Rethinking Youth Political Activism and Digital Networking In the Global South

This paper explores how Global South youth redefine political activism and resist traditional forms of politics through a new wave of social movements. Recently, youth movements have combined online and offline strategies to challenge mainstream political culture. It also examines how youth protests pursue social change and address pervasive social inequality while moving fluidly between digital and street-based activism (the shift from streets to screens and vice versa). Through digital networking, Global South youth organise local protests and confront dominant political discourses using grassroots strategies for social justice amid political polarisation and partisan fragmentation. The paper considers how digital mobilisation enables youth to contest institutional practices through discourses of resistance and contestation, and how their subcultural practices challenge conventional political norms and forms of expression. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how youth in semi-democratic contexts, by leveraging horizontal networking, forums, and coalition-building, subvert hierarchical political structures, blur the boundaries between discourse and practice, and create innovative digital forms of political activism. By tracing the interplay between youth, digital media, and politics, this paper shows how online communication shapes offline political action in the light of youth political styles and experiences with political activism. Drawing on theoretical perspectives such as the power of networking and the network society, the paper underscores social media’s potential to foster informal political expression, boost participatory democracy, advance social change, and empower youth in the Global South context.