Dichotomies in Digital Resistance: Gen Z Values and ICT Use in the 2024 Bangladesh Student Protests

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has transformed political activism worldwide; however, how these technologies aid, enable, or hinder political movements remains an ongoing area of research, particularly when such movements are led by students belonging to so-called Gen Z. In this paper, we take an ethnographic look at the Gen Z–led Bangladeshi student protests in mid-2024, which brought about large-scale political change and revealed recurring dichotomies in digital resistance shaped by ICT use under conditions of disruption. Our study includes interviews with students and political activists directly involved in the protests, as well as an online ethnography of publicly circulating and participant-shared protest-related materials collected from news and social media streams, including materials that were disregarded or acted upon during internet and media shutdowns, blackouts, and other disruptions. We draw on Structuration Theory as a sensitizing framework to analyze and contribute to the understanding of how signification, domination, and legitimation were enacted across public-platform, private, embodied, and transnational registers under infrastructural disruption. The study also contributes insights into how values associated with Gen Z were expressed, negotiated, and reconfigured under conditions of political unrest and digital disruption.