To what extent does social media provide youth a platform for enacting political change?
Head Researcher: Suhani Kothari
Researchers: Mav Murray, Lukas Edman, Mihika Kulkarni, Aleksander G. Nowak, Katherine Price
Executive Summary
This paper examines how far social media provides young people with a meaningful platform for political change, using four major case studies: Bangladesh, Nepal, the Arab Spring movement with focus on Egypt, and Morocco, with a comparative discussion of Turkey. The analysis is based on a wide range of sources: peer-reviewed academic papers on digital activism, country-specific scholarship and data, contemporary reporting from media outlets, and material from the 2024–25 movements, including social media and digital patterns.
The first section situates online mobilisation in a wider context, tracing the shift from the early optimism surrounding Facebook-led action to today’s encrypted organisation on Discord. This evolution reflects both heightened state surveillance and a move toward broader modes of participation.
The second section examines the case studies. In Bangladesh and Nepal, youth-led online mobilisation escalated into nationwide uprisings, transforming the national political landscapes. The Arab Spring case illustrates an earlier pattern: social media was essential for exposing censorship, but it did not deliver the desired structural reforms. Morocco’s trajectory, from the Facebook mobilisation of 2011 to the anonymous activism of Gen Z 212 in 2025, highlights how digital resistance adapts to growing repression. Turkey’s 2025 protests, however, show the constraints of digital mobilisation under authoritarian control.
The paper, by analysing the case studies, concludes that while social media organises effectively and delivers short-term results, it is not as effective in producing lasting reform unless paired with sustained offline mobilisation.