Daily Times

The realm of information warfare is ripe and hot. The enemies are invisibly making inroads into our amorphous state cores and attempting to bewilder the Idea of Pakistan. Of all the numerous threats popping up of this warfare, the most vulnerable and fragile targets are the potential youth of the country. Of various spoils of this information warfare for the enemies, the crucial ones are creating ideological youth disillusionment, and downward socio-cultural mobility. We being a resilient nation and a country with significant geo strategic worth have to offer a strong confronting to this framework of destruction laced out by the forces of animosity.

The most effective upfront artillery mechanized in this information warfare is the media. Media can be seen in three distinct dimensions, the print, the electronic and the social media. The pre media liberalization period ranging from 1964 to 2002 makes up for a unilateral or totalitarian phase served by a centralist media control mechanism. The PTV made up for the electronic media for that period while there were numerous print media groups in that period which saw circumstances of ups and downs back then. The liberalization of electronic media in the post 2002 hastened by the rise of social media cropped up several challenges which were to be tackled by us through grand social change management. But we left the circumstances define our destiny and incognizant of any fall outs, we did not pick on comprehending the media warfare prospects of such mushroom media regime in the country.

The print and electronic media are responsible, structured and formulated regimes which however sometimes go out of bounds in performing their professional duties such as moral justification of news management. The culture of ‘breaking news’ and ‘first caught’ news alongwith the obnoxious ratings table is compromising the professional journalistic ethics by putting behind all the acceptable social norms in reporting certain news item which has to be assessed in terms of social acceptability; the kind of social reaction it could give off; the sort of social impact it would be imprinting on social fabric and the long term news value of such material being broadcasted or published.

On the darker side, the media houses have been fast turning into mega corporations whose interests are but defined by accumulation of power. Power in this connotation is both the means of being influential and the practical accumulation of wealth. The media becoming so influential has earned a misnomer of fourth pillar of the state and is slowly becoming a strong party to managing the state affairs. The journalists on the other hand have their say in the media houses corporations and there are instances of fake news item management, self centered and self gain based approaches by the leading journalists who also happen to be claimants to infallible socio-moral characters. The elements of media econometrics are clashing with the factors of state biomechanics.

The most effective upfront artillery mechanized in this information warfare is the media. Media can be seen in three distinct dimensions, the print, the electronic and the social media

On the social entertainment juncture, the distinct role of media is to reflect the social landscape through effective tool of literature by following the Aristotle’s definition of literature that it was two pronged as to teach and as to entertain too. The PTV’s contribution in providing the quality depiction of the art and literature is unsurpassable and matchless to any given times. However its role on creating a politically literate society was failed due to the centralist media management doctrine. The present media regime is yet again another extreme which has not performed and delivered well on the entertaining side. The sort of social reflection as depicted in the entertainment content projects a society alien of ours. The rise of commercialism and its sandwiching into literature and art has reduced the literary effect of entertainment. The commercial gains define and modulate much of the business in the entertainment phase. The quality of entertainment, its social value, purpose and acceptability are being compromised.

The social media stream makes up the sum of all fears where there are no rules and no regulators. The ideological disillusionment in the youth is one of the instances here where the enemy is hitting us most hard. The anti state matter in Pakistan and outside have from the day first tried to nullify the idea which created Pakistan and attempting to reduce it to shards. Later on after creation, this attempt never stopped and was seen in the likes of various political cases appearing in different regions of the country. The infusion of idea that one’s’ ethno-regional identity was predominantly more superior than the idea of Pakistan has been continuously stuffed into our youth. The current social media with such unbridled openness and anarchic freedom of speech gave the enemies the breeding ground most favorable to unleash their monstrous designs. The enemy has launched all out war and we are but and just watching it all.

It should be an hour of grave national concern for us where we need to take immediate steps. We need to redesign a mechanism to reconnect to our social roots which were based on the principles of mutual respect, tolerance, apathy, care and cooperation-to rephrase our social order and put off the fictitious social glamour which is virtually surrounding us and has taken us to the world of ‘clouds’. This is possible if only we made certain readjustments with our education curriculum and education system. The social media needs an adequate control which could be of any type involving blockade of few such social media forums which are the easiest to handle and the most populous too with the potential to threaten misguiding our youth. The Chinese model of social media surveillance could be of instrumental worth in this case. This is a real time war and we need to take war like actions.

The writer is a civil servant based in Quetta