CJP and the Changing Information Landscape of Student Protest

For Gen-Z, the 'Cockroach' uprising became an act of protest, rebellion, identification and fun, all at once.

The transition from an online to offline movement saw an approximately 18 percent dip in the number of CJP followers.

(Photo: @baeofbengal/Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)'s use of social media for messaging is a textbook case study of political communication. We analyse the three most popular protagonists of the protest theatre and a couple of new Gen-Z media out lets to understand the most popular templates of youth mobilisation.

Abhijit Dipke used Open AI’s Large Language Model (LLM) to create the iconography of the cockroach that satirised the Chief Justice’s description of Indian youth related to the alienation and marginalisation of Gen-Z. Within a week millions signed up as members of the Cockroach Janta Party. 

Critique from two Union Ministers Kiren Rijiju stated that these millions of signups for CJP were primarily "bots", "Pakistanis", "George Soros’ network" and "foreigners". However, analytics revealed that 91 percent were Indians and a large number were women. Hence, these claims were debunked.

Gen-Z-Fying the Message: Satire to Protest

The transition from an online to offline movement saw an approximately 18 percent dip in the number of CJP followers, as it changed the tone from satire to real political activity and characters.

An organic next step was crowd sourced animations from real-life situations linked with appropriate music relatable with Gen-Z. These characters were likeable and not overhyped and Dipke kept building the audience using them.

For example, newspapers had a tragic story of a child who died after an accident because of a pothole on the road, in some town in India. The CJP handle depicted this in animation and launched a campaign #lifeofacockroach which asked its followers to post photos/videos documenting instances of systemic corruption, bribery, delayed pubic services, and infrastructure scams and tag CJP. This campaign was, however, truncated midway without any follow-up. 

Then, there was the cockroach reel linked to the medical exam paper leaks causing hardships to hundreds of thousands of students, some of whom (about 20) ended their lives. The CJP handle took this up hitting emotional cords. CJP created reels that engaged with collective rage—all online. 

As the site of action changed with Dipke relocating to India and making Jantar Mantar a physical reality, followed by an eight-city mobilisation, the cockroach imagery turned hybrid. The satire continued symbolically both online and as background at every protest site. 

The cockroach was adopted by thousands of digital co-creators who used AI tools to create autonomous animations and visuals. Various groups adopted it, all working in silos with a strange co-ordination, without centralised control. Further millions shared the animations and visuals within their circles of influence. This strengthened the CJP reach, trickling down to crevices. 

Apart from students, theatre groups, lawyers, farmer union members and handful and select celebrities shared the cockroach content. Doing so became a badge of honour for the generation: an act of protest, rebellion, identification and fun, all at once. 

This method of communication is unidirectional flow of dressed up as both ‘knowledge’ or information or even something false and delusional. But the comments sections in Instagram and YouTube etc revealed and shattered beliefs. Moreover, those who scrolled and those who trolled could understand Gen-z behavioural models. 

Reeling in the Outrage

The protester groups (CJP, AISA, KYS etc) watched which reels triggered Gen-Z responses and mobilised them. They learnt  which reels went viral in minutes. For example when Sonam Wangchuk was picked up in white sheets by the police the uploaded visuals became a mobilisation trigger. The image of Abhijit Dipke kneeling before a policeman was both a outrage trigger and controversial- of bending to authority. The reel of Neha showing the horrendous conditions of the public washroom that girls had to use was gendered trigger as more women joined her.

Viral reels  included Wangchuk's day 18 of the hunger fast update got 170 million views. Abhijit celebrating the resignation, went up to 150 million views. Shabana Azmi, kissing AISA leader Neha Bora’s hand has crossed 27 million views. Similarly Samajwadi’s Dimple crossing the barricades, or Dipke crying when Sonam Wangchuk was picked up by the police got millions of views and triggered high emotion.

Dipke’s brainchild practicing secular narrative with the visuals of Sikh, Muslim men (Harpreet Singh and Junaid) serving food at the protest site , with Dipke eating along with them symbolised the politics of the movement.

With some well-known figures joining provided content and trigger for support both from online and offline communities. The reels internationalised as they received international responses from figures like from Greta Thunberg, John Cusack and others. 

Independent Reporters, Offbeat Reporting

In the absence of mainstream media, the major input was from independent content creators, YouTubers and journalists constantly present at the Jantar Mantar site. With their own networks PeekTV, TheRedMike, Molitics, Samdish Bhatia’s Unfiltered, ‘motivational gurus’  and other ‘s like Ajit Anjum, chronicled this with minute detail. 

The two most watched videos on TheRedMike were of Junaid being targeted after the protest and a young SFI student explaining her call of ‘Vastugunahuuiyaan’. Issues like E20 and Iran war were not getting even half the number of views. PeekTV got more views on its YouTube channel during this protest than it did in the entire year preceding it.

The movement and these channels grew as they fed on each other. Millions watched these channels as their following grew exponentially while news of the movement grew.

Many of these journalists like the protestors got thrashed by the police during the lathicharge on 20 July. These channels crafted the narrative in favour of the protest, even as mainstream media stayed hostile and mostly away. This Gen-Z media got huge traction. 

CJP and left supporters replied to every public critique in droves. They responded to the police crackdown with reels filled with the paradox of humour and pain delivering simultaneous and subliminal messages. They questioned the most powerful men in the country. They were unafraid to raise other social issues  while circling back to student issues. As this protest transitions into a nation-wide season 2. many of its reels have become templates for Gen-Z persuasion.

(Sundeep Narwani is a social media analytics expert. Anuradha Chenoy is a commentator. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's. The Quint does not endorse or is responsible for them.)