Analysis of Pakistani and Indian Media towards Warfare: Case Study of Pulwama Attack & Balakot Airstrike

Abstract

This research is conducted to analyze the behavior of Pakistan and Indian media’s role towards warfare between both countries. We took Pulwama attack, Balakot airstrike and fighter jets shot down as a case study, and widely studied the claims made by both countries. We also included the stance of BBC news on this issue. In this paper, the authors conducted research on fake or true news being broadcasted from 14^th February 2019 to 5^th March, 2019 by India and Pakistani news channels, and categorized this news being source of warfare between both countries. However, we have limited our research to only two famous TV channels of India named as AajTak news and India Today, and from Pakistan we picked Geo news and ARY news. Indian TV channel AajTak aired more than 450 news and almost 40 special programs, while India Today aired 154 news and 30 special programs. On the other hand, Pakistan’s Geo News broadcasted total 122 news and 5 programs while ARY news aired 137 news and 4 programs on this issue. Based on our collected data we categorized the news of all four channels as fact-less, fact-based content and supported, not supported content towards warfare between both countries. According to our conducted hypothesis results more than 80 % content of Indian channels was fact-less and 20 % content was fact-based. While Pakistani media broadcasted 90 % fact based content and 10 % fact-less. We also concluded that 90 % Indian media content weather fact-less or fact-based was aired in a way that supported warfare among both nations and 70 % of Pakistani media content ,despite being fact based ,has also supported warfare .