AI-Powered Digital Narrative Engineering in Electoral Politics and Gendered Mob Violence in Bangladesh

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Politics and the Media (Table 9)

Abstract

Social media and digital platforms play a central role in this new era of revolution. Scholars have demonstrated how networked platforms enable rapid mobilization, horizontal coordination, and the circulation of counter-hegemonic narratives (Tufekci, 2017). At the same time, a growing body of research cautions that these same platforms are also fertile grounds for disinformation, computational propaganda, and AI-generated fake media narratives (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Woolley & Howard, 2018; Chesney & Citron, 2019). Digital infrastructures do not merely transmit political messages; they actively shape and remake public sentiment. In the Bangladeshi context, AI-driven content, bot-amplified post reactions, and manipulated social media poll results increasingly structured perceptions of legitimacy of different political parties and popular consensus. My particular concern in this paper is how digitally mediated narratives intersect with gender-traditional political agendas. Gendered political discourse, often mobilized by right-wing religious actors, has been amplified through digital networks. Such platforms have been positioning women’s bodies (public vs private spaces) and roles (caregivers vs conscious political actors) as symbolic battlegrounds in broader ideological contests. In this paper, I investigate how experiences of digitally mediated propaganda and gendered harassment influenced Bangladeshi women’s electoral decision-making in the 2026 parliamentary election. Specifically, I examine how social media platforms and AI-driven content shaped political narratives; how these narratives facilitated gendered and anti-women discourses; and how middle-class and working-class women interpreted and negotiated these dynamics in casting their votes.

Author

• Saifa Tazrin, University of Georgia