Digital Youth and Rhizomatic Protest Movements.

Historically, youth have been at the forefront of democracy struggles in Southeast Asia. As their lifeworlds and means of expression change, so does the nature of their protest. From Indonesia to Thailand and Myanmar, recent youth-led uprisings share key characteristics that bind them across borders and that distinguish this generation of activist youth from previous generations. First, they are digitally-savvy and interconnected. Second, they are imaginative beyond borders, evincing a deterritorialized, yet firmly local, generational consciousness that is evolving into a deterritorialized praxis for political change. Third, they shun and transcend existing political fault lines that have hitherto hampered democracy efforts in their respective countries. These characteristics reflect the ‘rhizomatic’ nature of their protest. Rather than sprouting from the single ‘root’ of national histories of student activism in each country, today’s youth movements form a heterogeneous assemblage with multiple nodes that expand in multiple directions, much like the digital information and communication flows that shape their protest.