From doctored photos making small crowds big to posts praising government accomplishments that never were, WhatsApp has become the channel of choice for disinformation in Zimbabwe before this month’s elections. The landlocked southern African country heads to the polls on August 23 to elect the president and legislature in what analysts expect to be a tense affair amid a crackdown on the opposition and rigging fears. Large-scale disinformation campaigns in the run-up to a vote are now a staple across the continent. Zimbabwe is no exception, but the situation there is more opaque. In Kenya and Nigeria, which recently held votes, misinformation peddlers hung out in the open, mostly on Facebook and Twitter, while in Zimbabwe WhatsApp is king of the rapid spread, analysts say.