Exploring Community Networks’ Contribution to the Intersectionality of the Internet: Connectivity from a Decolonial Perspective

More than 37% of the world's population remains unconnected to the internet, and how the remaining population gets connected lies at the heart of many global dilemmas (International Telecommunication Union, 2021). Through increased EU and US regulations, big tech companies are looking to compensate for their impending loss of profit through restrictive measures on data mining of users' personal information. This leaves countries within the global south with no such regulations particularly vulnerable to connectivity schemes such as Facebook's Free Basics, which has been accused of violating net neutrality in several countries and removed from India (Goel & Issac, 2016). Africa has been a target for these big tech companies in utilizing their connectivity programs, with Free Basics operating in 65 countries among over 100 million people in 2020 (Nothias, 2020). This has taken attention away from more complex connectivity methods, such as community networks, which the UNHCR has suggested have potential benefits in satisfying key aims in their goals for development within displaced populations. Connecting users from rural communities in the global south becomes even more challenging when factoring in research which has found that Western epistemology present on the internet through popular websites such as Wikipedia, suppresses non-Western epistemology (Kumar, 2021; Sibani, 2018; Sousa Santos, 2007). This thesis attempts to find a pathway for new users connecting to the internet to enjoy increased development capabilities and encourage the preservation of their non-Western culture and knowledge. By comparing a blog post on a community network regarding the history of the ethnic population of the region to a Wikipedia article concerning the same subject, this thesis attempts to find if the notion of participation or ownership in a network changes how users critically interact with information on the internet.