On April 22nd, the Pahalgam attack occurred in Indian-administered Kashmir, prompting immediate accusations from the Indian government, which held Pakistan responsible for orchestrating the violence through cross-border militant activity. In response, India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7th as a military retaliation.
Following this act were days of intense military exchanges, with a retaliatory strike by Pakistan on May 10th, known as Operation Bunyan al-Marsus. The world closely witnessed the Indo-Pak War as the drones filled both nations’ airspace.
After days of escalatory moves, the two nuclear nations signed a ceasefire agreement. Despite the peace settlement between India and Pakistan, a new conflict soon emerged: A conflict far deadlier than irregular skirmishes between two nuclear-powered states, a race to control the dominant media narrative. These conflicts were not waged with missiles, but with the global media headlines, viral local and international narratives, and hashtags.
When the missiles stopped and the hashtags began, who really held the power?
The Clash of Narratives on Pakistan-India Ceasefire
When it comes to media, objectivity is fleeting, especially in times of war. Take, for instance, these two headlines reporting the same moment:
“Pak PM Thanks Trump Following Ceasefire | Pakistan Appreciates US For Facilitating.” – NewsX
“India Rejects Donald Trump’s Role In Pakistan And India Ceasefire.” – Dawn News
Both headlines, both truths, depending on where you’re standing. This divergence in reporting laid the foundation for what followed: a battle not just fought with weapons, but with words.
Throughout history, armed conflicts have been temporary, but the discussion they generate often persists, and the same is the case with this recent military clash. Media outlets continue to address the recent India-Pakistan conflict from various angles. After the ceasefire agreement, and even during the war, media channels from both sides actively tried to shape the domestic and international narratives, with each presenting the outcome as favorable to their respective armed forces.
The surge of these clashing narratives resulted in a frenzy of confusion among the global audience, as media coverage varied widely across regions. While the local media in both Pakistan and India presented their national viewpoints, international media offered some differing interpretations of the event.
The social media platforms, including X, Threads, and YouTube, were filled with contradictory reports, resulting in the spread of complex event highlights and widespread misinformation for the global audience to comprehend. This event led some international news channels to publish accounts of what could have actually happened to reveal the truth beyond social media hype.
Suggested Read: Social Media Monitoring – The Silent Force Behind Leading Brands
Amidst the circulation of conflicting narratives, attention was drawn to the core performance of advanced military assets, including India’s Rafale fighter jets procured from France and Pakistan’s J10-C procured from China. In response to the claims of Pakistan downing Indian aircraft, some reports presented a temporary dip in Dassault Aviation’s stock, the manufacturer of Rafale.
There were also speculations that certain international media outlets in countries may present biased narratives about the war events based on which country they sided with. The news of the possible fall of French jets by Chinese ones was not just a coverage of how militaries on each side performed, but in fact it was a revelation of a possible shift in military power balance across the globe. Therefore, confirming the veracity of events was more important than ever.
It was also speculated that even international media may not present an accurate picture due to political bias. For instance, there were speculations and even some observations that Turkey, Azerbaijan, and China side with Pakistan, while Russia and France side with India. After the ceasefire, foreign policy and international relations experts and even the defense analysts were sharing their perspectives on which side was able to gain support of international fraternity and which side succeeded the most on foreign policy front.
With the surge of conflicting reports and limited verification, these narratives contributed to confusion in the digital space, calling for the need of instruments to get the true picture by separating fact from fiction.
The Credibility Crisis in Local Media Coverage
Media outlets, particularly in India, were under fire for making exaggerated claims with no logical argument. Statements related to the drowned enemy crafts, unverified casualty count, and unknown installation destruction were taking the local media by storm before they were thoroughly verified, leading to negative sentiment formulation.
This doesn’t end here. The state-backed media platforms continuously shared dramatic and irrelevant visuals/information, which led to the circulation of a fragmented crisis understanding. Ultimately, the international audience experienced uncertainties in recognizing the channels with the most unbiased and credible information.
Such a show of hyper-nationalism, echoing through the local media, made it increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. The media war of perception has left investigative journalists, think tanks, and even defense manufacturers scrambling for clarity. Local media outlets declared victory for their sides, while international reporting ranged from cautious neutrality to outright contradiction.
Apart from that, microblogging platforms like X were flooded with contradictory information. The intent of misinformation got so severe that many users turned to AI tools like Grok to verify the authenticity of viral posts. Thereby, investigative journalists were compelled to integrate sentiment analysis and media mention monitoring for credible research purposes.
Media Narratives, Shift in Balance of Power, and Geopolitical Alliances
In the aftermath of the India-Pakistan conflict, the headlines were echoing with talk of shifting geopolitical alliances. As per certain viewpoints, while India and Pakistan were immersed in direct military exchanges, China emerged as a strategic winner as it was able to demonstrate its military supremacy.
This is evident from some of the headlines in mainstream media, such as one given by the BBC here:
“The four-day conflict between arch-rivals India and Pakistan this month ended with a ceasefire and both claiming victory – but it now appears that China’s defence industry might also be an unlikely winner.”
Beyond the headlines, it is crucial to see how each actor was portrayed within broader narratives.
In this case, a Russian news outlet discusses the Chinese J-10C fighter jet and shows a Slightly Positive sentiment toward the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, which manufactures it.
On the flip side, the Dassault Rafale (French jet) and India, both involved in the incident, are viewed as Moderately Negative.
This showcases how different entities in the same article can be perceived very differently depending on media bias and narrative focus.
India Pakistan News Live Update – Analyzing Sentiments to Check Updates
There is no doubt that during the Indo-Pak conflict and ceasefire, the investigative journalists and analysts were confronted with a large volume of facts and misinformation at the same time. However, there is a very sheer volume of tools that exist to thoroughly analyze the following attributes:
- How were different publications in different countries interpreting and presenting the same event?
- What were the sentiments of the international media towards each warring party and towards the military of each country?
- Which of the two regions was praised/acknowledged by which third countries?
- What evaluations did neutral media outlets provide regarding the comparative military strengths/weaknesses of both sides?
To fulfill the void left by misinformation and to analyze how media in different countries share the opinion, there is a dire need for media monitoring tools. The significance of media monitoring platforms becomes indispensable as they provide a thorough analysis of global sentiment trends, allowing entities to decode whether a positive, neutral, or negative sentiment is ruling a particular region.
How Media Watcher Helps in Fact-Checking and Analyzing the Public Perceptions
For decades, military ceasefires have been preventing escalation, but the real challenge emerges later with the battle of global narratives. The warring factions are frequently subjected to media trials that unfold across international platforms. These narratives can be fair or deeply biased, largely depending on which country’s media is shaping or propagating the dominant storyline. Thereby, understanding how global audiences perceive the conflict and which powers align with each faction becomes a critical aspect of post-conflict influence.
Amidst this, Media Watcher emerges as a credible narrative analyst as it thoroughly evaluates the narrative evolution and media biases through its real-time tech.
The divergence in international narratives highlights the urgent need to integrate comprehensive media monitoring tools that cut through the global media bias and aggregate diverse perspectives while delivering a balanced overview of the conflicting events.
For this reason, Media Watcher goes beyond general sentiment and delivers Entity-Level Sentiment Analysis (ELSA) as it breaks down how individual subjects within a news piece are portrayed.
Media Watcher, through its sentiment analysis of media in different countries, not only helps in checking the facts but also senses the pulse of media in each country and thus reveals which countries are likely to side with which nation.
- Media Watcher’s real-time news accumulation helps companies analyze the audience perspectives in diverse languages and across 235+ regions.
- For researchers, policymakers, law enforcement bodies, and journalists, real-time media monitoring highlights narrative gaps and regional biases, exposing how a single event is perceived differently in different regions.
- What makes Media Watcher a comprehensive media monitoring specialist is its ability to aggregate more than 400 contextual categories to ensure effective sentiment synopsis with 95% accuracy rates while performing channel-specific media presence as well.
