Nepal

Social media accounts for most misinformation during elections

KathmanduPati June 30, 2026

Kathmandu – A research has shown that social media accounted for most misinformation spread during the House of Representatives elections held on March 5.
According to a research report by the Center for Media Research (CMR), social media accounted for the most misinformation, that is, 87 percent. The research also revealed that Facebook is the biggest carrier of misinformation among the social networking platforms.
Most misinformation carriers were artificial intelligence (AI)-generated materials. Some of these videos or materials were also found to be fabricated and with distorted context. Completely fictional or artificial content was created, old footage was used to create new events, and scenes were created as if the event had happened in real.
Releasing the research report, Executive Director Tilak Pathak said that even though the fact-checking of the media content was done it was more challenging because the fact-checkers did not have enough AI recognition tools, while edited videos were used.
The research found that the efforts made by Election Commission, civil society, the media, political parties and candidates themselves on fact-checking were insufficient.
Similarly, it has been found that some of the posts made on social media accounts were later deleted, making it difficult to verify them. Thus, after fact-checking, some of the content was removed from social media, and the Election Commission had also entered into an agreement with Meta Company for this.
The research recommends establishing a rapid response mechanism before the election, creating an official and authoritative framework for social media platform accountability, and developing a process for taking necessary action against misinformation as an indicator of conflict.
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