Pak communication disaster

2026-02-02 - 23:06

WHILE Pakistan argues with itself, India’s scripts, shoots and streams steadily win the narrative war. Indian films, web series and OTT platforms are no longer operating merely as entertainment industries. Over the last decade, they have increasingly functioned as instruments of narrative power, shaping perceptions about Pakistan across regional and global audiences. From Uri: The Surgical Strike and Mission Majnu to The Kashmir Files, The Tashkent Files, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, Family Man, Bard of Blood and now the latest Dhurandhar, a familiar pattern persists. Pakistan is almost always the antagonist. Its institutions are portrayed as shadowy, hostile or irrational, its society reduced to stereotypes and complex regional histories flattened into emotionally charged nationalist scripts. This pattern is not incidental. From a mass communication perspective, it fits squarely within framing theory. What audiences repeatedly see determines how they interpret reality. Pakistan is framed through threat, suspicion and conspiracy, while Indian intelligence and military agencies are shown as heroic, restrained and morally justified. Over time, repetition turns representation into assumed truth. OTT platforms have dramatically intensified this process. Unlike traditional cinema, global streaming services bypass borders, regulators and diplomatic sensitivities. Content travels directly into living rooms and mobile phones, particularly among younger audiences. Algorithms reward engagement, not balance. Once hostile narratives gain traction, they are reinforced through recommendation systems that privilege emotional and polarising content. This is not old style propaganda. It is normalised hostility embedded in entertainment. Agenda setting further amplifies the effect. Indian cinema, television debates, digital news portals and social media ecosystems work in narrative alignment. Films influence television discourse, television discourse legitimises cinematic portrayals and selective clips circulate on social media as evidence rather than fiction. Pakistan enters this media universe largely as a problem to be solved or an enemy to be neutralised. Against this backdrop, Pakistan’s response has been dismal. Despite frequent official references to counter fifth generation warfare, there is no visible cultural or narrative strategy. State responses remain reactive, fragmented and largely limited to press statements. There is no sustained investment in storytelling, cultural diplomacy or strategic communication that can compete with India’s well-funded content industries. Ironically, Pakistan has shown that narrative capacity does exist. During and after the Pahalgam episode, Pakistani social media users, particularly youth, challenged Indian television war rhetoric with facts, satire and digital agility. For a brief moment, the information space did not belong entirely to Indian media. That moment, however, was not institutionalised. Today, the same digitally empowered youth are lined up against each other on social media under the banners of competing political parties. What communication scholars describe as narrative noise now dominates the domestic information environment. Emotional, personalised and absolutist narratives collide daily, leaving no space for a coherent national message. For adversarial information campaigns, such fragmentation is not a weakness. It is an opening. From a mass communication standpoint, this represents a national level failure. Strategic narratives require continuity, credibility and institutional backing. Pakistan currently offers none of these consistently. Instead, there is silence at the state level and hyperactivity at the partisan level. This imbalance leaves the country cognitively exposed. The absence of a pro-Pakistan cognitive and narrative centre is particularly damaging. Such a centre would not function as a propaganda unit. It would operate as a professional, research-driven institution bringing together media scholars, historians, filmmakers, digital strategists and data analysts. Its role would be to monitor hostile narratives, produce credible counter content, invest in international storytelling and engage global platforms proactively rather than defensively. This is not about banning Indian films or censoring OTT platforms. In a digital age, such measures are both ineffective and counterproductive. It is about narrative parity. Nations that fail to tell their own stories eventually find themselves living inside stories told by others. Pakistan’s political struggles, social diversity, cultural depth and historical contradictions remain largely absent from global screens, while hostile representations circulate unchecked. As a teacher of mass communication, I see Pakistan’s challenge today as cognitive rather than purely political. Fifth generation warfare targets perception, memory and meaning. Tanks, statements and summits offer little defence when narratives go uncontested. Unless Pakistan develops a non partisan, institutionally anchored and intellectually credible communication strategy, Indian fifth generation warfare executed through cinema, OTT platforms and digital media will continue to shape global perceptions by default. Narrative wars do not wait for internal consensus. They reward coherence and punish division. The question is no longer whether Pakistan needs a strategic communication reset. The question is how long it can afford to delay one. —The writer is a Professor at the University of Central Punjab. (drtaimoorulhassan@gmail.com)