This thesis examines digital gender disinformation as a phenomenon that is gaining increasing strength due to the use of social media and its affordances, as well as the growing use of artificial intelligence, which facilitates the alteration or creation of false content. The study is situated within the context of electoral campaigns in Sweden and Bolivia, with the aim of understanding how this phenomenon operates in different settings and contributing to the field of knowledge, given that most existing scholarship comes from the Global North. Research on digital gender disinformation is still developing, particularly in the Global South.

The motivation behind this study was the observation that women were stepping down from leadership roles during political campaigns in both Bolivia and Sweden in 2025. Consequently, this study adopts a comparative qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with eight female politicians –four in each country– at both the local and national levels. The aim is to understand their perceptions of this phenomenon, compare their experiences and interpret them through the lens of existing gender disinformation theory.

A systematic thematic analysis with an inductive orientation is applied to develop themes and a conceptual model that emerges from the empirical material and explains digital gender disinformation through a dialogue between this material and the theoretical contributions of scholars working in this field. The study explores the mechanisms, gendered narratives and public-facing dynamics of disinformation in digital political contexts, as well as its broader democratic implications for political participation, representation and public debate.

The systematic thematic analysis results in four themes: The structural production and circulation of digital gender disinformation; gender disinformation narratives as instruments of political delegitimization; navigating gender disinformation in political practice; and the democratic consequences and limits of institutional responses. These themes are further developed in the theoretical discussion, which concludes with a conceptual model. The findings indicate that digital gender disinformation functions as a strategy aligned with broader structural mechanisms, enabling misleading content and false gender narratives to circulate online, cause harm, and contribute to democratic erosion. The results also underscore the need to prioritize and address gender disinformation both as a threat to democratic integrity and as a barrier to gender equality.