AI-generated clickbait, fake election posters and classic half-truths from politicians – here is NORDIS partner Källkritikbyrån’s major review of the election campaign’s hoaxes and distortions.
Fact-checkers such as Källkritikbyrån and the Valkollen project are monitoring the Swedish election and looking for false and misleading claims. The election campaign is now entering its final stage – here NORDIS partner Källkritikbyrån review what has emerged so far.
Clickbait networks make money from ad clicks during election periods
Excerpt from a Facebook post on 18 May.
Källkritikbyrån has previously exposed a network of Facebook pages that share false and inflammatory content to drive traffic to “news sites” filled with advertisements. The actors behind them include people in Vietnam, who use the method to make money. Last year, the content consisted of AI-generated sob stories, but in January we discovered that the pages were also involving themselves in the case of a missing 18-year-old in Uddevalla and spreading false claims.
The same network has also appeared in the election campaign, claiming that Swedish politicians such as Jimmie Åkesson and Magdalena Andersson had just become parents.
Post on Twitter/X on 13 May and comments from Facebook.
The pages have also spread posts about alleged political debates that never took place. In the comment sections, people react as though the events actually happened. One post focusing on Jimmie Åkesson provides an insight into how the hoaxers work with prompt instructions. It begins:
“I have rewritten the story in Swedish, kept the sequence of events but made it more dramatic and engaging, around 180 words with clear paragraph divisions:”
In other words: someone asked an AI bot to translate and embellish a text for a Swedish audience.
Slopaganda, influence campaigns and coordinated accounts
With everything from satirical videos to fake news sites, foreign powers seek to influence how we think and vote. Ahead of the election, there are concerns that troll factories and propaganda operations will target Sweden. In early August, Dagens Nyheter examined how it works when Russian propaganda reaches your phone.
There is a constant low-intensity information influence campaign against Sweden from Russia. The Swedish Psychological Defence Agency (MPF) told Swedish news agency TT in May that the Swedish election was, at that time, not particularly exposed.
However, fact-checkers and researchers in the Nordic cooperation NORDIS have observed pro-Russian “hacktivists” attempting to disrupt and cause damage in the countries. An examination of pro-Russian Telegram groups shows that the hackers readily boast provocatively about their attacks in the groups.
From Telegram, 22 April.
Activity increased sharply in Denmark during the spring, when an election was held in March. In Sweden, the authorities have seen a clear development since 2023 – cyberattacks have not necessarily increased in number, but they have become more sophisticated.
During both the 2018 and 2022 elections, the Swedish Election Authority’s website was subjected to overload attacks. Read the full NORDIS investigation here.
The first AI election
One risk ahead of the election is that AI-generated content can be distributed at a faster pace and on a larger scale than previously possible. In February this year, P4 Uppland exposed four AI-generated TikTok accounts posing as Swedish girls with far-right views. Experts from Sveriges Radio, Uppsala University and the Segerstedt Institute have all confirmed that the profiles are AI-generated. The accounts published short videos containing anti-immigration and racist messages, often featuring symbols associated with the far right.
From P4 Uppland.
“It gives the impression that several ordinary young girls hold these views, when in reality there is just one actor behind all the accounts. That creates an inaccurate picture of reality,” said investigative reporter Siri Christiansen, who exposed the fake accounts, in an interview with Sveriges Radio.
Källkritikbyrån has also seen how AI has been used to create fake images of politicians in compromising situations. For example, in February, an AI-generated image appeared in a Facebook group with more than 150,000 members, seemingly showing Social Democrats party leader Magdalena Andersson and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“This is an AI image and fake. Magdalena has never met Epstein,” Magdalena Andersson’s press secretary commented on the image.
Fake election posters and distorted political messages
Sometimes it is jokes and satire – at other times, they are distorted versions of what politicians have actually said. Valkollen and Källkritikbyrån have taken a closer look at fake election posters that have circulated online during the spring – and found distorted messages targeting the government parties and the Sweden Democrats as well as opposition parties.
In April, a fake quote attributed to Sweden’s Minister for Climate and the Environment, Romina Pourmokhtari (L), went viral and was used as a political weapon internationally. The clip allegedly shows an Iranian woman attacking Western feminists, but it is actually the Swedish environment minister – who does not criticise feminists, SVT Verifierar reported.
An anonymous Chinese account spread false claims in April about Sweden’s Minister for Education and Integration, Simona Mohamsson (L). She was claimed to be Muslim and to want to promote the introduction of more Islamic studies in Sweden, but she is an atheist and works politically against independent religious schools. The post was widely circulated through an American MAGA account on Facebook.
From a post on Twitter/X on 19 April.
That same month, an AI-generated image of European Parliament member Alice Teodorescu Måwe (KD) was circulated on social media. In the image, she was wearing clothing patterned with the Israeli flag – but the image was fake.
At the beginning of June, an image circulated on social media in which Sweden’s former Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask was allegedly shown delivering a scathing response to her party colleague Ulf Kristersson – but Ask’s “comment” was not genuine.
Falsehoods and half-truths in politics
As can be seen, there are numerous examples of quotes, images and messages from politicians being distorted during the spring and summer. But several media outlets have also exposed politicians who have made false or partly false claims during the election campaign.
In May, it emerged that the Sweden Democrats in Hylte, Halland, had distributed leaflets, including in Arabic, with the message “stop social services from taking your children into care.” Terrorism researcher Magnus Ranstorp said the message was reminiscent of the extensive LVU campaign – the largest influence campaign to have affected Sweden. “It is directly alarmist and misleading information,” Magnus Ranstorp told TV4 Nyheterna.
Magdalena Andersson (S) claimed that women who had recently given birth in Skåne were being referred to armchairs because the Tidö parties’ policies had led to a shortage of beds. Since visiting Skåne University Hospital in Malmö in March, she has repeatedly used the maternity ward armchair as an example of how healthcare is being negatively affected by the Tidö parties’ policies.
SVT Verifierar examined the claim about the “maternity ward armchairs” and found that it was true that women had been referred to the maternity ward armchair shortly after giving birth in Malmö. But since last summer, the maternity ward armchair has no longer been used. Nor was a claim by Annika Strandhäll (S) that babies had been delivered in armchairs correct.
In May, the Swedish Tenants’ Association’s magazine Hem & Hyra examined a claim about market rents that appeared on the Moderates’ website. It was incorrectly stated that the Moderates only want free rent-setting for new construction, when the party actually wants this for both new and old buildings. When a Hem & Hyra reporter contacted the Moderates, the error was removed, but the claim continued to spread in AI responses and on social media.
Ebba Busch (KD) blamed the deportations of teenagers on the Social Democrats and received heavy criticism. Källkritikbyrån has conducted an extensive review of which political decisions and whose policies actually led to the current situation.
From Instagram and Ebba Busch’s speech in Almedalen.
The anti-racist magazine Expo has examined a local Sweden Democrat candidate who claims that Swedish media have “deceived” the public about Russia and dismisses Swedish Russia experts.
Another local Sweden Democrat candidate spread ideas about satanic networks, chemtrails and vaccine conspiracies, something Expo reported on at the beginning of June.
Elisabeth Svantesson (M) and Mikael Damberg (S) agree that unemployment is high, while Finance Minister Svantesson says that much is working well in the labour market. In May, SVT Verifierar checked what is actually true. Unemployment has risen during the current term of office, with up to 100,000 more people unemployed. But it has been high for a longer period, regardless of which government has been in power. Political reporter Ulf Hambraeus explained how we can have both high unemployment and high employment at the same time – and how the economic cycle affects unemployment.
Are emissions from Sweden increasing or decreasing? SVT Verifierar examined the ministers’ climate claims. Emissions are approximately as high as they were at the beginning of the government’s term of office. And it cannot be established that emissions will be lower in 2026 than they were in 2022, as Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) has claimed.
What was the situation really with the Sunday roast? SVT Verifierar also examined claims made by Magdalena Andersson (S) during the programme 30 Minutes concerning the Sweden Democrats’ election promise not to reduce unemployment benefits. It turns out that unemployment benefits have both increased and decreased. The ceiling has been raised, but the phase-out is happening more quickly.
How much cheaper did fuel actually become? In July, SVT Verifierar examined a Facebook post by Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson (M) that received thousands of comments. Before the calculation was corrected, the post had been edited twice.
From Dagens ETC, 21 July.
Moderaterna politician and commentator Hanif Bali has launched an app that allegedly calculates your personal tax increase if the left-green parties win the election. But Lars Calmfors, professor of economics, says that the app is not serious and that the main problem with Bali’s calculations is that he has simply added together the political proposals of the left-green parties without taking into account that no party gets everything it wants in a negotiation, Dagens ETC wrote at the end of July.