This past month, following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, tensions sharply escalated between India and Pakistan. India, claiming that Pakistan was behind the attack, retaliated by targeting “terrorist camps” within Pakistan. In the exchange of fire, India claimed to have destroyed multiple camps and killed numerous terrorists while Pakistan claimed that it had shot down multiple Indian aircraft, including the Rafale fighter jet. Military and government officials on both sides, with support from the media, denied, at least partially, the claims made by the other.
On the night of 9/10th May, another sharp escalation occurred wherein both sides exchanged missiles and utilized the full capabilities of their respective air forces. Once again, each side made claims about the effectiveness of their strikes while downplaying those of the enemy. Fortunately, the situation was deescalated through international mediation. However, even the exact circumstances of the ceasefire and its preceding negotiations are still hotly debated as Indian and Pakistani media outlets are each presenting their own version of events.
With full-scale war seemingly averted, the situation has begun to calm. Despite this, little progress has been made towards quelling the propaganda war which continues to rage, both on electronic and social media. Individuals and organizations alike have, over the past month, pushed rhetoric and made claims with little basis in reality. This is not to say that sound evidence has not been provided about what transpired during the peak of hostilities. Several of India’s claims about targets hit during the exchanges have been verified by Pakistani and international sources. At the same time, Pakistan has presented strong evidence that it did indeed shoot down Indian aircraft. Why, then, have media outlets on both sides of the border been allowed to make outrageous claims and distribute false information without being held responsible by the general public and formal institutions?
During this confrontation, both the Indian and Pakistani leaderships made use of various propaganda techniques in order to boost morale and attack the other. It is an open secret that the mainstream media outlets in both countries are not safe from government control. Both past and current regimes in both countries have exerted influence over the media in order to push their political agenda. This crisis showed that only influential international media outlets such as CNN and Aljazeera were immune to bias and even they had difficulty reporting accurate information as they were often relying on local networks as their primary sources. These sources often confidently reported on information that they had no way of accurately verifying such as the exact number of drones that had been shot down. Moments after an attack was carried out, media outlets would present their analysis on the precise level of damage inflicted. While Indian media claimed that the IAF had neutralized Pakistan’s HQ-9 air defense system, Pakistani media claimed that the PAF had destroyed India’s S-400. Whether these claims are accurate is still up for debate but media on both sides reported it as a certainty.
While the fog of war makes it nearly impossible for anyone to understand precisely what is happening on the battlefield in real time, modern military technologies have evolved with this challenge in mind and now, more than any other period in history, militaries have the capacity to track, record, and preserve information about the situation on the battlefield. So, again, how is it that in the presence of verifiable evidence, we’re still falling victim to obvious propaganda? The answer, in my opinion, is that the modern media landscape, and the widespread adoption of social media as one of the primary mediums of communication, has made it increasingly difficult to differentiate between credible evidence and disinformation.
An ever-increasing number of people in the 21st century are using social media platforms as their primary source of information. The impact this is having on societies around the world is immeasurable and goes far beyond the subcontinent. Suffice to say, even a surface level understanding of this impact shows that it presents a serious threat to key principles which the modern geopolitical system is built on. If the printing press revolutionized society, and its political structures through allowing the distribution of information at scale, a process which was improved upon with the introduction of new technologies such as the telephone, the radio, and the television, then social media has brought about a second revolution. Where previously one-way communication was enabled on a mass scale, now two-way communication is possible.
With the way current iterations of social media platforms are designed, engagement is everything. The more responses a post or comment receives, whether positive or negative, the more its visibility is amplified. As a result, users are incentivized to make posts that are as divisive as possible. In an environment where attention is valued over accuracy and outrageous claims get equally outrageous coverage, disinformation will inevitably thrive. This is without even considering what an organized group could accomplish by manipulating the algorithms.
With the proper infrastructure, a politically motivated entity, whether it is aligned with a state or not, could manipulate public discourse through misinformation, targeted advertisement, and the fostering of isolated bubbles and echo chambers all through the use of the internet. We have seen multiple examples over the past 15 years of social media and the internet being used to manipulate public discourse and extract political gains. Cambridge Analytica is alleged to have been involved in the 2016 American Presidential election and the same tactics were used during the Brexit movement. Russia has been accused many times by the United States and European countries of running social media campaigns, often involving bots, fake users programmed to spam messages, with the goal of influencing other countries’ political affairs and elections. With this context in mind, the current uncertainty caused by the contradictory claims made by India and Pakistan begins to make sense.
In order for India and Pakistan to mutually coexist, the general populace in both countries must recognize and understand the cost of war. For two nuclear powered adversaries to avoid a nuclear escalation, which always seems to be on the horizon whenever a confrontation such as this occurs, there must be a mutual recognition that neither side desires such a war. The fear of nuclear annihilation which kept the Cold War cold has increasingly become less and less of a deciding factor in the way major powers are shaping foreign policies. With Russia acting aggressively under the veil of its nuclear arsenal and Europe rearming due to the serious possibility of a large-scale conflict, the geopolitical fault lines are shifting dramatically. Under such circumstances, we may see a new Cold War. One where, much like the last, the only thing separating opposing power blocs from a total war scenario akin to the world wars is the prospect of mutually assured nuclear annihilation. Only this time, the influence of social media platforms will cause public sentiment on each side to lean towards aggression.
If we are to consider the fear of a nuclear escalation and each side’s instinct towards self-preservation as the main reason why the United States and the Soviet Union never engaged in a direct, full-scale war, then we must acknowledge the importance of public sentiment and its impact on state policies regarding critical security interests. During the Cold War, a majority of people on either side understood the consequences of nuclear war and, as a result, pressure was exerted on political leadership to craft policy in a way that would avoid such a scenario at all costs. In the modern social media landscape, where divisiveness and war-hawking get attention by sparking discourse, it is very easy for public sentiment to be misrepresented in the heat of the moment. This can potentially have dire implications for preventing future escalations.
By amplifying extremist rhetoric and enabling the spread of disinformation on an unimaginable scale, social media platforms can be used to manipulate public discourse and misrepresent public sentiment. It is wishful thinking to imagine that these symptoms will be contained to the general populace as modern leaders have increasingly shown that they are more than willing to take advantage of these platforms as long as it helps keep them in power. On a domestic level, this erodes the integrity of democratic systems. On a regional level, it can result in the perception of hostilities between states being amplified, thus contributing to escalation in conflicts. On an international level, we are increasingly seeing how it can be used to reshape a population’s perception of geopolitical realities. In my opinion, the media and public perception element of the recent Indo-Pakistan conflict has been severely overlooked and it provides extremely valuable insight into the influence that the modern media landscape can have on pushing two countries towards escalation, a dynamic that will become more and more important in an increasingly volatile geopolitical system.
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