Coloniality and Communications: Introduction (Episode 1)

This episode introduces the research project Coloniality and Communications, outlining its central questions, archival sources, and methodological approach. Focusing on British telecommunications infrastructure in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in the early twentieth century, the video examines how communications technologies were integral to colonial state-building, surveillance, and spatial control. By foregrounding the extensive use of aerial systems—enabled by aerial photography, wireless communication, airplanes, and bombing—it asks what it means to think of air as media, or more precisely, as colonial media. Tracing the colonial legacies embedded in today’s skyborne media—from satellites to Wi-Fi and GSM—the episode argues that recognising these inheritances can sharpen our awareness of the risks embedded in contemporary media systems and help us imagine more just and equitable futures for communication.© the creators