As the digital divide shifts from access to agency, the upcoming South African Communications Association (SACOMM) 2026 conference is set to tackle the rise of “techno-feudalism” and its impact on the Global South.
In an interview with AJENda, Wits Centre for Journalism (WCJ) senior lecturer, Dr Collen Chambwera, who leads the local organising committee, revealed that SACOMM 2026 theme is Asserting the Human in the Time of Technofeudalism: Global South Perspectives, and aims to pivot the conversation away from technological fascination and back toward human consequences.
The conference will be held at the University of the Witwatersrand, 9-11 September 2026.
Dr Collen Chambwera.
Dr Chambwera explained that the theme is a response to a world increasingly dominated by massive technological platforms. These entities, he argues, have moved beyond traditional capitalism into a state of “techno-feudalism,” where users and businesses act as digital “serfs” paying rent to platform “lords”.
“In all our understandings of these developments, we need to go back and consider that there are real people involved,” Dr Chambwera stated. “How can communication help us to sort of re-centre the human… to bring the concerns of real people to the fore?”
Bridging the academic-professional divide
Addressing long-standing criticisms that SACOMM has become too ivory tower focused on the academic side of communication, leaving the professional side behind, Dr Chambwera emphasised a renewed commitment to the industry. By leveraging the expertise of the African Journalism Investigative Conference (AJIC), which the WCJ organises annually, the SACOMM 2026 organisers plan to integrate working professionals into the panels at the conference.
The move mirrors a broader push for collaboration between those who study media and those who practice it, he said.
The 2026 event promises a blend of robust intellectual debate and cultural immersion. All the activities of the conference will be geared toward “Decolonisation and Global South perspectives,” he said
“It’s going to be an exciting one,” Dr Chambwera concluded. “In Johannesburg, the attendance is always high, and the discussions are going to be quite robust.”
Call for abstracts
The organisers of SACOMM 2026 have issued the following call for abstracts:
The contemporary media environment is characterised by the increasing influence of platforms in what has come to be known as the platform economy. Scholarly debates shaped by this reality, including the political economy of the media, address whether capitalism is now dead or whether we live in a world marked by a different form of capitalism. Those who argue that capitalism is now dead (e.g., Varoufakis 2023) point to what may be called the refeudalisation of society, in which ‘rent’ is the new profit. The rise of a platform economy, which accumulates capital through rent, in the form of ‘workers’ renting space or experience on platforms such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc., is said to have overtaken the significance of capital accumulation through the production of tangible goods. Thus, they argue that we now live in a technofeudal era. However, others (see Gilbert 2024) argue that capitalism is not necessarily dead, but that we live in a ‘new regime of accumulation’ in which profit is derived from investing in the creation, maintenance, and innovation of platforms on which individuals and organisations pay rent. In other words, as Morozov (2022) argues, it is more persuasive to hold on to the argument that capitalism is simply reinventing itself.
These arguments open up avenues for analyses of the current media and information environment. In a context where a few platforms significantly determine access to information, markets, cultural visibility, and even social existence, it is necessary to consider the impact on real humans. The impact is unequal across the world. Just as capitalism grows through the accumulation of excess value resulting in acute inequalities, technofeudalism, or the new regime of capital accumulation, is lived through unequal connectivity, infrastructural dependency, digital colonialism, and the intensification of platform governance over culture, labour, and knowledge production. The race to AI dominance further exacerbates the inequalities brought by the new regime of capital accumulation. The Global South is particularly affected due to its long-standing experience of constrained and subordinate role-play in the Global economy. There is a need for analytical and potential proposals to reclaim the discourse and valorise and assert the experiences and homegrown solutions of people in the Global South.
This conference theme invites scholars to interrogate how the human is being redefined and reasserted in the emerging order of technofeudalism or regimes of capital accumulation. Further, scholars are invited to explore innovations that acknowledge this emerging order but chart possible ways, especially for the Global South, to centre the human while staying relevant and possibly chart new paths for capital accumulation with the human in mind.
Submissions are invited from those who focus on the theme, as well as from others in line with the general SACOMM conference.
Submissions may come from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to communication studies, media studies and journalism, communication education and advocacy, and strategic communication.
Abstracts will be peer-reviewed, and accepted papers will be presented at the conference either in a traditional presentation format or as part of a panel.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 April 2026. Notification of abstract decision will be made available on 15 May 2026.
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This image was originally published by Ajenda Newsletter