On Sept. 10, I found myself watching a scene I never thought I’d witness in Nepal. Not on television, not via state broadcasters, not even on the YouTube channels of established media outlets, but on a Facebook Live stream. Tens of thousands of Nepali youths had convened on Discord — a platform better known for video gamers than for governance — to choose who should lead the country as prime minister.
For two days, the streets of Kathmandu and dozens of Nepali cities had been roiled by unprecedented youth-led protests, leaving 19 young people, most of them in their teens and early 20s, dead after police responded by firing live ammunition. The next day, mobs overran political leaders’ homes and torched government buildings. Parliament was left in ruins. Unable to contain the chaos and losing legitimacy by the hour, the government, headed by K.P. Sharma Oli, collapsed. The army stepped in and convened negotiations, including members of the Gen Z protests, to appoint an interim government. Young people found themselves urgently debating who would be their nominee to lead the country on social media channels.
On Discord, the language of revolution was informal and jarring: Avatars with anime faces, usernames like “Ghost” and “Jalebi,” as well as a steady stream of GIFs punctuated serious political debates. Names floated for leadership ranged from Kathmandu’s rapper Mayor Balendra Shah to maverick Dharan Mayor Harka Sampang, countercultural figures already mythologized online.
The young moderators struggled to corral the chaos into order. “Our agenda is clear, but we need more than one representative [to negotiate with the army],” one voice said. “Even if just one or two of us [are] in the [interim cabinet], it will do. We just have to hold an election,” another chimed in.
Following a marathon session more befitting a Twitch stream, the youth organizers eventually coalesced around one name they felt bridged credibility and independence to head an interim government: former Chief Justice Sushila Karki. She was duly appointed by the end of the week.
As of Sept. 14, more than 70 people had been confirmed dead in the unrest, thousands of prisoners had escaped, billions of dollars in property damage had been done, and Nepal had named its first female (interim) prime minister while a cabinet was still being formed.
Yet what makes this moment such a profound and important lesson for Nepal, for South Asia, and for journalism is how much of what happened before was forewarned online — and ignored until it was too late.
The Spark: A Ban That Backfired
The trigger had been a familiar tool of authoritarian control: censorship.
On Sept. 4, Oli’s government abruptly banned 26 social media apps, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. The justification was regulatory: They claimed they were curbing misinformation and enforcing accountability on international platforms. The subtext was clear to many: Stifle dissent.
In a country where 55% of people use the internet daily, and where social media is interwoven with commerce, self-expression, and news consumption, the ban was catastrophic. Downloads of virtual private network software — used to circumvent restrictions on the internet — skyrocketed by 8,000% within days. Far from silencing criticism, it ignited it. Online platforms became underground channels and symbols of defiance.
By Sept. 6, Instagram users with handles like @HamiNepal and @GenZ.nepal had issued posts calling for protests against “the system.” The target was not just the ruling party but what youth organizers were identifying as “every structure that has betrayed people”: government, opposition, bureaucracy, judiciary, and legacy media elites.
On Sept. 8, they acted.
A Generational Divide in Journalism
Veteran journalists were stunned by the scale of the uprising — but there were familiar echoes. Twice before, in 1990 and 2006, mass protests had toppled repressive orders, aided by courageous reporting. In those instances, mainstream newspapers, radio stations, and later, television, had carried the banner of democracy. Some had symbolically published blank spaces in place of censored articles, during a 2005 coup against Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, Nepal’s last king, defying soldiers that occupied newsrooms.
This time was different, and it revealed just how profoundly trust had shifted.
Much of Gen Z’s organizing was done in a language the state and major news outlets failed to decode. Memes interspersed anime characters from the Japanese show "One Piece" with slogans about corruption. Protesters rallied to a backdrop of ironic music, such as the American actor Bo Burnham’s satirical song “Bezos” about Amazon’s executive chairman, or protest clips spliced with “Bella Ciao,” an Italian antifascist anthem. In their social media reels, phrases like “corruption is sus” (suspect) was not meant as satire, but as marching orders.
Editors for both the official state media and legacy outlets struggled to comprehend this vernacular. While they had reported on trends like #NepoKids — a hashtag used in Nepal to express anger over the children of the wealthy and powerful — newsrooms remained focused on statements from leaders, parliamentary actions, and party insider intrigue, rather than decoding TikTok’s political grammar.
This blind spot was perceived by many young people as fatal to these outlets’ credibility.
The Fall of a Government
Instead of restraining law enforcement, the Oli government doubled down on repression. Police, armed with live rounds, confronted teenagers carrying skateboards and protest placards. Even as the casualties mounted, recordings emerged of senior leaders continuing to dismiss protestors as “restless students.”
But online, the narrative shifted quickly: with a steady stream of videos showing skateboarders gliding past armored police, or children in school uniforms dancing as tear gas canisters were fired at them, and in some instances, throwing the canisters back at police while holding up playing cards from the game UNO, in reference to the “reverse UNO” meme that symbolizes turning the tables on someone. The juxtapositions amid the chaos bordered on the absurd, but they traveled faster than any official narrative. Within hours, both national and international media carried stories led by citizen footage.
By the time Oli resigned on the morning of Sept. 9, less than 24 hours after the protests had started, more than just the government had crumbled. Mobs who appeared to be an amalgam of many groups turned against entrenched elites. The homes of political families, including that of former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, were sacked and set ablaze. Memes ridiculing his son as a “#NepoKid” had been circulating for days, feeding resentments that erupted into physical violence.
Structures long considered untouchable were rapidly destroyed: government offices, the Supreme Court, party headquarters, even the facilities of two of Nepal’s largest media houses, Kantipur and the Annapurna Post, were targeted.
By late that night, only the army remained in control, patrolling the streets and guarding what was left of government buildings.
The Media and Its Mirrors
For Nepali journalism, the uprising raised unsettling questions that echo globally.
First, the issue of trust. Nepal’s media sector has long cast itself as a bulwark against authoritarianism. Newspapers resisted the monarchy in 1990, stood against King Gyanendra’s censorship in 2005, and helped usher in the birth of the republic in 2008. But trust has eroded. Thousands of online portals compete for people’s attention. Private outlets, many owned by businesses, are seen as serving their owners’ political or financial interests. Audiences perceive mainstream reporting as politicized and compromised.
Second, the pace of information delivery. While mainstream media worked through hierarchies of verification reporting a rapidly unfolding story, citizen-run livestreams, bloggers, and influencers were already shaping the narrative. A British travel vlogger who stumbled onto the protests produced a video that got more than 25 million views, dwarfing the combined audiences of national news channels. The mainstream media was suddenly no longer the place where revolutions were being narrated in real time — only where they were belatedly confirmed.
Third, the scourge of misinformation. The same open flow of digital information that toppled the government also unleashed confusion. AI-generated clips impersonating prominent news anchors circulated false claims about geopolitical conspiracies. False reports claiming that 32 student protesters had been found dead inside the Parliament went viral. With some Indian legacy media outlets layering in conspiracy-oriented coverage aligned with Hindu nationalist tropes, truth became contested at global speed.
For many Nepalis, journalists became fact-checkers less of the political establishment than of the digital ecosystem itself — answering desperate WhatsApp or Messenger queries asking: “Is this true?”
"The mainstream media was suddenly no longer the place where revolutions were being narrated in real time — only where they were belatedly confirmed."
Historical Irony
For those who lived through earlier waves of democratic struggle, the irony was thick. Both K.P. Oli and Sher Bahadur Deuba had risen as young radical dissidents in the 1970s and ’80s, rallying against the king’s authoritarian Panchayat regime. They, too, once claimed to be fighting in the name of free speech.
The Media Council Act, introduced under Oli and adopted in Feb 2025, has given the government a more powerful role to regulate journalists. In February, his administration proposed the Social Media bill, which threatened five-year prison sentences and fines as high as $18,300 for posting “harmful” online content.
Laws never intended to limit speech have been used to stifle it. Earlier this year, an arrest warrant was issued for broadcast journalist Dil Bhusan Pathak after he reported on alleged investments by Deuba and his wife, Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba. Authorities cited the Electronic Transaction Act, a law ostensibly about digital commerce that’s been increasingly deployed against journalists.
Global Parallels, Global Lessons
Nepal’s uprising is not an isolated event. Around the world, from Kenya to Indonesia, digitally native protest movements are redrawing political maps. They are decentralized, meme-driven, internationally cross-pollinated, and often indifferent to conventional political leadership. They distrust not only governments but legacy institutions, including mainstream journalism.
For journalists globally, Nepal is a warning shot. The assumption that the press stands automatically as democracy’s ally no longer resonates with younger generations who see compromised ownership structures and disconnection from their language. Protest legitimacy is increasingly being measured not by newspaper column inches, but by the virality of choreographed social media reels.
Nepal is also a case study in risks. Digital revolutions spread quickly, but misinformation spreads faster. Without traditional mechanisms of verification, rumors can tip into violence. Journalists must find new strategies not only to document upheaval, but also to represent credibility in the midst of digital storm surges.
What Comes Next for Nepal, and for Journalism?
As of this writing, Karki, the former chief justice, is tasked with leading an interim government. Whether she succeeds is uncertain: Factions within the Gen Z movement that ushered her to power have already turned on some of her choices before the cabinet is even finalized. The same youth movement that seemingly united for a moment to oust an entrenched elite appears to be splintering under the weight of governing. Meanwhile, globally, members of Gen Z are celebrating Nepal’s lightning-fast online revolution while the army still patrols the streets.
Yet Nepal has already crossed a Rubicon. The uprising proved that collective digital organizing can topple long-entrenched systems in a matter of days. Political leaders, once dismissive of memes, now know their own fragility in the face of online mobilization. Traditional media houses, once lionized by democratic struggles, must now reckon with declining trust and new roles in an age when their monopoly over narratives has shattered.
For journalism, the questions are existential. Can legacy outlets regain the trust of a rising generation that views them as complicit with “the system”? Can newsrooms learn to translate the vocabulary of memes, anime flags, and digital irony for wider public understanding? And can they do so without losing their credibility and fidelity to fact-checking amidst the noise?
Subina Shrestha, a 2017 Nieman Fellow, is a filmmaker and correspondent who focuses on human rights, social issues and political changes in her native Nepal.