In about 10 weeks, four states and one Union Territory go to elections. There will be campaign songs, reels, trails, tactics and more. Policies will be launched and re-launched. From jingles to jumlas. From public rallies to podcasts. If the 2019 polls were India’s first “WhatsApp Elections” and 2024 India’s first “digital forward” elections, then 2026 ought to be characterised by a potpourri of both. They say 2029 will be the AI election. Here are some thoughts on the intersection of media and politics from an ever-eager student of both.
Fake news may be described as yellow journalism on steroids — sensationalism amplified by technology to spread at algorithmic speeds with little to no accountability. The impact of fake news on elections today can be understood by going back to the basic journalistic framework of the “five Ws”.
What: While the term does not have any legal definition in India, the Australian government’s eSafety Commissioner describes fake news as “fictional news stories that are made up to support certain agendas”.
Who: With three out of five internet users in India accessing news and information online, the rapid proliferation of fake news is particularly worrying. A Pew Research Centre study of 2025 found that 65 per cent of those surveyed viewed made-up news and information as a huge concern, among the highest globally.
Why: Fake news has become a structural feature of Indian elections. While the votes are cast offline, the battle for those votes increasingly unfolds online. With over 90 crore internet users in India in 2025, influencing perception and shaping narratives has become possible with just a few clicks. A study by the Indian School of Business and CyberPeace revealed that 46 per cent of all fake news was political in nature.
When: Fake news peaks around elections, with the National Crime Records Bureau recording a 70 per cent rise in fake news cases in 2019, an election year, over the previous year.
Where: Digital platforms including social media platforms and messaging apps like Facebook, X and WhatsApp enable the rapid spread of fake news. Doctored videos, AI-generated pictures and clips blur fact and fiction while algorithms provide the push that makes such content go viral.
India has close to 900 private television channels, and nearly half of them are news channels. Television still has a deep reach — 23 crore homes own a TV set. In recent years, though, there has been a marked shift to the digital mode. A Reuters Institute report shows that seven out of 10 Indians now prefer to consume news online. Of those, half get their news from social media. Fifty-five per cent rely on YouTube for news consumption, 46 per cent on WhatsApp, 37 per cent on Instagram, and 36 per cent on Facebook. Even with these media consumption patterns, newspapers, both in regional languages and English, still remain comparatively high on the credibility quotient.
Influencers
With the increasing use of social media, “influencers” have considerable heft in this space. These individuals, who are supported by strong research and production teams, have built a large following buoyed by their personal brand equity.
Among Gen Z, only 13 per cent prefer to follow “celebrities’ and over 86 per cent prefer to follow influencers. In fact, the reach of these influencers has been so crucial that many senior politicians have actively reached out and have given them interviews. Even the Union government has not left this channel untapped. The government has engaged with influencers by empanelling “influencer agencies” on MyGov. Four influencers were empanelled in 2023, of which one’s CEO is a vocal supporter of the ruling dispensation.
Deepfakes
The deceased patriarch of a regional party from the south “showing up” in trademark attire for a party meeting. Two leading actors of the Hindi film industry criticising the Prime Minister and supporting the largest opposition party. These are the kind of artificially created, digitally altered videos that popped up before the last Lok Sabha elections.
Deepfakes, the technical term for such pieces of content, have increasingly become one of the most potent tools deployed by political parties and agencies who help them design campaigns. Consider this. In the 60 days before voting began during the last general elections, 5 crore AI-generated calls were made to voters, where the voice of a political leader was synthetically generated to come across as if directly speaking to the voter. During the same elections, Meta approved 14 AI-generated electoral ads calling for violence against Muslims and an opposition leader. The Election Commission of India (ECI), as the constitutional authority responsible for administering election processes, ought to have stepped in to set up guardrails regulating the dissemination of such content. However, if the implementation of the recent SIR process is anything to go by, we may be praying to the wrong god.
This article was also published in The Indian Express | Friday, January 16, 2026]