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. DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION .

An article by Igor Išpanović in the website of Heinrich Böll Stiftung published
28 October 2025

(Editor’s note: The recent victory of the student list in the presidential election of Serbia was an important surprise and inspired us to seek out this article about how their movement was developed)

The wave of anti-corruption protests that began at the end of 2024 is unprecedented in its scope in Serbia’s democratic history. The ways students used popular digital platforms deserve credit for this.

A video of the student list electoral victory published on facebook.

Only a few months after people in Serbia took to the streets to protest government corruption, fears emerged that the protests would fizzle out. Cold weather and the approaching winter holiday period did not inspire hope that the momentum that students had previously contributed to by blocking major university centers in the country could be maintained. However, it was precisely in that uncertain moment that the expression “pump it up!” started to be heard more and more loudly among those present at the protests. It would soon become one of the rallying cries of the demonstrations. Reddit users played a key role in spreading this protest slang, which signals that the protestors’ efforts must be redoubled and that giving up is not an option.

According to comments on this online forum, the phrase was first used by user Pharaoh01414, reacting to events in the country during the holiday season, urging people, in all caps lock, to “go harder” and “just pump” until all the demands are fulfilled. The expression went viral, and the frenzied spread of this form of digital chanting was aided by a video clip from several years ago, which users dug up, featuring popular turbo-folk singer Darko Lazić shouting this very slogan at a wedding. On YouTube alone, that video currently has nearly one and a half million views.

Virality is becoming an increasingly important resource for social movements and activists. It allows for an incredibly rapid spread of information, which is why some scientists compare this phenomenon to contagion. Popular digital platforms are fertile ground for this, especially because they encourage or “reward” with visibility content that features emotions, from laughter to disgust and anger. Finally, amenable to so many different interpretations and adaptations, viral material becomes an unavoidable part of online discussions and spills over into the offline world.

The students have skillfully used the infrastructure of digital platforms and created a network that enabled them to instantly circulate and highlight the information they wanted. “Pump it up!” thus immediately appeared in many humorous posts, video montages, and memes. At the same time, it became the main chant and rallying cry at protests, inspired banners and performances (such as when citizens of Kragujevac used their bodies to form the shape of a pump to support the students who were cycling to Strasbourg), and entered other aspects of everyday life. This (un)seriousness served as living proof and a constant reminder that protest energy must not and will not subside.

Digital Natives Against Protest Fatigue

Demonstrations have become part of everyday life for Serbia’s residents, especially since Aleksandar Vučić, leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, who had been serving as Prime Minister, took over as President in 2017. From protests “Against Dictatorship,” through revolts against the planned Rio Tinto lithium mining project, to “Serbia Against Violence” and outpourings of collective grief and anger over two mass shootings, citizens have had countless reasons to take to the streets in recent years. However, in the previous decade, few such rebellions have resulted in the desired political outcome. This has led to disappointment and exhaustion among participants. Such accumulated negative feelings would spill over into the next protest cycle, causing the initial enthusiasm to fade faster and faster.

Scientists have called this phenomenon protest fatigue, and it manifests both physically and psychologically. It is not only a consequence of long-term emotional commitment to the goals of a certain movement and the physical effort exerted to achieve them, but is also caused by activists’ and protestors’ experiences of being threatened, subjected to police brutality and arrests, especially in undemocratic regimes. However, during the current wave of protests, students stood out as leaders of an all-encompassing social discontent. Many of them belong to “Generation Z,” and for most of them, this is their first serious political engagement. Their more direct involvement in protests, as well as the use of social media for broader mobilization, breathed essential energy into maintaining protest momentum in the fight against the authoritarian government of the Serbian Progressive Party.

Shortly after the students blocked their faculties, more than fifty Instagram accounts were created for various faculties. Moreover, they established a central account @studenti_u_blokadi (students_in_blockade) for communication and coordination of joint activities on this platform. According to research conducted by Radio Free Europe, this account has more followers than President Vučić, the Serbian Progressive Party, and the Serbian Socialist Party combined.

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Is there a renewed movement of solidarity by the new generation?

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These numbers are not surprising given the differences in media use in Serbia between people who favor the parties in power versus those closer to opposition actors. According to Reuters’ Digital News Report from 2022, TV is the main source of news for people with who favor the ruling coalition, while those who favor opposition parties, it is social media and online portals. Regardless, Serbia’s citizens are increasingly migrating to digital platforms in search of information, and in this regard, they have held the leading spot in Europe for several years.

On one hand, the blockading students’ Instagram profiles primarily serve as alternative media outlets, featuring news about events related to the blockades, calls for protests, appeals for donations. On the other hand, on X or TikTok, the students take a much more casual approach, posting humorous content, snippets from everyday life during blockades, and emotionally colored viewpoints. All of these accounts are managed by so-called working groups for media or public relations. They are registered for each faculty and function as smaller, relatively autonomous units within the broader organizational infrastructure of the faculty. Their task is to come up with content for the respective platforms, write statements, communicate with citizens, and mediate between journalists and students.

Protest “Hype,” or How Students Gave Citizens the ‘Green Light’

If each of the fifty identified Instagram accounts of the students’ blockade has a counterpart on just one more platform, such as X or TikTok, this would mean their online network comprises over a hundred accounts. Such a massive digital presence enables them to instantly make information or an event go viral, making it the first post citizens see when they open their applications. They achieve this through additional networking via various options offered by these platforms — sharing Instagram stories or tweets, as well as posting joint content, which is crucial for smaller faculties that are not sufficiently visible on their own.

This visibility is especially important when it comes to calls for protests and street actions, where the goal of the posts is not only to inform but also to mobilize citizens to take to the streets. In these cases, the students have particularly harnessed the logic of digital platforms to their advantage by gradually building “hype,” creating an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation before each major protest. Each of them having been given a memorable and catchy name, they become the main topic of conversation, weeks in advance.

Among these campaigns, the one preceding the “See You on Vidovdan” protest on June 28 particularly stands out. The high level of anticipation was also in part due to the fact that it was the first major protest announced after a months-long pause following the largest protest gathering in Serbia’s democratic history, that had taken place in mid-March. The announcement of this protest was accompanied by a short video of a traffic collapse featuring footage of a traffic light changing color from red to green. The motif of the ‘green light’ then frequently appeared in posts from various students’ blockade accounts, as did the cryptic message “you will have the green light.” The students did not offer an explanation of this ‘green light’ at the time, which completely captured the citizens’ attention, and the topic kept coming up in their conversations and speculations.

Then, a few days before the protest, the students posted two demands to the authorities as an ultimatum to be fulfilled by 9 p.m. on the day of the protest. More than one hundred thousand people gathered at that protest, and the mystery of the ‘green light’ was solved just before it ended. That was when the students’ social media accounts began counting down the time that remained until the deadline they had set for the authorities — the first post was red, the second yellow, and the third green. This was also a signal to Serbia’s residents to engage in civil disobedience in response to the authorities’ failure to fulfill the demands, and that call resulted in a transition to a new phase of struggle and massive traffic blockades that followed in the coming days and months.

On the Reach of Virality, and Other Concluding Considerations

With the help of popular digital platforms and new technologies, the students have creatively and thoughtfully created an atmosphere of long-term protest readiness. However, on social media, attention is a precious resource, and it is very easy to fall into the trap of being overwhelmed and oversaturated with information. This is an especially thin line when it comes to viral content that often activates intense emotional responses with, in the context of the protests, a constant sense of urgency and the importance of every event. In this sense, the point at which the momentum of the protests was most threatened was precisely after June 28. That is when other social groups started to mobilize, gathered primarily around local assemblies. Suddenly, calls for action began to come more frequently and from multiple sides, and citizens were put in a position to weigh which struggle was more important to prevent burnout in the long run. Therefore, it is essential that this additional decentralization of protests be supported by better coordination between different actors to prevent the fragmentation of engagement and dwindling numbers on the streets.

Moreover, virality can also work in the opposite direction. One consequence of prolonged struggle is the adaptation of undemocratic regimes to the tactics of social movements, especially on digital platforms. Fake news and disinformation are the perfect viral content whose circulation aims to, among other things, cast doubt on facts and stifle space for discussion. Furthermore, the example of the phrase “ćaci” shows that the authorities have also become skilled in using social media logic. This word, which appeared at roughly the same time as “pump it up!”, refers to ignorant and corrupt people who support the current regime for personal gain. However, high-ranking officials and party members soon began identifying themselves as ‘ćaci,’ and President Aleksandar Vučić marked Students’ Day on April 4 by posting on Instagram a photo of himself in a T-shirt with the inscription “I’m a ćaci too.” Then, before the Vidovdan protest, a banner appeared saying “Better ćaci than Nazi” on the fenced section in front of the National Assembly. The latest in a series of viral iterations is the song “Better to Be a Ćaci” created using artificial intelligence. Although it has only about one hundred fifty thousand views on YouTube, it has become a popular musical background on TikTok and Instagram.

Finally, research is divided on the form of engagement encouraged by using digital platforms. On one hand, some speak of so-called “clicktivism,” the idea that liking, commenting, and sharing posts rarely translates into more serious social action. On the other hand, one of the most comprehensive studies on social media and engagement claims that access to these online forums affects a higher degree of political participation. One thing is certain — there are more and more protests worldwide, especially those originating from digital space. The next step is to use protest momentum in the social media era to create stronger and more consolidated movements fighting for social change, and students in Serbia have laid excellent foundations for this.

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