Disinformation Campaigns Threaten Women’s Political Participation

In February 2025, Nusrat Tabassum faced a devastating discovery on her phone: a sexually explicit deepfake video of herself rapidly spreading across thousands of WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages. For Tabassum, a student leader who had helped overthrow Bangladesh’s authoritarian regime just months earlier, this marked the ninth documented disinformation attack against her. Her apparent transgression? Announcing her candidacy for parliament.

Tabassum’s experience exemplifies a broader, coordinated disinformation campaign targeting women who led Bangladesh’s July 2024 uprising and subsequently sought political positions. Following the successful revolution, many female student leaders joined the newly formed National Citizen Party (NCP), Bangladesh’s first student-led political party, established in February 2025. Prominent activists including Tasneem Zara, Samanta Sharmin, and Tabassum herself emerged as leaders and electoral candidates, triggering an immediate and severe escalation in targeted disinformation attacks.

Recent research titled “Disinformation Targeting Female Political Figures in Bangladesh” documents how gendered disinformation is systematically produced, circulated, and weaponized against these women. The study reviewed 40 distinct fact-checked reports concerning 12 female student activists, representing nearly 23% of the overall sample. The findings reveal a disturbing pattern of coordinated attacks designed to undermine women’s political participation.

Between 2024 and 2025, these 12 female leaders faced sophisticated attacks using various technological tools. Farzana Sithi endured deepfake videos showing her dancing in nightclubs she never visited. Nafsin Mehanaz Azireen’s photographs were digitally altered to suggest provocative clothing and fabricated intimate encounters. Faria Rahman Farah’s image was manipulated to depict her in compromising situations.

The perpetrators employed increasingly sophisticated tactics. One prevalent strategy involved creating “outlet-style photocards” that impersonated trusted media brands like Prothom Alo, Samakal, Jugantor, and Jamuna TV to give false statements an air of legitimacy. These fake news cards combined doctored images with fabricated headlines alleging corruption or impropriety, creating a package designed for maximum virality.

During the July 2024 uprising, at least 16% of disinformation targeting female activists utilized these photocards impersonating respected media outlets. This tactic exploits audience trust in established media brands, leverages quick visual processing on social media, and creates highly shareable content perfect for rapid dissemination across messaging platforms.

Death rumors presented another chilling tactic, with activists Lucky Akhter and Sinthiya Zaheen Ayesha targeted by false claims of their deaths, creating fear throughout activist networks. Other forms of disinformation included allegations of foreign visa bans, nepotism in government jobs, and secret marriages to army officers.

The research identified approximately 700 Facebook pages posing as news outlets but functioning as disinformation hubs. These pages created centralized operations capable of disseminating identical content across multiple platforms within seconds, suggesting a high level of coordination and shared resources.

The technological sophistication has escalated from simple photo editing to AI-generated deepfakes and fabricated social media profiles. Some activists, like Nusrat Tabassum, faced sustained campaigns with at least nine documented false claims targeting her specifically.

Another concerning dimension revealed in separate research is how the interim government faces disinformation campaigns led by the former ruling Awami League and its allies that deliberately conflate women’s political participation with religious extremism. This strategic conflation forces female activists into impossible defensive positions: any attempt to assert both gender equality and traditional values can be weaponized to argue women should not seek political power.

The layering of attacks along multiple axes—gender, ethnicity, religion, and class—creates nearly impossible situations for targeted women to defend themselves effectively. The sophisticated coordination evident in Bangladesh’s case demonstrates a dangerous strategy to erode democratic participation and human rights gains.

As one female student leader told researchers: “We don’t want to go back to how things were before.” The ultimate question facing Bangladesh and democracies globally is whether societies will allow this coordinated architecture of exclusion to prevent women who risked everything for political change from governing the countries they helped liberate.

This systematic disinformation campaign represents more than individual harassment—it constitutes political warfare designed to maintain patriarchal power structures in the digital age. The response to these coordinated attacks may determine whether Bangladesh’s democratic transition can truly transform long-standing patterns of gender exclusion in politics.