Television once decided which version of America reached Pakistani households. Algorithms, influencers and diaspora voices now compete for that role, and the outcome will shape how Islamabad and Washington understand each other for years to come.
For much of Pakistan’s modern history, the American image reached the public through relatively identifiable institutions. Newspapers selected the stories. Television anchors interpreted them. Editors decided which American statement deserved prominence and which could disappear beneath domestic political news. Government officials, diplomats and foreign correspondents supplied another layer of interpretation. The result was hardly neutral, but the architecture of influence was comparatively visible.
That architecture is now changing. A Pakistani teenager watching TikTok, a university student scrolling Instagram, a political activist following X, a diaspora family sharing YouTube clips on WhatsApp and a television viewer watching an evening bulletin may all encounter entirely different versions of the United States within the same hour. The question is therefore no longer simply what Pakistani media says about America. It is who now shapes Pakistan’s view of America.
Why Pakistan’s Relationship with America Has Always Been Contested
This distinction matters because Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has always been unusually vulnerable to mediated perceptions. Security cooperation, the war in Afghanistan, drone strikes, sanctions, aid, American elections, immigration and Pakistan’s relationship with China have repeatedly been interpreted through powerful narratives of sovereignty, dependence and strategic betrayal. Research on Pakistani and American elite journalism continues to find significant differences in how the two countries frame their relationship, with Pakistani coverage placing greater emphasis on sovereignty, national interest and mistrust, while American coverage has more often foregrounded security, Afghanistan, democracy and governance.
Television did not eliminate these differences. It organised them. Digital media has made them much harder to contain.
From Gatekept Television to Algorithmic Feeds
Pakistan’s television revolution transformed political communication by bringing continuous news into millions of homes. But television retained a gatekeeping structure. A limited number of channels, anchors and editors exercised disproportionate influence over the national conversation. A foreign-policy story might be compressed into a headline, followed by an anchor’s interpretation and several minutes of discussion. The audience could disagree, but the basic menu of information was still largely determined by the broadcaster.
TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and X operate differently. They do not merely distribute information selected by editors. They increasingly determine visibility through recommendation systems, engagement signals and personalised feeds. An individual may never deliberately search for American foreign policy and still encounter repeated videos about Donald Trump, Gaza, immigration, American universities, military power or alleged US interference in Pakistan. Political information can arrive disguised as entertainment.
Lessons from Pakistan’s 2024 Election
Pakistan’s own experience with digital politics demonstrates how significant this transformation has become. Research on the 2024 elections has found that platforms such as X, YouTube and TikTok increasingly functioned as agenda-setters, particularly in an environment in which traditional media faced restrictions and political contestation. Other research has similarly found that social media has increased political awareness and engagement in Pakistan while simultaneously creating opportunities for misinformation, propaganda and echo chambers.
The implications for perceptions of America are substantial.
The New Mediators of Distant Realities
Walter Lippmann’s classic insight was that citizens rarely experience distant political realities directly. They construct pictures of those realities through mediated information. The contemporary problem is that the mediator is no longer necessarily a newspaper, television channel or diplomatic institution. It may be an influencer with several million followers, an anonymous geopolitical account, an edited video, a diaspora commentator or an algorithm whose logic is invisible to the user.
This changes agenda-setting itself. Traditional media could decide which issues mattered by giving them prominence. Digital platforms add another layer: they can determine which versions of those issues receive repeated exposure. The competition is therefore not only over the facts but over attention.
How a Single Policy Becomes Many Different Stories
Consider how an American election can reach Pakistan. A television bulletin might explain the candidates, polling, foreign-policy positions and implications for Pakistan. A YouTube commentator may instead frame the election as evidence of the decline of American democracy. A TikTok creator may reduce it to a dramatic confrontation between personalities. An X account may interpret every statement through the lens of Pakistan’s relations with China, India or Afghanistan. A Pakistani living in the United States may provide a personal account that challenges all three.
None of these perspectives is automatically illegitimate. The danger arises when one emotionally compelling fragment begins to stand in for a complicated reality.
The same applies to American policy towards Pakistan. A statement by a US official can be presented as evidence of respect, hostility, strategic calculation or interference depending on the communicator. A sanctions decision may be explained through non-proliferation rules, or transformed into a story of American punishment. An American aid program can be portrayed as humanitarian cooperation, strategic influence or dependency. A disagreement between Washington and Islamabad can become a viral video within minutes, stripped of the diplomatic context that produced it.
A Wider Public Sphere, Not Necessarily a Better One
Pakistanis are not passive recipients of these narratives. They interpret, remix and contest them. That is one of the genuinely democratic possibilities of digital media. A young Pakistani who once depended upon television can now listen directly to American journalists, academics, politicians, diaspora communities and ordinary citizens. American universities, technology companies, cultural institutions and civil-society organisations can communicate without waiting for Pakistani television to carry their messages.
This is an expansion of the public sphere. But it is not necessarily an improvement in the quality of the public sphere.
Jürgen Habermas imagined the public sphere as a space in which citizens could encounter arguments, deliberate and form public opinion. The digital environment has expanded access to speech while weakening some of the conditions required for deliberation. People can participate more easily, but they can also inhabit increasingly separate informational worlds.
This fragmentation is especially consequential for foreign policy because most citizens cannot independently verify distant events. They rely on intermediaries. If those intermediaries are selected according to engagement rather than expertise, the loudest interpretation may become more influential than the most accurate one.
Misleading Without Being False
The problem is not simply “fake news”. Much of the content shaping perceptions of America may contain genuine facts. A video of an American protest can be authentic while still being presented without context. A genuine quotation can be selectively edited. A real photograph can be associated with the wrong event. A legitimate criticism of US policy can be combined with an unsupported claim. The resulting narrative may be misleading without being entirely fabricated.
Artificial intelligence is likely to make this problem more difficult. Synthetic voices, manipulated video, fabricated screenshots and AI-generated political material can increasingly imitate the appearance of authentic evidence. The most powerful misinformation may not be an obvious fabrication but a piece of content that confirms what an audience already expects to be true.
This is particularly important in Pakistan because perceptions of America are already embedded within powerful historical narratives. The memory of drone strikes, the post-9/11 relationship, the Afghan war, sanctions, aid conditionality and political controversies provides fertile ground for interpretation. Digital content does not create these perceptions from nothing. It can reinforce, intensify or reorganise them.
Separating “America” from “Washington”
At the same time, it would be a mistake to assume that anti-American narratives dominate every digital environment. Pakistan’s image of America is contradictory. The United States can simultaneously be viewed as a powerful state whose foreign policy is distrusted and as a destination for education, migration and professional opportunity. American universities remain attractive to Pakistani students. American technology, entertainment and consumer culture are deeply familiar. Millions of Pakistanis have family, professional or social connections with Americans and Pakistani Americans.
The distinction between “America” and “Washington” therefore matters. A Pakistani citizen may criticise American foreign policy while admiring American universities. Someone may oppose US military interventions while wanting to study or work in the United States. Another person may dislike American political culture while consuming American entertainment every day.
Digital media can either preserve these distinctions or erase them.
Influencers, the Diaspora and the Limits of Public Diplomacy
Influencers occupy an increasingly important position in this process. They are not necessarily experts, diplomats or journalists. Their authority often comes from perceived authenticity. Audiences may trust a familiar personality more than an official embassy statement because the influencer appears to speak without institutional constraints.
Diaspora communities are particularly significant. Pakistani Americans can provide perspectives unavailable through conventional diplomacy: how American politics affects families, how immigration debates are experienced, what ordinary Americans think about Pakistan and how Pakistan is perceived within the United States. Yet diaspora communication can also become selective. Political commitments in one country can intensify political conflicts in the other.
For policymakers, this creates an uncomfortable reality. Traditional public diplomacy assumes that governments communicate with foreign publics through relatively identifiable channels. But when information travels through thousands of personalities and algorithmic networks, the government no longer controls the route.
What Pakistan’s Strategic Communication Needs to Do Differently
Pakistan’s strategic communication therefore requires a conceptual adjustment. It should not attempt to compete with influencers by becoming an influencer, nor should it seek to impose an official interpretation of American affairs. Credibility cannot be manufactured through volume.
The first requirement is institutional capacity. Pakistani diplomatic missions need teams capable of monitoring digital narratives, identifying emerging misconceptions and responding rapidly with verifiable information. This does not mean responding to every hostile post. It means identifying narratives with genuine policy consequences and ensuring that credible information is available before misinformation becomes established.
Second, Pakistan needs stronger media literacy. Citizens should be taught not simply to identify false information but to ask better questions: Who produced this material? What evidence is provided? Is the video old? What information has been removed? Does another credible source confirm the claim? What incentive might the communicator have?
Third, independent journalism remains essential. Governments cannot solve an information problem by becoming the principal source of information. Journalists, universities and civil-society organisations need greater capacity to verify digital material, explain American institutions and place individual events within broader Pakistan-US relations.
Fourth, Pakistan needs to understand that digital diplomacy is increasingly about trust rather than publicity. A government that communicates only when it wants to promote a favourable narrative will struggle to become credible when a crisis occurs. Transparency about uncertainty, rapid correction of mistakes and willingness to acknowledge legitimate criticism can be more valuable than polished messaging.
Washington’s Side of the Challenge
The United States faces a corresponding challenge. American diplomacy cannot assume that official statements will automatically define how its policies are understood in Pakistan. A diplomatic explanation released after a narrative has already gone viral may be technically accurate but politically ineffective. Washington therefore needs to understand the communicative ecosystems through which Pakistanis actually encounter American policy.
Neither country, however, should respond by attempting to control the digital public sphere. Regulation intended to combat misinformation can easily become a mechanism for suppressing criticism. Recent international debates over algorithmic control illustrate how quickly questions of platform governance become questions of free expression and political power.
The deeper issue is therefore not whether Pakistan can produce a better narrative about America. It is whether Pakistan can create a healthier information environment in which competing narratives can be tested against evidence.
Preparing for an AI-Saturated Information Environment
That distinction will become increasingly important as artificial intelligence accelerates the production and circulation of political content. A future Pakistani citizen may encounter an apparently authentic American politician speaking words that were never spoken, a historical photograph presented as a contemporary event, or a convincing video that compresses a complicated diplomatic dispute into thirty seconds.
The answer cannot be permanent suspicion. A society in which citizens believe nothing is authentic is almost as vulnerable as one in which they believe everything they see. The objective must instead be stronger habits of verification and stronger institutions capable of establishing facts.
The New Gatekeepers, and the Contest Ahead
Pakistan’s view of America has never been produced by a single institution. Television once possessed disproportionate influence because it controlled much of the gateway to international information. That gateway has now fragmented. The new gatekeepers are algorithms, personalities, networks and communities.
This transformation creates risks, but it also creates an opportunity. Pakistan no longer needs to depend entirely on a small group of broadcasters to explain the world. Its citizens can access American debates directly and participate in conversations that were previously distant and elite. The challenge is ensuring that greater access produces greater understanding rather than simply greater exposure to emotionally powerful fragments.
In the digital age, foreign policy is therefore becoming a contest over more than diplomatic positions. It is becoming a contest over attention, interpretation and trust. A thirty-second video can reach millions before an embassy statement is read. An influencer can become a foreign-policy interpreter without ever having studied international relations. An algorithm can decide which argument appears repeatedly on a citizen’s screen without explaining why.
The question facing Pakistan and the United States is consequently larger than who wins the next media cycle. It is whether democratic societies can preserve the distinction between information and manipulation when the institutions that once organised public knowledge no longer control its circulation.
For Pakistan, the strategic lesson is clear. It should invest less in controlling narratives and more in strengthening the institutions through which citizens can evaluate them. In the contest to shape Pakistan’s view of America, the most durable advantage will not belong to whoever speaks the loudest. It will belong to whoever is trusted when the noise becomes overwhelming.
Published in SouthAsianDesk, September 12th, 2026
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