A teenager’s body hangs from the Shaheed Minar in Manikganj. Beside it sits the portrait of an SSC examinee named Shihab, under a headline styled like Samakal’s: He scored a golden GPA-5 two days after his death. The photocard adds one more detail. It says the boy belonged to the Chhatra League.
FactWatch investigated this photocard in August 2026 and rated it false. Two different boys who shared a name had been merged into one story. Samakal’s real report was about a different Shihab. A dead child, a party label, and a trusted masthead: That mix is built to make people angry before they think.
Not a fluke, but a format
Between September 2025 and February 2026, fact-checkers debunked 690 distinct fake photocards. Nearly half of them were political misinformation.
Five simple elements are being used:
Prof Sumon Rahman, Head of the Media Studies and Journalism Department, ULAB, says the photocards are easy to produce and seem to carry a newsroom’s endorsement.
FactWatch’s 2021 review already found visuals and videos were the favourite carriers of falsehood. Rumor Scanner logged 105 fake photocards in 2023, then 324 cases in just nine months of 2024.
FactWatch spent the 10 weeks around Bangladesh’s 13th parliamentary election tracking exactly this. Between December 11, 2025 and February 17, 2026, its researchers logged and verified 94 distinct disinformation cases tied to the vote.
The breakdown is the interesting part: AI-generated content 16%, doctored excerpts 6%, and fake media photocards, the branded ones mimicking a specific outlet’s logo and layout, at 21%.
Made for big moments
Photocards follow the news cycle. Volumes spiked right after each major political event. After Osman Hadi was shot in December 2025, photocards about laundered money and invented quotes multiplied. When Tarique Rahman returned on December 25, others claimed patients were dying in ambulances.
The pattern predates that vote. During talk of Dr Yunus resigning in May 2025, 56% of that episode’s misinformation used fake photocards. Even a local union parishad race in Pirojpur drew fake photocards. Amar Desh’s design was copied the most, followed by Kaler Kantho, Jamuna Television, RTV, and Kalbela.
What is trending now
Artificial intelligence is the newest layer. FactWatch debunked an August 2026 card attributed to the power minister, and its detection tools suggested it was AI-generated. One study found 28% of AI cases were AI-edited photocards carrying false quotes.
Two other trends are more concerning. Photocards have turned sexual: Researchers counted 34 degrading cases, including a fake gang-rape claim about Dr Mahmuda Mitu. They stoke communal fear, such as invented threats to Hindu households over which symbol they vote for.
Who makes them, and why
Dismislab traced photocards to partisan pages across the spectrum. Roughly 62% attacked parties, 16% targeted individuals, and 12.5% puffed up popularity. A polls-day review found pro-Jamaat networks especially active, while Rumour Scanner says Indian accounts and local pages both feed wider campaigns against Bangladesh.
Spoof pages do the heavy lifting. FactWatch found that fake Amar Desh photocards spread from a look-alike page with about 14,000 followers, not the newspaper’s official one.
During the election period, multiple media outlets -- including Kaler Kantho, DBC News, Jamuna TV, Channel24, Jugantor, Amar Desh, BBC Bangla, and Prothom Alo -- had their identities spoofed, creating a network too expansive for any individual newsroom to track.
The readers who pay
A photocard is built for a thumb and a hurry, which suits newcomers. One national survey found 53% of adults are online, half for under five years, and about 40% of users are unfamiliar with search engines.
Unicef’s study found news literacy very low among people without high-school education. One analyst calls the problem a threat to a digitally illiterate population.
In an interview study of 29 Bangladeshi users, lower-education participants leaned on people. A driver said that if his boss shares something, he assumes it is credible. A housewife re-shares her sister’s posts because the sister is a government official. A retired man asks his granddaughter before he shares.
Now picture a photocard landing in that chain. It carries a familiar logo, so the outlet vouches for it. It comes from a cousin or a neighbour, so the family vouches for it. Two layers of borrowed trust arrive before anyone has read a word.
A Bangladesh misinformation primer notes that in some rural areas, people know Facebook but not the wider internet. Messaging apps like Imo, popular among migrant workers, carry rumours without any editor in the loop. A photocard that would take a scroll to debunk online can travel through a bazaar as paper. Nobody in that crowd opens a fact-checker’s page.
It also assumes the outlet’s page is easy to find. Outlets already post clarification notices, but they reach only the page followers.
When fake photocards multiply, the honest ones lose value. Readers learn that a logo proves nothing, and then they start to suspect real reporting too. Amar Desh’s editor warned that people begin to think the paper publishes fake news.
There is a cruel twist. A person caught out by one fake photocard often decides all photocards are fake. Disbelief becomes as useful to manipulators as belief. He may think the media is dying too. I worry now that a real piece of news can just be waved away as “just a photocard.”
Zulker Naeen is a research coordinator, Center for Critical and Qualitative Studies, and adjunct faculty, Department of Media Studies and Journalism, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.
