The May 2025 military standoff between India and Pakistan not only marked a paradigmatic shift in the engagement doctrines between the two countries, but it also exposed the Indian disinformation nexus to the regional and global community. While both sides were locked in a conventional skirmish, the digital landscape underwent a consequential change. Algorithmic micro-targeting, narrative manipulation, and an exaggerated disinformation campaign were all tactics employed by India to obscure facts parallel to the kinetic conflict.[1] In the digital battlefield, drones have been supplanted by deepfakes, and a strategic arsenal by doctored news headlines. The line between disinformation and misinformation was deemed impossible to discern.[2]
The fog of war may be inevitable, but in this age, it is not due to smoke and chaos alone.[3] Indian media’s jingoist and fanatic tendencies manifested on the X-space (Twitter Space) and served to deliberately create confusion among the masses while using invalid and unauthentic information. This synthetic surfeit sparked resistance even in the Indian masses, leading to a paralyzed reaction to global scrutiny towards them. [4]
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