Why ‘shooting down’ fighter jets has become central to narrative setting
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When Israel and the United States attacked Iran on February 28, another skirmish was underway between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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That morning, Afghan spokespersons claimed that a Pakistani fighter jet had been shot down in Jalalabad and the pilot captured.
The claim was quickly picked up by Afghan and global media, and social media engagement accounts. Videos online showed what appeared to be a red parachute and a crowd gathered on the roadside. There was no real wreckage, no pilot in a flight suit.
When the claim was disproved, news organisations removed their posts or added Pakistan’s denial. The viral videos had been unrelated to the fighting along the Durand Line.
This was not the first false claim shared on social media about the Afghan Taliban shooting down Pakistani fighter jets.
Such assertions about downed jets are now an unmistakable global pattern. While the number of jets a country loses may not be a measure of who comes out of the conflict with the upper hand, the claims, even if they are disproved later, have become an important weapon in a country’s online narrative battle.
That is why such claims are often grossly exaggerated or outright false.
This pattern of claims and counter-claims keeps on being repeated.
The most prominent recent example of this pattern is the four-day conflict in May between India and Pakistan.
When India struck sites it claimed were terrorist...