RAGING with an overflow of information and photographs, Twitter must have had a busy past Sunday night as terrorists stormed Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport in a siege that lasted well into the next day. Social media pundits, official sources, journalists, first-hand eyewitnesses and the Pakistani Taliban could be read providing a detailed minute-by-minute account on the audacious attack.

Tweets, videos and photographs (#KarachiAirportAttack) detailing the attack unfolding (militant numbers, attack location, ammo, planes attacked) meant the ‘news’ you read for over 24 hours was sourced from friends, colleagues, journalists, and state and security accounts. It was shared consistently by Facebook and Twitter news consumers though it was often difficult to verify facts, let alone regulate accounts of the Taliban and their sympathisers as they posted their apocalyptic version.

If you were concerned about flights suspended or distressed by reports citing a plane hijacked and another on fire, then @AirportPakistan was accurate with information. Syed Saim A. Rizvi (@saim_rizvi) on the stranded Emirates airline provided gripping eyewitness updates: “… think some local airline got hijacked by terrorists... I can see army jawan are on run way now”. Three minutes later another tweet: “… they fire rocket launchers — may Allah protect my country and all passengers and people who are on the board as well on the floor.”

He tweeted about panic on board the flight that had MQM parliamentarian Dr Farooq Sattar. The Telegraph’s Pakistan correspondent tweeted he’d spoken to Sattar. Rizvi was retweeted in the hundreds, but journalist Ali Chishti (@akchishti) anxious about his mother trapped inside the terminal, shared 140-word updated reports that were accurately chilling and on-spot. One of them retweeted 300 times: “8 confirmed terrorists in #Karachi Airport now. They are moving with commando precision. They are on CCTV now”.

A welcome first was the official stream of tweets by Maj Gen Asim Bajwa, DG ISPR, confirming the number of dead terrorists, though perhaps prematurely tweeting that the airport had been cleared by 2pm on Monday — militants attacked the ASF camp on Tuesday afternoon. His tweets substituted in the early hours for an immediate press conference or an ISPR statement on the operation. “It was comforting to know the DG ISPR was on Twitter to provide information on the attack, but then we know he won’t give a backstory. You don’t expect him to say there’s been an intelligence lapse at the airport. That information won’t come from an official source on social media,” media practitioner Afia Salam says.

With no rules of engagement, social media platforms provide a larger canvas of information and if you’ve been a user long enough, it becomes easier to screen information or ask the right questions. “Tweets can’t be regulated for misinformation, but then an uninformed person won’t go on Twitter in an instance like this. Key is to ask questions when unsure and to use Twitter intelligently,” she adds. “After the first instance of smoke billowing through the skies, Twitter users were tweeting that a plane had caught fire. If that had happened, it’s natural logic that the plane would have blown up.”

Using the internet to support terrorist activities, spread militant propaganda, train recruits and finance terror plots is an art perfected by the Taliban whose parallel war on social media platforms clearly reiterate their anti-state narrative. More lately, their extremist mindset produces an existential threat to journalists. This is what happens in the midst of wars when both sides resort to spreading their narrative.

Various TTP accounts were allegedly live-tweeting the airport attack in Pashtu (@Muheb_TTP) with Umar Media’s (official TTP media wing) Facebook page claiming that six terrorists had attacked the airport. Official sources claim 10 militants had attacked the cargo terminal which prompts terrorism analyst Mohammad Amir Rana to explain that the Taliban deliberately put out incorrect information to lend credibility to their cause.

Six militants holding a supposedly well-guarded airport hostage for 24 hours is certainly troubling and humiliating. “Using social media as a platform to disseminate information is not new as the Taliban have used various media during the Soviet war for propaganda purposes. The question is how reliable is the information disseminated on Twitter and Facebook,” he says.

After the attack, the Twitter handle @omarkhorasani1 showed the user threatening ‘hateful journalists’ for their ‘shameful’ and ‘partial’ reports. Explaining that @omarkhalidkhorasani1 is an account managed by the TTP Mohmand faction, where they are known to claim responsibility for attacks and distribute press statements, researcher Zia Ur Rehman points out that there are various Twitter accounts managed by different TTP factions. On Facebook, it is apparent that several TTP-linked pages post messages, upload videos, and even interact with followers.

It has been obvious for quite some time now that while news has a place in social media, the authenticity of content is debatable because of rapidly generated reports. As citizen journalists, Twitter and Facebook users are not bound to recheck their facts. “Social platforms are going to complement and not take over the older news media outlets. There is that group of people who shuffle between the two. Social media platforms are information-based and not knowledge platforms. And they could be propaganda-driven which means for credibility one would pick the traditional medium,” Ms Salam says.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2014