Critical Media Perspectives on the 2024 Bangladesh Uprising: The Gen Z Revolution

Bangladesh’s 2024 July Uprising serves as a case study demonstrating how mediated citizenship, algorithmic publics, and aesthetic resistance have come to define the vocabulary of contemporary revolution. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from media sociology, digital activism, political communication, and discourse analysis, this volume offers nuanced analyses of protest aesthetics, platform politics, and state repression during Bangladesh’s 2024 July Uprising to demonstrate how Gen Z effectively mobilized hybrid and digitally mediated forms of resistance against an entrenched authoritarian regime. Contributors explore the role of various factors including grassroots digital activism, gendered media narratives, and transnational coverage as they document how media narratives were constructed, contested, and weaponized within the conflict – through means ranging from state-orchestrated communication blackouts to the insurgent power of memes, graffiti, citizen journalism, and protest music – to reshape the political discourse of Bangladesh. Ultimately, this volume situates the events of this uprising as a clear indicator that struggles over media, visibility, and narrative authority have redefined the conditions of contemporary political action.