Public Opinion Shift, Post-Truth, and Hybrid Warfare: Contextualizing The Nexus Of Post-Truth And Hybrid Warfare In Pakistan

Abstract

Over the last few years, Pakistan has been embroiled in political turmoil that seems to be signaling a shift in public opinion vis a vis state narrative. A shift in public opinion that favors alternate points of view to the state’s can symbolize a challenge in maintaining control over the national discourse and narrative, exposing fault lines in society that can potentially be exploited. This situation has become particularly dangerous as a result of the post-truth nature of today’s information environment and the resulting post-truth and hybrid warfare nexus. The post-truth and hybrid warfare nexus has emerged as a contemporary security challenge for states and Pakistan is no exception. Therefore, there is a need to contextualize this nexus to Pakistan and the unique security challenges it faces, both in the form of external threats and internal strife. This study looks at the issue from a post-structuralist lens, enabling the fluidity of truth as a socially constructed phenomenon, using Foucault’s work on truth and truth regimes, as the guiding theoretical framework. Foucault’s idea of power and how it functions in a society, also allows the navigation of the post-truth-hybrid warfare nexus and how public opinion can act as a force within it. A mixed-method method approach to data collection was adopted in the form of surveys and expert interviews. The results of the study show that the country’s media landscape is being dominated by social media platforms that have overtaken traditional news mediums, as a result, the state’s role and influence have been reduced as compared to the past. Furthermore, the study concludes that while the use of social media for public opinion manipulation for the purposes of hybrid warfare remains true, it is genuine grievances of the people that manifest in fault lines that are exploited. The study also revealed that public opinion is pitted against the state narrative on several political and security issues, and coercive measures to deal with the situation might not be fruitful in the long run. A reorientation of the existing mechanisms of knowledge production, that determine what is considered truth in a society and what is not, has resulted from the democratization of media systems, leading to an attenuation of the state’s capabilities to manage narrative and discourse in the country.