By Shazia Anwer Cheema
Addressing a press briefing at the Foreign Office alongside Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) Lt General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry again shared audio conversations and record of transfer of money to a terror networking allegedly run by the Indian Army that was busted on April 25, 2025, by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. He again said that the data he shared is Verifiable, announcing that Pakistan would raise the issue at international forums.
Just to give a brief background of this network busted by Pakistan, it may be remembered that DG ISPR during his press conference on April 29, said that on 25 April, an arrest was made near the Jhelum bus stand. The offer of DG ISPR for an international investigation in this case shows his confidence because he believes that the information he shared in his press conference is “Verifiable” and an independent inquiry by any international organization will confirm the credibility of Verifiable evidence. Does India show such confidence and offer an independent inquiry into the Pahalgam incident?
The War between Verificatory and Verifiable content is a serious academic topic for media practitioners, academicians, and consumers (listeners/viewers/readers) that is linked with the Post-Truth Era. Spreading disinformation, hate, chaos, deep fake, cheap fake, and almost every kind of genre of untrue news are so dangerous that it can push two nuclear powers into standoff, break states (Middle Eastern cases), collapse democracies (Eastern European cases) and place terrorists as “democratic Saviors” (Syrian case).
THE NUMBER OF FACEBOOK PAGES HAVING FAKE IDENTITIES WAS IN BILLIONS BUT DURING THE LATTER QUARTER OF 2022, 1.3 BILLIONS FAKE FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS WERE IDENTIFIED AND REMOVED, AND THIS PROCESS IS STILL GOING ON
Grace McKenzie (PhD Psychology scholar at Lancaster University) in an academic research titled “Hiding in Plain Sight’ over fake identities shows that 4.76 billion (59.4%) of the world’s population use social media. Facebook, the largest platform worldwide with 2.59 billion users, has 4-5% of active fake accounts; that equates to between 103.6 million to 129.5 million accounts. This number was in billions before, but during the latter quarter of 2022, 1.3 billion fake Facebook accounts were identified and removed, and this process is still going on. She indicates that fake profiles continue to spread misinformation and pose to humanity. In Post Post-Truth Era, fake content generated by faceless keyboard warriors is then taken by mainstream media, and recent Indian media campaigns on the Post-Pahalgam incident are a textbook example of this practice.
Another research conducted by Katharina Krombholz, Dieter Merkl (TU Wien), and Edgar Weippl from the University of Vienna titled ‘Fake identities in social media: A case study on the sustainability of the Facebook business model’ also shares almost the same results.
Post-Pahalgam incident campaigns are catchy in graphics and content, and provide Verificatory content to the consumers to further elaborate and spread it. Indian media mostly uses Verificatory news because it provides a margin for extensive anti-subject debate and does not bear the burden of Verifiability. In the media sphere, during the last three decades, “old-fashioned media ethics” became redundant mainly because old norms were heavily discarded, and the rhetoric of “my truth and your truth” replaced the universal truths. The consumers get confused between fake and false news. False is untrue, and fake is when reality undergoes a treatment plan. In the fake news, senders, instead of presenting the reality to the Receiver (consumer), want to reshape this reality according to their ideology/requirements and then present it to the Receiver. In Post-Pahalgam campaigns, targets are Muslims and Pakistan; therefore, the construction/reshaping of reality is done through beliefs and emotions, and achieving behavioral change of laymen against Islam, Muslims, and Pakistan. Since fake news is believable and has the power to transform the truth into fiction and false into a narrative, it creates an alternative reality because the available truth is not generally accepted as a “valid reality”. This concept indicates a reorganization of that reality in cases where generally accepted objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than public appeals. In other words, “false reality” presented to the consumers emerges next to the actual reality. The post-truth refers to situations where facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appealing to emotions and personal views. In other words, the Verifiable perception of reality in the post-truth era will be a secondary factor in the formation of meaning, which is described by sensations, emotions, and passions. The distorted presentation of the truth is about beliefs on the one hand and emotional impulses on the other.
In an academic paper titled ‘Semiotics and political discourse in the post-truth era’, the authors Betül Çanakpınar, Murat Kalelioğlu, and V. Doğan Günay suggest that while the sender wants to convince, he/she also want the receiver to believe (convincing). In the emotional sense, perhaps the person does not want to know the truth as it is but wants to hear and know it in a way that pleases him/her and this factor is strongly used by puritan BJP successfully since first decade of 21st century and BJP has virtual identity as a morally pure, clean and sincere. At the receiving end, a layman who can’t even differentiate ‘fake news’ from ‘false news’ consumes a well-crafted fake message as a reality.
Another advantage of using Verificatory content is that it provides a margin for extensive anti-subject debate and does not bear the burden of Verifiability. Artificial Intelligence-generated photos and videos are being presented as real images that the world is watching in post-Pahalgam campaigns.
As we know, propaganda acquires the connotation of negativity and becomes synonymous with maligning, untruthful, and destructive; therefore, the very basis of propaganda, positive or negative, is semiotics. Propaganda requires meaning-making tools, and all the aspects that can create meaning become a resource for propagation. Let me simplify it—:
A word, a brush, a picture, a gesture a melody, all are meaning-making tools, and their use cannot detach from personal biases (religious beliefs, social believes, political beliefs, hatred for other groups etc.) and that is the beauty of it, having numerous expressions coming from uncountable individuals create collective knowledge. However, this human cognitive ability can be played with like all other brain functions. Our cognitive system can be manipulated with the help of manipulative tools, and propagandists study the core beliefs of the target group, gauge the flexibility of intermediate beliefs, and then work on the most accepted meaning-making tool because anything not connected to core beliefs can never be perceived as an automatic thought.
It may be remembered India had been using such tools against Pakistan and EU DisinfoLab uncovered, more than 750 media outlets in 116 countries; over 550 website domain names registered; the resurrection of dead people; the impersonation of EU institutions, and direct control of more than 10 NGOs accredited to the UN Human Rights Council, utilized to push fake news and false Indian propaganda against Pakistan since 2005. The deep analysis of data used by Indian propaganda uncovered by the EU DisinfoLab had components to trigger hate against Pakistan through sarcasm, irony, and mockery, as they trigger the inbuilt human biases and generate questions. These questions create curiosity and unconsciously force the recipient to react, and that reaction is a commodity and a currency for the social media platform provider.
Let me explain it in simple words–:
As we all know, anything conclusive and truthful gets fewer eyeballs because objective truths are Verifiable and thus do not prompt curiosity. However, subjective truths lead to numerous alternative truths, hence creating “peak shift effects” and grabbing attention. This is what most Indian news channels are doing in the post-Pahalgam media sphere.
At the end, my request to responsible media practitioners of the subcontinent is:
“This should be the foremost obligation of independent media practitioners to request their jingoistic colleagues to avoid the rhetoric of ‘my truth and your truth’ and please stand with Truth.
Shazia Anwer Cheema is an author, geopolitical analyst, writer, and educator with 10-plus years of international experience in research, teaching, and strategic analysis. Expert in media, linguistics, and cognitive semiotics, with a strong focus on political discourse, global narratives, and strategic communication.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this article/Opinion/Comment are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk (DND). Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk.
