Dr. Shabir Hussain is a Professor of Political Communications at Bahria University. He researches digital hate speech and disinformation within the political context of India and Pakistan. He specifically focuses on how mediated populism interacts with hate speech and disinformation in both countries.
In this interview, Dr. Hussain offers insights into the landscape of hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation in Pakistan, the weaponization of social media against religious minorities, and potential adaptations to Pakistan’s legal frameworks to better protect the public from these harmful influences.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Deeksha Udupa: How does digital hate speech influence the social and political environment for minorities — whether different sects in Islam, or Hindus, Christians, and other ethnic minorities — in Pakistan?
Shabir Hussain: Digital media has provided a platform that hateful groups have taken advantage of. Now, these hate-mongers have social media teams. They have special social media teams and are resorting to deep fakes and misinformation. The videos, images, and text that they produce are fastidiously crafted. They are not amateurs. Another dangerous aspect of this all is the audience: all of these purveyors of hate have huge amounts of civilian supporters sharing their perspectives.
It becomes easy to target a specific person or community because like-minded people who are ideologically motivated will believe this misinformation. There is low media literacy and no fact verification. Because of this, we see killings of religious minorities and a resurgence of political violence in Pakistan.
DU: How do you think we can increase media literacy in Pakistan and around the world so people are better equipped to differentiate between real and fake content?
SH: This is a difficult question to answer in the Pakistani context. Over the past few years, Pakistani society has become increasingly polarized, to the extent that it is essentially divided into discrete groups. No one is looking to verify facts. They are seeking information that is aligned with their polarized ideologies. Social media’s mass availability has hindered media literacy. 75 million people are on social media with minimal media literacy education, which intensifies the problem. Because of how polarized society is, people are uninterested in knowing the whole truth. They’re only interested in their portion of the truth. Even if people are interested in verifying the facts for themselves, the fact-checkers in Pakistan are divided. The media houses and fact-checkers themselves have political affiliations. At present, I don’t know if the majority of Pakistanis are ready to commit to media literacy.
DU: Do you think there are mechanisms or policies that could effectively mitigate this interplay in a way that protects freedom of expression while preventing harm?
SH: I am weary of governmental mechanisms or policies because under the current Pakistani government, freedom of information is perceived as an obstacle to the objectives of the government. Recently, the government has enforced high security measures for Pakistani society. With this securitization, they want to impose a particular perspective that views Islam as the foundational faith in the country, and the Pakistani military is the driving force behind that push, with mainstream Pakistanis operating in it. Ethnic and religious minorities, along with the poor, are completely ignored because they don’t fit into the narrative of a united, strong Pakistan.
DU: What role do social media platforms play in the spread of disinformation and hate in Pakistan?
SH: Unfortunately, in Pakistan, it’s almost impossible to hold these media platforms accountable because they aren’t based in Pakistan. They usually govern from elsewhere and don’t have local offices in Pakistan. The attention economy is another huge factor. There are very few people who are actually registering complaints against offensive posts to social media companies. Generally, average Pakistanis don’t know that they can file complaints against these platforms to remove problematic content.
The broad interpretation of the freedom of expression also contributes to this confusion. Something that may be very dangerous in the Pakistani context may not seem dangerous in the Western context, which is why the content is generally not removed.
DU: Do you see AI exacerbating the spread of online hate in Pakistan?
SH: Yes, at this point, no more than 1-2% of Pakistanis are using AI. In the future, it will be a very problematic phenomenon. Recently, I was playing around with AI and I requested information about the civil rights movement in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. What I realized was that the AI responses were actually criticizing the movement and saying that the campaigns were anti-Pakistan and would weaken the country. The AI responses never mentioned the truth, which is that the movement in question demands the freedom of the Balochistani people. Because AI is gathering information from mainstream and digital media, I don’t think it will improve the situation. I think greater reliance on AI could be very dangerous for Pakistan.
DU: Considering your work on media-driven advocacy for civil rights, how effective have social media campaigns been in countering hate speech and disinformation that targets minorities? What strategies do you think are most effective for civil society groups when using digital media to advocate for the rights of marginalized communities?
SH: I have seen that social media can actually be very useful for civil rights movements in Pakistan. Traditionally, the mainstream media in Pakistan has criticized civil rights movements for being anti-military and anti-Pakistan and accused them of working in favor of an enemy agenda. This is what is defined as the protest paradigm, because the protesters and human rights activists were always reported on in negative terms. Yet with the rise of social and digital media, we have seen excellent alternatives for civil rights movements in Pakistan. Activists and protesters are using social media very skillfully and strategically by challenging government and mainstream propaganda.
DU: What policy recommendations would you suggest to the government in Pakistan and to social media platforms in order to curb the spread of digital hate speech while also balancing democratic freedoms?
SH: In Pakistan, we are still struggling with democracy and core political values. We need to ask what kind of Pakistan these politicians and bureaucrats have in mind: do they want a Pakistan that is a liberal democracy or one that is highly militarized? With that being said, I think that the government can actually pressure social media companies. The state is in a good position to work with social media companies to figure out what sort of information should be available, how complaints should be handled, and how hateful information and disinformation should be removed.
We actually have a lot of rules and regulations on social media in Pakistan. All of these rules focus on how content should not operate against the security of the state of Pakistan. We need to broaden these laws, beyond just protecting the security of the state, to include legislating against hate speech and disinformation. There are human rights bodies and digital rights advocates who are fighting for this, but a greater consensus is needed. We need to understand what exactly the definitions of freedom of expression, hate speech, and disinformation are in the context of Pakistan, because what may be considered hate speech in other places, like India, may not be considered hate speech in Pakistan. I feel that the government needs to broadly de-securitize its treatment of social media regulations.
I think it also must launch a mass education campaign: the government should introduce media literacy courses at schools, colleges, and universities. Political parties bear a huge responsibility as well. They need to establish red lines on disinformation and hate speech for their leaders and their supporters. We need responsibility and ethical values to formulate such boundaries. All of this can only be achieved after a political consensus is established.