The Power of Social Media Sites
- Post On03/30/2025
- ByShankar Paudel
My recent article “The Power of Social Media Sites: A Case of #BackOffIndia” has been published in The Batuk, a leading journal in Nepal. The article could be accessed at https://doi.org/10.3126/batuk.v11i1.74445.
This article explores how the hashtag united Nepali people against the hegemonic attitude of India by analyzing the tweets with the hashtag (#) BackOffIndia to expose how this hashtag worked as a platform for horizontal connectivity and dissemination of information, citizen journalism, the pervasive nature of power and multiple resistance sites. The analytical study of the blockade conducted with the help of a digital platform, Twitter (now X), led to the conclusion that the Indian government had imposed a state of blockade on Nepal in denial of the promulgation of the constitution in 2015. From the analysis, Twitter has been found useful and an easier and more successful tool to spread the voice of protest across the world.
Shankar Paudel
यत् भावो – तत् भवति।
My name is Shankar. I am a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (RWS) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I am also an assistant director in the rhetoric and writing studies program. At UTEP, apart from being a doctoral student, I am working as an instructor of technical writing (RWS-3359) and first-year composition (RWS 1301). I worked as an assistant director at the University Writing Center for three semesters (2022 Spring, 2023 Fall, and 2024 Spring). Prior to that, I was a graduate consultant at the University Writing Center (UWC) for a year and coordinated the Workshop Committee during that time. In the summer of 2022, I worked with the School of Nursing at UTEP as a PhD Research Associate. My research and teaching interests are more related to environmental humanities, environmental historiography, rhetoric and composition, digital humanities, multimodal composition, and technical communication. My dissertation is focused on environmental rhetoric in the field of technical communication. I am the president of two student organizations at UTEP, Frontera Retorica (a student chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America at UTEP) and Nepali Students Association at UTEP (NSA-UTEP). Internationally, I am associated with the South Asian Foundation for Academic Research (SAFAR—https://www.safarsouthasia.org/2022/02/08/shankarpaudel/) as an academic counselor and the Center for Advanced Studies in South Asia (CASSA) as a digital consultant and am also involved in various projects.