On 27th April, Malta’s prime minister Robert Abela announced a snap general election for 30th May, nine months before his administration’s term is due to be up. Political parties are now in full campaign mode. Billboards mark the country’s roads, leaflets fill letterboxes and lie scattered in gutters, doorbells ring as candidates set out on house visits, meet-ups and rallies are organised almost every day – and social media is awash with adverts, memes, and slopaganda.
Malta is no stranger to political disinformation. As a country dominated by the two larger parties – Labour Party (Partit Laburista) and Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista) – polarisation and rivalry fuel false and misleading narratives directed at maintaining power. In the run up to an election, this is only more evident.
The following are some cases we have come across since the election was called.
- AI slopaganda aiming to distort debate
It is widely known that, internationally, AI is used to create photorealistic images (deepfakes) with the intention of deceiving people into believing them. But just as malicious are AI-generated images that are evidently fake and yet leave a different kind of impact.
This is slopaganda: low-quality AI-generated images intended to influence people’s political views rather than deceive them into believing that they are real. They strike right at emotions, making them an effective tactic for propagating narratives – people generally remember feelings more than facts. A recent infamous case on the global stage is US President Trump’s AI image depicting him as a Christ-like figure.
As Times of Malta has reported, here in Malta, AI is being used to troll and mock political adversaries in the electoral campaign. In this way, it is intended to distort the debate and make light of a serious situation. The Leader of the Opposition, Alex Borg, has been a particularly frequent target. In some videos, he is shown laid-back and smoking, a parody of the Nationalist Party’s election slogan, “Nifs Ġdid” (“A fresh start”, but literally translated as “a new breath”). Another image that made waves portrays him as Moses dividing the sea for traffic to flow, a reference to proposals related to public transport.
At the other end of the spectrum, social media users have made mock-ups of the Labour Party’s electoral billboards. AI has been used to alter its slogan “Int Malta” (“You Are Malta”). Several versions allude to Malta’s booming population of third country nationals (“Int India”), while others take a dig at the country’s infrastructure issues by highlighting the traffic problem. Interestingly, some Facebook users have actually believed these to be real billboards, with one user on a Labour Party supporters’ group claiming that the Nationalist Party is putting them up in the Labour Party’s name to mislead the public (see screenshot).
We had highlighted a case of AI images being used to distort public opinion in Malta in April 2025, when supporters of the Labour Party had utilised them to undermine activists’ concerns with regards to the controversial magisterial inquiry reform bill by framing the situation as a petty partisan battle. Our article can be found here.
Other parties are contesting the general election. However, so far, it appears that only the two main parties have been the prompts and targets of AI slopaganda.
- Identity politics dominate the debate as false claims and Islamophobia surrounding candidate’s nomination spread
On 2nd May, activist Omar Rababah, who is half Maltese and half Syrian, announced on social media that he would be contesting the election on the Labour Party ticket. This prompted a wave of abuse and Islamophobic fearmongering, including theories that he is pushing for a Muslim takeover of Malta.
Some examples of the content being shared on social media in reaction to Rababah: a meme on TikTok portraying the prime minister as a Muslim, and an image on Facebook spreading Islamophobia.
Xenophobic sentiments are already strong in the country, making it easy for such narratives to take hold. What is particularly worth highlighting about the case, in fact, is that it has allowed identity politics to dominate debates at the expense of all else.
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This is the first in a series of weekly briefs produced by MedDMO in the run-up to Malta’s general election on 30th May 2026.
