The National Communication Association (NCA) 2025 Annual Convention in Denver drew international academic attention to Bangladesh’s July 2024 student-led mass uprising, with multiple presentations examining how a decentralised Gen-Z movement achieved historic political change despite violent crackdowns, internet shutdowns, and censorship. The dedicated panel, “From Rights Movement to Regime Change,” was chaired by Mohammad Ala-Uddin, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Saint Mary’s College, Indiana, and featured scholars from US and Bangladeshi institutions analysing the cultural and communicative forces that sustained the uprising. In his presentation, Shah Jahan Shuvo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Alabama, showed how protesters shifted from digital coordination to street-based organising after the government imposed a telecommunications blackout, arguing that the movement represents a defining case of post-digital resistance. Md Harisur Rahman, Associate Professor at North South University and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, analysed how protest songs such as “Shono Mohajon” and “Deshta Tomar Baper Naki” became emotional and organisational anchors during state repression, transforming individual frustration into collective resolve. A second analysis was presented by Didarul Islam Manik of Central New Mexico Community College, whose study of graffiti identified themes of counter-hegemony, satirical resistance, and visual defiance that reclaimed public space and mobilised citizens during a period of total media blackout. Saiqa Shahzadi, from the University of New Mexico, examined how Pakistani newspapers framed the uprising through narratives of instability and geopolitical anxiety, often downplaying youth agency while foregrounding regional insecurity.