Bangladesh’s Fake Photo Card Problem

Digital policy experts describe the present era as one defined by a chaotic information eco-system, crowded with fake news, misinformation, disinformation and other forms of online harm and propaganda. Governments and regulators around the world, including in Bangladesh, are still scrambling to design legislative instruments and public policy tools that can keep pace with this environment while remaining aligned with both free speech standards and human rights norms.

Big Tech companies have made matters worse. Decisions by firms such as Meta to scale back human content moderation have intensified the problem rather than contained it. In reality, a disproportionate share of people across the world now receive most of their news through social media feeds that lack meaningful gatekeeping or independent editorial oversight.

Rumours, fabrications and manipulated images move through these networks with almost no resistance.

Users absorb falsehoods as fact, and entire communities settle into competing realities shaped by ideological and political bias, pushed by algorithms into echo chambers where their version of events becomes the only version that is perceived as real. The result is a public sphere in which the old faith that truth will ultimately assert itself and set societies free no longer feels sustainable.

Bangladesh experiences the same overarching patterns of online harm that are visible globally, yet a distinctly Bangladeshi problem has emerged in recent years, and a plethora of political observers are finally beginning to call it out. Fake photo cards, meaning fabricated images that copy the look and authority of mainstream news outlets, have become a powerful vehicle for disinformation.

Examples of High-Profile Fake Photo Cards

Take the recent case of the looting of white stones in Sylhet. Two fake photo cards bearing the names and logos of two newspapers, namely Prothom Alo and Kaler Kantho, spread on Facebook, one claiming an Upazila Chairman had said the stones were merely being washed and dried, the other alleging that a Jamaat leader and local officials had funded a 500 million Taka palace with the proceeds.

FactWatch later confirmed that neither outlet had published these items.

Another viral image that appeared to show several people arrested with the stones was also found to have been generated by artificial intelligence and was unrelated to any law enforcement operation.

The same technique was used earlier, in October 2023, when a Facebook page called Take Back Bangladesh circulated a photo card styled as a Daily Star news graphic that attributed a contentious remark to Bangladesh Nationalist Party Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir after an alleged meeting with the then American ambassador, Peter Haas. Checks of news archives and open sources found no record of such a statement or such a meeting, and The Daily Star later clarified that both the quote and the supposed meeting were unsupported by the factual record.

The most accurate definition of a fake photo card emerging from these examples is the following: a doctored or intentionally engineered social media graphic that mimics the design, logo, colours and layout of a real news outlet but contains made-up or edited text and images that the outlet never actually published. This definition zeroes in on five specific and unique features of photo cards.

Five Core Features of Fake Photo Cards

First, a fake photo card usually includes the official logo and branding of a mainstream media outlet or page, such as its name, icon and brand colours, so that viewers immediately recognize the supposed source.

Second, it typically carries a short, bold headline in large font that summarises the main claim, quote or news in a way that can be read quickly on a mobile screen.

Third, it features a prominent photograph, often of a person, place or event, which sits in the background or beside the text and is used to make the message feel more vivid and convincing to a public that is either not digitally literate enough to distinguish fact from fiction or does not have the time to do so.

Fourth, the elements on a photo card follow a consistent layout or template, with the logo, headline, body text and image placed in similar positions each time so that the design looks clean, familiar and somewhat professional.

Fifth, photo cards include extra attribution details, such as the date, programme name, page handle or a small caption or credit line, which are meant to make the graphic look like an authentic piece of mainstream journalism or an official announcement.

Experiencing the Transition from State-Led Censorship to an Information Free-for-All

Bangladesh is now navigating a messy transition from authoritarian rule into an interim period that is meant to lead to credible elections and a return to parliamentary democracy, a transition that has coincided with and brought to the surface the full scale of problems related to a chaotic information ecosystem.

After the ouster of the Awami League government, the lid effectively came off a long-pressured information environment. Prior to August 5, the Sheikh Hasina-led administration fostered its own kind of digital harm by strategically creating a censorial atmosphere across social and mass media, which in turn promoted a visible culture of self-censorship.

The state signalled that overly critical commentary about the Prime Minister, her government and, frankly, anything related to the ruling party could trigger deployment of legislative instruments such as the Digital Security Act or the Official Secrets Act to harass and imprison journalists, activists and regular citizens. This produced a draconian digital environment in which many voices chose silence for fear of persecution by the heavy hand of an authoritarian, anti-rights state apparatus.

Since August 5, the interim government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus has, to its credit, opened greater space for free expression, though questions remain about the extent to which those aligned with the Awami League, or those calling for the fundamental rights of Awami League supporters and politicians to be respected, enjoy the same protections.

That opening, nevertheless, has collided with the pre-existing problems of a chaotic information ecosystem that even mature liberal democracies, with robust freedom of speech protections, struggle to manage. Quick self-directed research into the debates around free speech and digital governance in countries such as Canada, Australia, and the European Union writ large will give a sense of this.

Bangladeshis who felt unable to speak openly for many years are suddenly able to do so, and some of the worst aspects of online discourse have, as a result, surged to the surface. Targeted verbal slurs and harassment, particularly against women and minorities, have intensified rather than diminished, and those seem to be tied to Islamist narratives.

Alongside this has come a wave of political and non-state actors leveraging pointed social media campaigns, particularly through fake photo cards, to construct bogus narratives that serve their own agendas rather than the truth.

Creating Illusions of Political Strength Through Strategic Social Media Campaigns

This pattern is being reinforced by a parallel impulse to brand anyone with an unpopular or inconvenient view as a loyalist of the deposed Awami League regime. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, regarded by political actors across the spectrum as a seasoned and responsible national leader, has been a frequent target.

At the same time, there has been a marked rise in bots and fake accounts targeting the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is widely expected to form the next government and has cast itself as a centrist, liberal democratic force rather than seeking to court segments of society that demand a more openly revolutionary or Islamist brand of statecraft.

Many digital researchers and practitioners in Bangladesh argue that the largest concentration of bots and coordinated disinformation activity appears to be associated with supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist networks. Their activity seeks to create a mirage of political strength online, suggesting that these forces are far more dominant in the social media space than they are in electoral reality.

At the same time, the Awami League, now operating as a social-media-driven entity rather than the historic grassroots party it once was, has mobilised its activists to remain active online and has also leveraged fake photo cards to generate fabricated news with one key objective: making Professor Yunus appear to be a mass-murdering, corrupt, Islamist, fascist thug.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party is facing a significant problem of failing to keep pace with the times. The party has been late to organised digital politics, and apart from Tarique Rahman, whose recent social media rhetoric has been relatively measured and even progressive, its online strategy has lagged behind that of its rivals.

His style tends to resonate more with urban, educated audiences than with those demanding retribution in the post-Awami League period.

It is also notable that he has acknowledged the dangers that unrestrained social media dynamics pose, even as his party continues to face disinformation campaigns from its opponents and tries, with limited success, to operate and gain advantage within the same polarised information ecosystem.

Digital Literacy as a Component of Public Education Must Be a Central Public Policy Priority

This constellation of forces presents an unsolvable challenge for the interim government to address in the lead-up to the election. Over the longer term, however, Bangladesh needs a sustained national effort to promote digital literacy, alongside clear digital rules of the game that are neither censorial nor permissive of online harms. Striking that balance is one of the hardest tasks of contemporary governance and demands attention from the whole of society, not just government.

Public investment in digital literacy, embedded throughout the entire continuum of schooling from primary through higher education, must be treated as non-negotiable. Citizens need to learn a simple but demanding habit: do not believe everything encountered on social media, and take the extra step of verification before accepting or sharing any claim.

Without that cultural shift, fake photo cards and other forms of engineered disinformation will continue to fill a trust vacuum left by legacy media outlets, which must both regain public confidence and modernise so that audiences can turn to professionally produced fact-based news rather than anonymous social media feeds.

The election period will lay this reality bare in full, and Bangladesh is perhaps not yet fully aware of how dangerous politics organised around information warfare can be. With fabricated stories and manipulated images likely to circulate in an avalanche in the months before a make-or-break election, an electorate that has been estranged from genuine voting for fifteen years will experience directly how narratives can be concocted, and recent elections in Pakistan and Indonesia offer a preview of the storms that lie ahead.

In such a chaotic eco-system, every major political moment risks becoming a contest of perception in which the actor that prevails in the public imagination is not necessarily the one advancing a fact-based or evidence-informed political or policy agenda.

That prospect should concern everyone, particularly the next elected government. Robust and durable solutions require long-term generational investments in digital literacy initiatives from a public education lens and in empowering legacy media outlets to adhere to non-partisan news reporting from a media reform lens. Today, even educated citizens, whether in their thirties or their sixties, who lack digital literacy skills struggle to separate fact from fiction.

Regulatory safeguards may be the most realistic tool for protecting this cohort from fake news in the short run. Over the longer term, Bangladesh must design and implement ambitious, nation-wide literacy measures that equip future generations to take ownership in navigating the chaotic information ecosystem.

Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed is a Canada-based Public Policy Columnist with more than 140 published articles across Bangladeshi and Canadian media and policy outlets. He currently serves as a Policy Development Officer with the City of Toronto. He can be reached at mir.ahmed@mail.mcgill.ca. The views expressed are his own.