Social Media Platforms Chat applications are an important platform for spreading disinformation about Indian politics. At least fifty thousand election-related WhatsApp groups were created by both the BJP and INC during the May 2018 Karnataka state elections (Freedom House, 2018). The social media chief of the BJP declared 2018 the year of India’s first ‘WhatsApp elections’, and has reportedly “drawn up plans to have three WhatsApp groups for each of India’s 927,522 polling booths” (Perrigo, 2019). A so-called ‘cell phone pramukh’ will operate a number of these groups and drive the party’s WhatsApp-based campaign by circulating specially designed campaign material (Uttam, 2018). Parties are even using data analytics to form WhatsApp groups based on demographic and socio-economic factors, using information from the electoral roll to sort the population into groups based on factors such as caste and affluence, to achieve micro-targeted messages (Singh, 2019). Following the 2019 election, researchers at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism analysed 1.09 million campaign-related WhatsApp messages and found that 52% of content was either images, videos, or links. They also discovered that 35% of the media items in the dataset had been forwarded messages (Bengani, 2019). Ahead of the 8 February 2020 elections in Delhi, it was reported that dozens of WhatsApp groups were being created, containing up to two hundred and fifty members and spreading messages that condemned mainstream media and promised to provide ‘real’ news (Sircar, 2020). WhatsApp is increasingly scrutinized by the Indian government. Mob lynchings caused thirty deaths throughout India in 2018, which reportedly resulted directly from misinformation spread over the app – leading them to be known as ‘WhatsApp killings’ (Safi, 2019). In one video that went viral in June 2018, footage of a child abduction was accompanied by text about ‘kidnappers’ arriving in the city to abduct children; however, it was actually a child abduction awareness video created in Pakistan. In line with their trolling tactics, political differences are exacerbated by inciting Hindu–Muslim tensions on WhatsApp. For example, right-wing Hindu groups circulated a video on WhatsApp depicting a Muslim mob attacking a Hindu woman, but it was footage of a lynching in Guatemala. Automation has also been attempted—during the state elections in 2018, the platform’s systems detected an attempt by someone in Karnataka to create dozens of WhatsApp groups in quick succession (Goel, 2018). In April 2019, Facebook took down 687 pages and accounts linked to the IT cell of the INC which posted about political issues, the upcoming elections, and criticism of the BJP. Facebook also suspended fifteen pro-BJP pages, groups, and accounts, and one pro-BJP Instagram account linked to Silver Touch. These accounts were removed because they engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” (Gleicher, 2019). Alongside evidence of computational propaganda on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, Modi has his own app, NaMo, which launched in June 2015 and has over 10 million downloads. NaMo is a platform used by Modi to communicate with his followers. However, he has received a significant amount of criticism for bypassing traditional media channels and evading media scrutiny through its use (S. Bansal, 2019). And despite the Indian government putting pressure on social media platforms to control disinformation, there is a lack of content moderation on the NaMo app making it susceptible to propaganda. One of the most prolific accounts on this app, The India Eye, was responsible for 40% of the 744 posts on NaMo’s default feed. Alt News, a fact-checking organization in India, uncovered extensive misinformation peddled by The India Eye on their Facebook page: at least six of the twenty 181