Journal article
The production of generational labels in news media: a forensic semiotic analysis of "Gen Z" protests in Nepal and Madagascar
Social semiotics, pp 1-26
16 Apr 2026
Abstract
The transformation of protest into generational spectacle has become a recurrent feature of contemporary news media. Increasingly, heterogeneous mobilizations are rendered intelligible through the label "Gen Z protest," a designation that does not describe age as much as it produces youth as a moral and political fact. This study conceptualizes this process as an evidentiary transformation in which images, captions, and institutional routines converge to stabilize generational meaning. Advancing a Critical-Forensic Media Analysis, it approaches protest photography not as transparent documentation but as an architecture of evidence through which youthfulness is made to appear self-evident. Examining globally circulated coverage of protests in Nepal and Madagascar, the analysis shows how repetition, visual style, and editorial framing substitute circulation for verification, converting aesthetic cues into demographic certainty. Tracing the epistemic life of the "Gen Z" sign across discourse, image, and media practice, the study shows that generational labeling operates as an ideological technology of visibility, governing whose bodies can stand in for the future and how political legitimacy is made to appear true.
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Details
- Title
- The production of generational labels in news media: a forensic semiotic analysis of "Gen Z" protests in Nepal and Madagascar
- Creators
- Essien Oku Essien - Drexel University, Communication, Culture, and Media
- Publication Details
- Social semiotics, pp 1-26
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- Number of pages
- 26
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Communication, Culture, and Media
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001740985700001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-105035705691
- Other Identifier
- 991022179999304721