Propaganda and Information Warfare in Post-July Bangladesh
Akther Mahamud
When Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled on the fifth of August 2024, millions of people across the country celebrated what many perceived as the end of an authoritarian era. The political transition generated widespread optimism, with citizens expecting democratic reforms, greater accountability and positive socio-political change. However, the post-July reality proved to be far more complex than the period of the movement itself, particularly in the digital information environment.
Social media rapidly became a contested space where competing political narratives, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation thrived. Instead of promoting national unity, the online information ecosystem increasingly became characterized by fear, uncertainty, mistrust, ideological polarization and intense struggles over political influence. As a result, many of the initial hopes associated with the movement were overshadowed by an ongoing information war that sought to shape public perception of the movement, its participants, and the country's political future. The continuous confusion, frustration and ideological polarization gave opportunity to the fallen regime of Awami League to prepare war field with organized propaganda.
After the success of July Movement 2024, the war between dictator organs and people of the country simply moved online. From the day of Sheikh Hasina’s resignation, a second race unfolded alongside the political transition, fought not with slogans and placards but with fabricated quote cards, recycled videos, forged letters and AI-generated photos. This is the information war of the July Movement, and after two years of that ongoing war, it is now possible for us to assess the true shape of this war.
I have examined forty-nine individually documented cases of propaganda targeting the July Movement and its aftermath, each verified by fact-checking organizations including Rumor Scanner Bangladesh, Dismislab, FactWatch, BOOM Bangladesh, AFP Fact Check Bangladesh and Prothom Alo Fact Check. The findings challenge a common assumption about disinformation in the AI era. These are not deepfakes that dominate this landscape. These are made-up photo cards, old footage carrying new or framed captions with deformed analysis.
Nearly a quarter of the documented cases involved genuine video, filmed in one place and time, stripped of its context and reintroduced as evidence of something else entirely. For example, a clash in Chattogram became an attack on Hindu students in Dhaka; a market fire in Lakshmipur became an arson attack on minority-owned shops; an idol immersion ceremony filmed in West Bengal became evidence of religious persecution in Bangladesh. Alongside this sat plain texts: rumours, fabricated quote cards mimicking the branding of Jamuna TV or Kaler Kantho, and forged letters attributed to the overthrown dictator Sheikh Hasina. Deepfakes and AI-manipulated images, for all the anxiety they generate, accounted for less than a tenth of the documented cases I observed.
Perhaps the most striking finding concerns, the source of these materials. Majority of the documented propaganda traced back to Indian media outlets or India-based social media accounts, a figure that sits alarmingly alongside Rumor Scanner's own estimate that seventy-two percent of accounts spreading anti-Bangladesh misinformation were located in India (Rumor Scanner Bangladesh, 12 January 2025). Named outlets including Republic Bangla, Zee News, Hindustan Times and India Today were repeatedly flagged for broadcasting claims that had already been debunked, often dressing communal narratives in the language of concern for minorities while ignoring the evidence in front of them.
This does not mean that propaganda came from only one side. Supporters of the former Awami League government, coordinated bot accounts that generated about tons of Facebook comments during the movement and Bangladeshi nationalist social media pages that shared unverified anti-India claims all contributed to spreading different narratives and misinformation online. The lesson is not that one country's media is uniquely dishonest; but that in a decentralized, algorithm-driven information environment, ideology, opinion leadership and fear now do the filtering work that newsroom ownership once did like artists.
Herman and Chomsky called this manufacturing consent when it happened through institutions. What we are witnessing now is its digital successor, assembled not in editorial meetings but in comment sections, made up photo cards, recycled video clips and deformed analysis.
The encouraging part of this story is, Bangladesh's fact-checking community has been growing fast, their ability of debunking disinformation is increasing day by day. These organizations investigated and corrected innumerous cases, using reverse image search, geolocation and cross-verification to trace footage back to its true origin.
But their work rarely travels as fast as the falsehood it corrects, but it travels, slow and steady. What remains is the harder task, building the habits of doubt among ordinary readers, so that recycled videos are questioned before they are shared and planned distribution of photo cards are checked before believing and sharing them. That habit, more than any single fact-check, is what will determine whether the people of Bangladesh shall win this war at the end.
Developing a habit of questioning and verifying information should be a national priority. Critical thinking and media literacy cannot emerge spontaneously; they require careful and sustained nurturing. The government has an inevitable role in encouraging these skills through a systematic education system that integrates critical thinking, digital literacy, and fact-checking from primary school to university and by supporting independent fact-checking organizations. In addition, nationwide public awareness campaigns, collaboration with educational institutions and fact-checking organizations and a strong commitment from the government are essential to cultivate a generation capable of critically evaluating information and resisting propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation.
Author, Researcher
akhtarmahmudwriter@gmail.com
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