Nepal’s change of leadership after an uprising last week set an extraordinary precedent. It was the outcome of a selection process that used a video-gaming platform called Discord to simulate what was described as a mini election. When the military imposed a curfew across Kathmandu and restricted large gatherings, members of a civic organisation called Hami Nepal set up a channel on this platform to initiate a combination of voice, video, and text chats that would become the digital version of a national convention. Discord is a communication platform used by over two hundred million people to hang out and play games with their friends. The New York Times quoted a 23-year-old content creator as saying, “The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord.”
When Nepalis quickly took to this channel, in just four days, the server acquired more than 1,45,000 members. So much so that when the prime minister resigned and power passed on to the country’s military, the army’s chiefs who would decide who led the country next are reported to have met with the channel’s organisers and asked them to create a process to come up with a potential nominee for an interim leader.
The chaotic conversation which ensued inside this wide-ranging chat room that anyone could join was reaching the army headquarters, the moderators said. And it threw up, in a very short time, the names which led to the current prime minister’s selection.
Across the world, social media platforms have helped foment revolution over the last couple of decades and have become arbiters of political change. But using an internet platform to generate a popular consensus for a country’s leadership transition is definitely a first. It may well be a transient gain. As an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told NYT about the role of technology in social movements; creating a stable political structure in the long term is not something that these platforms have had much success with. Bangladesh, where the youth led the movement to effect a leadership change, being the most recent example.
The social media ban in Nepal which triggered the violent uprising led by the youth cohort being described as Gen Z was partly the government’s response to video expressions of resentment at the lifestyle of the children of the ruling class flaunting their wealth. Videos emerged on TikTok showing children of Nepalese politicians flaunting luxury in a country where the per capita income is $1,300 a year.
Internet-enabled media platforms have become a source of livelihood for many young Nepalis. Nepal has the same problem as India — no jobs for the youth. Some said that they ran businesses on Facebook. And the BBC reported that popular platforms such as Instagram have millions of users in Nepal who rely on them for entertainment, news and business.
Banning social media hit livelihoods and also remittances to families from some seven million Nepalis living abroad. One report said that some 25% of the country’s gross domestic product comes from external remittances. Being connected to the world seemed essential for a very young country with one of the lowest median ages in South Asia. The ban, therefore, triggered visceral anger, especially when initial protests were met by police violence.
Social media impacts societal transformation because it has political potential. It enables students to organise, share information, and mobilise. First, it becomes an important amplifier of dissent. And then when a new political Opposition emerges, it uses these platforms to mobilise people. The mayor of Kathmandu, Balendra Shah, a former rapper and engineer turned politician, was one such face that emerged out of the protests and then became a contender when a new political leadership was being considered. He used Facebook to incite. “Parliament had to be disrupted,” said one message.
From the Arab Spring onwards, social media’s impact on political mobilisation has seen reams of academic research being published. A survey of participants in Egypt’s Tahrir Square protests found that people learn about protests being organised not from broadcast media but through interpersonal communication on social media. Social media use greatly increased the odds that a respondent attended the protest on the first day. While satellite TV use decreased these odds.
In Bangladesh, too, a study found that social media quickly became the movement’s cornerstone, bypassing government-controlled traditional media to enable students to organise, share information, and mobilise. But going beyond its impact on catalysing movements, other research has studied the political effects of social media platforms on different regime types, looking at how American social media platforms can affect the political systems of different states in varying ways. This is potentially more valuable in terms of insights offered. The study says that the effect varies both between and within democratic and authoritarian States and depends on how three political actors — domestic Opposition, external forces, and the governing regime — use social media.
Nepal’s September Revolution has taken platform-enabled political mobilisation a small step forward in terms of demonstrating its constructive possibilities. The world will be watching to see what comes next from the country’s Gen Z and the leadership it helped anoint.
Sevanti Ninan is a media commentator. She also publishes the labour newsletter, Worker Web.