Methods

This study employs qualitative rhetorical analysis as its primary method, drawing on the

digital rhetorical ecology framework developed in the preceding section. The dataset consists of

100 comments collected from ten Facebook accounts that posted content related to the July 2024

student uprising in Bangladesh, with particular focus on posts documenting or responding to the

shooting of Abu Sayed on July 16, 2024. Eight of the ten accounts are individual user accounts—

ranging from students and activists to diaspora community members—and two are official

organizational accounts, including a human rights advocacy page and a student movement

solidarity network. This combination of individual and organizational voices reflects the

decentralized, multi-actor character of the movement's digital ecology and allows the analysis to

account for how different types of actors participated in the production and circulation of protest

discourse.

Comments were collected through manual observation and transcription during the peak

period of the movement's digital activity, spanning July to the first week of August 2024. Posts

were identified through keyword and hashtag searches targeting terms directly associated with

the uprising and with the Abu Sayed incident, including "Bangladesh protest," "quota reform

movement," "July uprising," "Abu Sayed," and the hashtags #JulyMassacre, #RedForJustice,
#IAmRazakar, #StepDownHasina, and #SaveBangladesh. Given Facebook's restrictions on

automated data collection tools, data gathering was conducted through systematic manual

methods: relevant public posts and their associated comment threads were identified through

direct observation, and comments were collected through transcription and screenshot archiving.

All data used in this study is drawn from publicly available posts. Ethical guidelines were

observed throughout: no personally identifiable information beyond publicly visible usernames is

reported, and all comments are treated as public rhetorical utterances rather than private

expressions.
 The ten accounts were selected using a combination of purposive and criterion-based

sampling. Accounts were chosen if they met the following criteria: the account posted original

content related to the July Movement or Abu Sayed's shooting during the study period; the post

generated substantive comment engagement (a minimum of fifty comments); and the account

was publicly accessible. Among the eight individual accounts selected, priority was given to

accounts with diverse audience sizes—ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of

followers—to capture the range of voices participating in the movement's digital ecology rather

than limiting analysis to the most prominent actors. The two organizational accounts were
selected because of their established relevance to human rights documentation and student

movement solidarity in Bangladesh. Table 1 below provides a full overview of the dataset.

Table 1. Dataset Overview

Account Type Followers (approx.) Comments Collected

Account 1 Individual 12,400 10

Account 2 Individual 8,700 10

Account 3 Individual 21,300 10

Account 4 Individual 5,900 10

Account 5 Individual 15,600 10

Account 6 Individual 9,200 10

Account 7 Individual 33,800 10

Account 8 Individual 7,400 10

Account 9 Organization 88,500 10

Account 10 Organization 142,000 10

Total — — 100

Thematic codes were developed inductively from the data, consistent with grounded

theory methods (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Initial open coding proceeded through close reading

of all 100 comments, with codes assigned to capture recurring rhetorical moves, emotional
registers, discursive patterns, and references to visual content and circulation. Through iterative

axial coding, related codes were grouped into broader categories, which were then refined

through selective coding into the three themes that structure the analysis: political grievance as a

catalyst, the human toll of activism, and the rhetorical transformation of the hashtag. These

themes emerged from the data rather than being imposed prior to analysis, though they are

interpreted through the theoretical frameworks of rhetorical ecology, affective publics, ecologies

of harm, and visual rhetoric established in the literature review. Tables 2 and 3 below present the

theme distribution across the dataset and the breakdown by account type.

Table 2. Theme Distribution

Theme No. of Comments % of Dataset Dominant Account Type

Political Grievance as a 38 38% Individual &

The Human Toll of 34 34% Individual

Rhetorical 28 28% Individual &

Total 100 100% —

Table 3. Account Type Breakdown

Account Type No. of Accounts Comments Collected % of Dataset

Individual User Accounts 8 80 80%

Official Organization 2 20 20%

Total 10 100 100%

The dataset includes comments written in both English and Bengali. Bengali-language

comments are preserved in the original with English translations provided in brackets. Presenting

both languages together gives readers a sense of the data's rhetorical texture and allows the
translated meaning to be evaluated against the original expression. This bilingual presentation

also reflects the sociolinguistic reality of the movement's digital ecology, in which English and

Bengali circulated simultaneously as languages of protest, solidarity, and international appeal—

with English-language posts oriented toward diaspora and international audiences, and Bengali-

language posts more often addressed to domestic participants in the movement.

An obvious limitation of this study is the size of the dataset. One hundred comments

drawn from ten accounts represent a small fraction of the total discourse generated by the July

Movement across Facebook, and a larger dataset would likely surface additional themes, reveal
greater variation within the three themes identified here, and allow for more granular claims

about patterns of participation across different account types and audience sizes. The manual

data collection method, while necessary given Facebook's API restrictions, also introduces

constraints on scalability and reproducibility. Additionally, this study focuses exclusively on

Facebook, and does not capture the significant protest discourse that circulated through other

platforms—including WhatsApp and Telegram groups, which hosted more private and encrypted

forms of coordination—or the offline dimensions of the movement that both shaped and were

shaped by digital circulation. Finally, the analysis of comments as rhetorical texts requires

acknowledgment that comments represent the visible, public-facing layer of a far larger affective

and political engagement with the movement; the silences, the lurkers, and the non-commenting

viewers who nonetheless shared and watched the circulating content are not fully captured in this

dataset.

The analysis is organized into three thematic sections corresponding to the emergent

themes identified through the coding process. The first section examines how political grievance

was concentrated and amplified through the circulation of the Abu Sayed footage, analyzing how

users named and contested the structural, direct, and cultural violence of the July Movement's

political ecology. The second section traces how the image of Abu Sayed's death was

transformed through acts of digital mourning and commemoration into a symbol of collective

sacrifice, extending the movement's affective public beyond its initial student constituency. The
third section analyzes how the movement's hashtag ecology—most dramatically in the ironic

reclamation of the term "razakar"—functioned as a site of identity construction, counter-

rhetorical reversal, and sustained political demand-making. Each section reads comment data

through the theoretical frameworks established in the literature review, showing rather than

merely telling how the ecology of digital circulation produced the July Movement's rhetorical

force.