The Disinformation Election
What the evidence shows about the forms election disinformation took in Bangladesh in 2026, how it spread through the observed Facebook ecosystem, and who it targeted.
What did election disinformation look like, how did it spread, and who did it target?
Key signals from the research
Fake-news activity accelerated before election day
Posting by the observed fake-news pages rose from an average of 6 posts per day in mid-December to 134 posts on 11 February 2026, the day before the election.
Journalists were a major target
The study identified 566 posts attacking editors and journalists, framing them as agents, operatives or enemies.
Anti-India narratives drew unusually high engagement
Anti-India stories generated 6.8 times more reaction than election content in the observed dataset.
The ecosystem showed strong thematic overlap
Eight influencer pairs had identical topic coverage in the network analysis, alongside a wider network of highly similar thematic patterns.