism from the Internet. Has it been proven that the Internet is a colonial network? To answer the two questions, the intellectual production on this issue and the effects of communications and the Internet on the world were reviewed through 17 scientific papers that addressed the topic. The content analysis method was used to explore the contradictory concepts first, where 13 contradictory concepts were discovered between the two groups, in addition to some less important concepts. Second, a group of areas of reform were identified through which cooperation between the two groups can occur. Despite this, the topic is open to exploration through larger samples, each of which can focus on a specific concept in post-colonial studies.