Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
On Sept 8, 2025, Nepal’s Gen Z protests, sparked by social media restrictions and corruption, escalated from semi-private digital peer networks on TikTok and Discord to street demonstrations. Trust-based networks shaped collective identity, coordinated action, and enabled large-scale mobilization.
Paper long abstract
On September 8, 2025, nationwide Gen Z protests in Nepal, which resulted in fatalities among youth participants aged 16–29, marked a significant state–society confrontation following months of digitally coordinated mobilization. Initially triggered by social media restrictions and persistent political corruption, protest activity emerged from semi-private digital peer networks on platforms such as TikTok and Discord before expanding into large-scale street demonstrations. Existing scholarship on collective action tends to emphasize formal organizational structures, visible leadership, and in-person mobilization, often overlooking the role of intermediated and covert interpersonal solidarities within digital networks. Drawing on media reports, press releases, and interviews with Gen Z leaders, this study examines how digitally mediated peer relations enabled geographically dispersed youth to articulate personalized grievances, cultivate collective identity, and coordinate contentious action. The analysis shows that youth activists leveraged the state-led expansion of digital infrastructure—particularly internet access—to expose political corruption and contest restrictive policies, while trust-based semi-private networks functioned as pre-mobilization spaces where shared meanings and strategic coordination developed prior to public protest. These networks provided the organizational foundation that facilitated the rapid transition from online interaction to street-level mobilization. By foregrounding digitally mediated peer networks as sites of collective identity formation and coordination, this study extends political opportunity and network theories to contemporary youth movements, highlighting how informal digital solidarities can underpin large-scale political mobilization in semi-authoritarian contexts.
Keywords: interpersonal mediation, personalized peer networks, digitally mediated solidarity, Gen Z mobilization
Making sense of protests in south Asia and beyond: implications for democratic participation and accountability